Robert Whitehead (theatre producer)


Robert Whitehead was a Canadian theatre producer. His first production was Medea, starring Judith Anderson and John Gielgud, and he won the Outer Critics Circle Award five times. He was nominated for 19 Tony and Drama Desk Awards, winning 4 Tony Awards and 5 Drama Desk Awards.

Life

His father owned textile mills, and his mother, Selena Mary LaBatt Whitehead, was an opera singer.
He went to Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, then worked as a commercial photographer before studying acting at the New York School of the Theatre.
He spent the Second World War years as an ambulance driver in North Africa and Italy.
Whitehead had a long-term association with fellow producer Roger L. Stevens. In 1964, the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre opened with Robert Whitehead and Elia Kazan as its heads and Harold Clurman as literary adviser.
In 1968, Whitehead married Zoe Caldwell, who starred in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The couple bought property in Pound Ridge, a mountain area in New York State, and built a house there. Caldwell, who won a Tony as Brodie, later appeared for Whitehead in a revival of Medea, Lillian, a one-woman show about Lillian Hellman, and Terrence McNally's Master Class, in which she played Maria Callas.

Honours

2002 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. The Commercial Theater Institute gives an annual award for "Outstanding Achievement in Commercial Theater Producing" which is named for Robert Whitehead.

Broadway Productions

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Awards and nominations

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