James Walsh Dead: Tony-Winning Broadway Producer Was 89

James Walsh, whose many Broadway producing credits in the 1980s and ’90s included the Tony Award winning productions of 1986’s I’m Not Rappaport starring Judd Hirsch and 1989’s Pulitzer-winning The Heidi Chronicles, died of sepsis Thursday, August 27, in New York City. He was 89.

His death was announced by his wife, the Emmy- and Oscar-winning casting director Juliet Taylor.

Born May 6, 1937, in Antonito, Colorado, Walsh attended UCLA before beginning his career as a Ford Foundation intern for administration in the arts at the Metropolitan Opera from 1961-1963. He then worked at the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center under Robert Whitehead and Elia Kazan, helping to manage their repertory company based in Greenwich Village at the ANTA Theatre while the Vivian Beaumont was still under construction. ANTA productions included such future stars as Faye Dunaway, Jason Robards and Roy Scheider.

He began his Broadway career as an assistant general manager on 1964’s After The Fall by Arthur Miller, directed by Elia Kazan. Over the next 20 years he served, with one notable exception, he served as company manager, general manager or assistant manager for such memorable, even seminal, Broadway shows as Miller’s Incident at Vichy (1964), Tartuffe with Hal Holbrook and Salome Jens (1965), Jay Presson Allen’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie starring Zoe Caldwell (1968), Arthur Kopit’s Indians starring Stacy Keach, Charles Durning, Raul Julia, Sam Waterston and many others (1969);  Julian Barry’s Lenny Bruce bioplay Lenny starring Cliff Gorman (1971); Brian Friel’s The Freedom of the City (1974); Herb Gardner’s Thieves starring Richard Mulligan and Marlo Thomas (1974); I Have a Dream starring Billy Dee Williams as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1976); Barnum starring Jim Dale and Glenn Close (1980); The Music Man revival with Dick Van Dyke (1980); Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music (1981); and Beth Henley’s The Wake of Jamey Foster starring Anthony Heald and Holly Hunter (1982).

The one notable exception to his management roles from the era was The Watering Hole starring William Devane, Shirley Knight, Vivian Nathan and Ralph Waite. He produced the play by Lyle Kessler that opened – and closed – on March 12, 1969.

When he returned to producing 14 years later, it was with considerably more splash if not immediately greater success: Doonesbury, a high-profile musical with book and lyrics by Garry Trudeau, based on his wildly popular comic strip and with music by Elizabeth Swados, was neither a critical nor commercial success when it opened in 1983. Though it garnered considerable attention, the musical played only 20 previews and 104 performances.

Walsh’s luck would change drastically with his third producing effort: Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport, the 1985 play directed by Daniel Sullivan and starring Judd Hirsch and Cleavon Little. The play about two elderly men who become unlikely friends as they spend their days together on a park bench was a hit, winning Tony Awards for Best Play, for Hirsch’s performance and for lighting design. (A 1996 film adaptation starred Walter Matthau and Ossie Davis).

Walsh followed up that success with an even more celebrated production: Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles (1989), a generational touchstone starring Joan Allen, Peter Friedman, Boyd Gaines, Cynthia Nixon and others. The play, about a young feminist who choose to adopt a child on her own, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for six Tony Awards, winning for Best Play and Best Featured Actor (Gaines).

The early ’90s brought continued success for Walsh, with Broadway productions of Tony-nominated Once on This Island (1990), 1992’s Conversations with My Father, again starring Hirsch along with Tony Shalhoub, Jason Biggs and others; and, also that year, Gregory Mosher’s revival of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire starring Alec Baldwin, Jessica Lange and Amy Madigan.

Although the starry production was one of the most anticipated shows of the season and proved a major box office success, it received mixed-to-negative critical reviews and no Tony nominations. Lange’s performance would be favorably reappraised over the years, and in 1995 she was Emmy nominated when she starred, along with Baldwin, in a CBS film adaptation of the Broadway production.

Walsh largely retired from the theater following Streetcar, returning briefly in 2003 to produce the musical Never Gonna Dance, a short-lived project based on the 1936 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film Swing Time, starring Noah Racey, Nancy Lemenager, Karen Ziemba and Peter Gerety, with direction by Michael Greif and choreography by Jerry Mitchell.

In addition to Broadway, Walsh produced two notable Off Broadway plays in 1967: Norman Mailer’s The Deer Park and The Beard, Michale McClure’s controversial take on Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow (the playwright and poet would later go on to co-author the song “Mercedes Benz” with Janis Joplin).

Walsh also served on the Board of Governors for the League of American Theaters and Producers and on the Theatre Advisory Board for the American Soviet Theatre Initiative.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by sons Sam Walsh and Jason Walsh.