Legendary Broadway producer Cy Feuer, 95, died this morning at his home in Manhattan. In addition to producing a number of award-winning Broadway musicals during his fifty-plus year career, Feuer also worked as a director, composer, musician, and was a longtime president of The League of American Theatres and Producers.
His feature film credits include co-producing with his Broadway partner, the late Ernest H. Martin, the 1952 film version of their musical Where's Charley, starring Ray Bolger, and the monumental 1985 flop A Chorus Line, directed by Richard Attenborough. In 1972, Feuer produced by himself the film version of Cabaret, winner of 8 Academy Awards. Additionally, in the late 1930s he worked as a composer – and at one point was head of the music department – at Republic Pictures.
With Martin, the Brooklyn-born Feuer produced several hit musicals that later became motion pictures – though the transfer to the screen was not always successful. Among the film adaptations are Guys and Dolls (1955, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, with Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, and Jean Simmons), Silk Stockings (1957, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse), Can-Can (1960, directed by Walter Lang, with Shirley MacLaine, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, and Sinatra), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967, directed by David Swift, with Robert Morse), and The Boy Friend (1971, directed by Ken Russell, with Twiggy and Christopher Gable). One of the plays Feuer directed, I Remember Mama, was adapted for the screen in 1948, with George Stevens directing Irene Dunne and Barbara Bel Geddes.
Feuer was nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning three: one for Guys and Dolls and two for How To Succeed in Business. In 2003, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award. That same year, he published his memoir, I Got the Show Right Here: The Amazing True Story of How an Obscure Brooklyn Horn Player Became the Last Great Broadway Showman, written with Ken Gross.
In his honor, the marquee lights on Broadway and at other theaters throughout the U.S. will be dimmed for one minute tomorrow night at 8 p.m.