Playbill

Michael Frazier (Manager) Obituary
Michael Frazier, a theatrical producer, who presented Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music on Broadway, died of complications of Parkinson's disease on Oct. 23, 2009, in Great Barrington, Mass. He was 72. Lena Horne, a concert presentation that brought the 1940s film and recording star new-found fame when it bowed on Broadway in 1981, was Mr. Frazier's most notable success. It ran more than a year and won Horne a special Tony Award. The show subsequently toured the country, played London and was presented as a television special.

Otherwise, Mr. Frazier's Broadway producing career was marked by some very notable, even historical, flops. He produced Hide and Seek, a 1980 thriller that ran all of 8 performances; ushered in End of the World, the 1984, Harold Prince-directed play that was author Arthur Kopit's last, brief gasp as a Broadway playwright; was one of the backers of another famous Prince misfire, the burlesque house-set musical Grind, which ran a couple months in 1985; and produced Mail, the little-seen 1988 musical by and starring actor Michael Rupert. His final Broadway credit was 3 From Brooklyn in 1992. Like Mail, it starred one of its creators, Sal Richards; and, like Mail, it didn't last long.

He first became a Broadway producer in 1973 when he joined several others to present a revival of Clare Booth Luce's The Women starring Kim Hunter, Myrna Loy and Alexis Smith.

Mr. Frazier also producer Off-Broadway, including the 1990 musical Further Mo' at the Village Gate, and, 1991, Brad Fraser's Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love at the Orpheum, which received a lot of attention for its gory subject matter but did not catch on with audiences.

In 1989, Mr. Frazier cast his lot in Chicago, initiating a non-profit enterprise at the Halsted Theatre Centre. "I want to do a series of four new American plays in the small space, each running about 6 to 10 weeks," he said at the time.

 X

Blocking belongs
on the stage,
not on websites.

Our website is made possible by
displaying online advertisements to our visitors.

Please consider supporting us by
whitelisting playbill.com with your ad blocker.
Thank you!