Allan Albert(1945-1994)

Allan Praigrod Albert was born in New York City and raised in Miami Beach. He graduated from Amherst College, where he staged "The Fantastics," with Ken Howard and Larry Dilg in leading roles, and "Murder in the Cathedral," starring Stephen Collins, in the village's Grace Episcopal Church. He also played the role of Marat in a staging of "Marat/Sade." He attended the Yale School of Drama and founded the Proposition, an improvisation troupe that played in Cambridge, Massachusetts and New York for a decade, launching the careers of Jane Curtin, Josh Mostel, Suzanne Rand and John Monteith (Monteith and Rand), and others. From 1977 to 1979, he was artistic director of the Berkshire Theater Festival and the Charles River Playhouse. He also did stints as director of comedy development at the infant HBO (from 1979 to 1981) and WNET in New York. At HBO, he was in charge of the "Young Comedians Shows," which featured such performers as Pee-wee Herman and Arsenio Hall. In 1980, he started Allan Albert Productions, which produces live shows for Hersheypark and other theme parks. He ran AAP until his death. At the time of his death, he and William Henry III, the drama critic for Time magazine, were researching a film for PBS about Norman Rockwell. He produced _Songs of Six Families, The (1994) (TV), a ninety-minute PBS tribute to regional music in American, and _"American Masters" (1983) You're the Top: The Cole Porter Story (1990)_, and he directed the Cole Porter 100th anniversary gala at Carnegie Hall. In 1989, he founded the Oasis foundation to give attention to the work of young photographers, and, shortly before his death, he set up The Allan Albert Photographic Fund at Amherst College.