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Gene Saks 1921 - 2015

Gene Saks was born in 1921, and died at age 94 years old in 2015. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Gene Saks.

Gene Saks

1921

2015

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Gene Saks Gene Saks (1921 - 2015)

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Gene Saks' History: 1921 - 2015

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Introduction

Gene Saks was a great Broadway director and made Neil Simon plays hugely successful.
1921

Birthday

1921

Birthdate

Unknown

Birthplace

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Ethnicity & Family History

Jean Michael Saks — he legally changed the spelling of his name as an adult — was born to Morris Saks and the former Beatrix Leukowitz in Manhattan on Nov. 8, 1921, and he grew up in Hackensack, N.J., where his father ran a wholesale women’s shoe business.
Nationality & Locations

American and in adulthood, life-long New Yorker.
Early Life & Education

He graduated from Cornell and, after serving in the Navy during World War II — he took part in the Normandy invasion — studied acting at the New School for Social Research and the Actors Studio. He helped start a theater cooperative at the Cherry Lane Theater and appeared in a number of productions as Off-Broadway blossomed.
Military Service

In the Navy during World War II and he took part in the Normandy invasion.
Professional Career

Gene Saks Born Jean Michael Saks November 8, 1921 New York City, U.S. Died March 28, 2015 (aged 93) East Hampton, New York, U.S. Occupation(s) Director, actor Years active 1949–2015 Spouses Bea Arthur (m. 1950; div. 1978) Children 2 Keren Saks (m. 1980) Children 1 Gene Saks (born Jean Michael Saks; November 8, 1921 – March 28, 2015) was an American director and actor. An inductee of the American Theater Hall of Fame, his acting career began with a Broadway debut in 1949. As a director, he was nominated for seven Tony Awards, winning three for his direction of I Love My Wife, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and Biloxi Blues. He also directed a number of films during his career. He was married to Bea Arthur from 1950 until 1978, and subsequently to Keren Saks from 1980 to his death in 2015. Early life Saks was born in New York City, the son of Beatrix (née Lewkowitz) and Morris J. Saks. Saks first became involved in theater as a student at Hackensack High School. He studied at Cornell University. Upon graduation, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, taking part in the Normandy landings. He also trained for acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the German director Erwin Piscator and helped start a theater cooperative at the Cherry Lane Theater and appeared in a number of productions as Off-Broadway blossomed. Career Saks made his acting debut on Broadway in South Pacific in 1949. On stage he also appeared in e. e. cummings's Him,[4] A Shot in the Dark, The Tenth Man, and A Thousand Clowns, in the role of Leo "Chuckles The Chipmunk" Herman, which he reprised in the film version. He portrayed Jack Lemmon's brother in the screen adaptation of Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue and also appeared in Nobody's Fool starring Paul Newman. Saks shared a long-term professional association with playwright/comedy writer Neil Simon, directing Simon's plays Biloxi Blues, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Jake's Women, Rumors, Lost in Yonkers, Broadway Bound, The Odd Couple (1985 revival with female cast) and California Suite. His additional Broadway credits included Enter Laughing; Half a Sixpence; Nobody Loves an Albatross; Mame; I Love My Wife; Same Time, Next Year, and Rags. Among Saks's film directing credits were Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Cactus Flower (which won Goldie Hawn the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress), Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Mame, Brighton Beach Memoirs, A Fine Romance, and the 1995 television production of Bye Bye Birdie. Personal life Saks was married to fellow Actors Studio member actress Bea Arthur from 1950 until 1978. The couple had two sons by adoption: Matthew (born in 1961), an actor, and Daniel (born in 1964), a set designer. He also had a daughter by his second wife Keren Saks. Saks died of pneumonia at his East Hampton residence on March 28, 2015, aged 93. Filmography Film Director Year Title Notes 1967 Barefoot in the Park 1968 The Odd Couple 1969 Cactus Flower 1972 Last of the Red Hot Lovers 1974 Mame 1986 Brighton Beach Memoirs 1991 A Fine Romance 1995 Bye Bye Birdie TV movie Actor Year Title Role Notes 1965 A Thousand Clowns Leo 1975 The Prisoner of Second Avenue Harry Edison 1978 The One and Only Sidney Seltzer 1983 Lovesick Frantic Patient 1984 The Goodbye People Marcus Soloway 1991 The Good Policeman Performer 1994 Nobody's Fool Wirf 1994 I.Q. Boris Podolsky 1996 On Seventh Avenue Sol Jacobs 1997 Deconstructing Harry Harry's Father Television Year Title Role Notes 1951 Out There Performer Episode: “Misfit” 1954 Omnibus Traveling Salesman Episode: “Hilde and the Turnpike” 1955 Danger Performer Episode: “Precinct Girl” 1955 You Are There Pvt. Lambert Episode: “D-Day (June 6, 1944)” 1955 Producers' Showcase Waiter Episode: “Reunion in Vienna” 1955 Pond's Theater Performer Episode: "The Ways of Courage" 1955 The Elgin Hour Mitchell Sanders Episode: “Mind Over Momma” 1955 Playwrights '56 Mr. Baumgarten Episode: “Snow Job” 1956 Playwrights '56 Doctor Episode: “The Center of the Maze” 1956 Playwrights '56 Emcee Episode: “You Sometimes Get Rich” 1958 Kraft Theatre Various Roles Season 11 - Episode 27 1958 Where Is Thy Brother? Mr. Kalish Television Movie 1959 Bachelor Father Fred Episode: ”Bentley, the Organizer” 1959 Mike Hammer Gobo McCoy Episode: See No Evil 1959 Brenner Vinnie Harper Episode: “Small Take” 1959 Rendezvous Episode:” The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit” 1960 Play of the Week Mikoel ”The Dybbuk” 1961 Great Ghost Tales Performer Episode: “Bye Bye Baby” 1961 The United States Steel Hour Willie Episode: “Man on the Mountain Top” 1963 Armstrong Circle Theatre Arthur Vernon Episode: “The Embezzler” 1998 Law & Order Judge Carl Samuel Episode: “Castoff” Theatre As an Actor Year Title Role Venue 1949 South Pacific Professor Majestic Theatre, Broadway 1950 All You Need is a Good Break Performer Mansfield Theatre, Broadway 1955 South Pacific Professor New York City Center, New York 1956-57 The Good Woman of Setzuan First God Phoenix Theatre, Broadway 1958 The Infernal Machine Capt. of the Patrol 1958 Howie Professor 46th Street Theatre, Broadway 1959-61 The Tenth Man Rabbi Booth Theatre Ambassador Theatre 1960 Love and Libel Norman Yarrow Martin Beck Theatre, Broadway 1961-62 A Shot in the Dark Morestan Booth Theatre, Broadway 1962-63 A Thousand Clowns Leo Herman Eugene O'Neill Theatre, Broadway As a Director Year Title Playwright Venue 1963-64 Enter Laughing Joseph Stein Henry Miller's Theatre 1963-64 Nobody Loves an Albatross Ronald Alexander Lyceum Theatre 1965-66 Half a Sixpence David Heneker Broadhurst Theatre 1965-55 Generation William Goodhart Morosco Theatre 1966-70 Mame Jerry Herman Winter Garden Theatre Broadway Theatre 1970 Sheep on the Runway Art Buchwald Helen Hayes Theatre 1971 How the Other Half Loves Alan Ayckbourn Royale Theatre 1975-78 Same Time, Next Year Bernard Slade Brooks Atkinson Theatre Ambassador Theatre 1976-77 California Suite Neil Simon Eugene O'Neill Theatre 1977-79 I Love My Wife Michael Stewart Ethel Barrymore Theatre 1981 The Supporting Cast George Furth Biltmore Theatre 1982 Special Occasions Bernard Slade Music Box Theatre 1983-86 Brighton Beach Memoirs Neil Simon Alvin Theatre Neil Simon Theatre 46th Street Theatre 1985-86 Biloxi Blues Neil Simon Theatre 1985-86 The Odd Couple Broadhurst Theatre 1986 Rags Joseph Stein Mark Hellinger Theatre 1986-88 Broadway Bound Neil Simon Broadhurst Theatre 1987 A Month of Sundays Bob Larbey Ritz Theatre 1988-90 Rumors Neil Simon Broadhurst Theatre Ethel Barrymore Theatre 1990 Lost in Yonkers Richard Rogers Theatre 1992 Jake's Women Neil Simon Theatre 1997 Barrymore William Luce Music Box Theatre Awards and nominations Tony Awards Year Award Nominated work Result 1965 Best Direction of a Musical Half a Sixpence Nominated 1966 Mame Nominated 1975 Best Direction of a Play Same Time, Next Year Nominated 1977 Best Direction of a Musical I Love My Wife Won 1983 Best Direction of a Play Brighton Beach Memoirs Won 1985 Biloxi Blues Won 1991 Lost in Yonkers Nominated Drama Desk Awards Year Award Nominated work Result 1975 Outstanding Director of a Play Same Time, Next Year Nominated 1977 Outstanding Director of a Play I Love My Wife Nominated 1985 Outstanding Director of a Play Biloxi Blues Nominated 1987 Broadway Bound Nominated 1969 DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Movie – The Odd Couple - Nom 1991 Outer Critics Circle for Outstanding Direction of a Play - Lost in Yonkers - Won Honours Inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1991.[8]
2015

Death

2015

Death date

Unknown
Cause of death

Unknown
Death location

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Obituary

Gene Saks, Tony-Winning Director of Neil Simon Hits, Dies at 93 By Bruce Weber March 29, 2015 Gene Saks, an actor who switched to stage and film directing in midcareer, winning three Tony Awards and becoming the leading interpreter of the plays of Neil Simon, died on Saturday at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 93. The cause was pneumonia, his wife, Keren, said. As a director, Mr. Saks focused on comedy, and he excelled with the kind of snappy, battle-of-the-sexes material that might be termed the theater of repartee. He often said he was concerned that laugh lines be not simply jokes but also expressions of character; nonetheless, he was known for his comic instinct and for helping actors with line readings and timing to make a scene work. That said, he was never a cutup or a wit. “He could direct actors to be funny, but he wasn’t funny himself,” said Emanuel Azenberg, who produced nine Broadway shows directed by Mr. Saks, including eight written by Mr. Simon. “He would say, ‘This is funny,’ in a very serious way. And you’d laugh, because that was funny. All of those fundamentals — pacing, timing, line readings — that had to do with: If you said it this way it would be funny, but if you said it another way it wouldn’t be funny. That’s what he was good at.” Quick wit and effective cadence — the backbone of verbal humor — were hallmarks of the musicals Mr. Saks directed on Broadway: “Mame,” the long-running hit (from May 1966 to January 1970) with Angela Lansbury as the famously charismatic and irrepressible control freak of an aunt, and Mr. Saks’s first wife, Bea Arthur, as her perpetually pixilated pal, Vera Charles; and “I Love My Wife,” a spoof of the so-called sexual revolution about a pair of married couples and their experiment with partner-swapping, which ran for two years in the late 1970s (of course) and earned Mr. Saks his first Tony Award. Mr. Saks also directed Bernard Slade’s two-handed bittersweet comedy, “Same Time, Next Year,” about a couple’s annually recurring adulterous tryst. With an initial cast of Ellen Burstyn and Charles Grodin, it opened in 1975 and ran for more than three years, largely owing to what Walter Kerr, writing in The New York Times, called its conscientiousness “about getting a laugh every 40 to 60 seconds.” Mr. Simon was, of course, the king of this sort of comedy, and in the latter part of his career, Mr. Saks became his go-to director, staging eight of Mr. Simon’s plays on Broadway, beginning with “California Suite” in 1976 and including a female revival of “The Odd Couple” in 1985 that starred Rita Moreno and Sally Struthers as the famously mismatched roommates. Mr. Saks directed what many critics considered Mr. Simon’s more serious comedies and his finest and deepest work — “Lost in Yonkers” (1991), which won the Tony for best play and the Pulitzer Prize for drama, and the original productions of “Brighton Beach Memoirs” (1983) and “Biloxi Blues” (1985) (Mr. Saks won Tonys for both) — and “Broadway Bound” (1986), an autobiographical trilogy for which Mr. Saks felt an especial affinity; after all, he once pointed out, Mr. Simon’s alter ego and protagonist in the three plays, Eugene Jerome, was 15 in 1937, precisely his own age. Mr. Saks also staged Mr. Simon’s “Rumors” (1988), a farce set at a dinner party with Christine Baranski and Ron Leibman, and “Jake’s Women” (1992), which starred Alan Alda as a writer with marital (and other) problems. And he directed four screen adaptations of Mr. Simon’s plays: “Barefoot in the Park,” “The Odd Couple,” “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” and “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” “Aside from Neil’s wit, his brightness and his ability to characterize, he writes about things I know about and care about,” Mr. Saks explained once, in an interview with The New York Times, about his connection to Mr. Simon. “We both came from middle-class, first-generation Jewish families, and our humor springs from the same roots.” Jean Michael Saks — he legally changed the spelling of his name as an adult — was born to Morris Saks and the former Beatrix Leukowitz in Manhattan on Nov. 8, 1921, and he grew up in Hackensack, N.J., where his father ran a wholesale women’s shoe business. He graduated from Cornell and, after serving in the Navy during World War II — he took part in the Normandy invasion — studied acting at the New School for Social Research and the Actors Studio. He helped start a theater cooperative at the Cherry Lane Theater and appeared in a number of productions as Off Broadway blossomed. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Mr. Saks appeared on Broadway in small roles in a number of hit shows, including “South Pacific”; “The Tenth Man” by Paddy Chayefsky; and “A Shot in the Dark,” adapted from a French comic mystery that later became the source material for the Blake Edwards film of the same name starring Peter Sellers. His best-known stage role was as a temperamental and phony children’s television star, Leo Herman, a.k.a. Chuckles the Chipmunk, in the 1962 Herb Gardner comedy “A Thousand Clowns.” He reprised the role in the 1965 film, but by then he was mostly a director. He subsequently appeared in a small role in the film version of Mr. Simon’s “Prisoner of Second Avenue” (1975), and in the 1990s he revived his acting career somewhat, playing a handful of character roles in films including “Nobody’s Fool,” Robert Benton’s adaptation of the Richard Russo novel, starring Paul Newman, and Woody Allen’s dyspeptic comedy about a blocked writer, “Deconstructing Harry.” Image Mr. Saks’s final Broadway show as a director was “Barrymore” (1997), in which he directed Christopher Plummer’s Tony-winning tour-de-force performance as the legendary actor and tippler at the end of his career. His first, offered to him by the producer Morton Gottlieb, whom he had met at the Actors Studio, was “Enter Laughing” (1963), a joke-laced play by Joseph Stein based on the memoirish novel by Carl Reiner. “I didn’t think it was a great play, but I laughed,” Mr. Saks recalled. “And there were a couple of theater scenes, and I thought, ‘I can do that.’ It was a great lesson to me. When you read something, if you have the feeling you can contribute something, then it’s for you. If it doesn’t ring any bells, and you can’t do anything to make it better, then it’s not for you.” Mr. Saks’s marriage to Ms. Arthur, whom he met at the New School, ended in divorce. (She died in 2009.) He is survived by their two sons, Matthew and Daniel; his wife, the former Keren Ettlinger, whom he married in 1980; their daughter, Annabelle; and three grandchildren. Mr. Saks met Mr. Simon in the early 1960s when he was asked by Mr. Simon’s agent to sit in on a tryout performance of “Barefoot in the Park,” directed by Mike Nichols, which was struggling on the road, and to offer his advice. But the night he saw the show the audience loved it, and Mr. Simon didn’t ask for any advice. The next time he heard from Mr. Simon was several years later, when he was asked to direct the film version of the play, which starred Robert Redford and Jane Fonda and appeared in 1967. Mr. Saks’s relationship with Mr. Simon endured for more than quarter of a century, and though professionally rewarding, it was not necessarily close and not always smooth. They had an explosive falling out in 1993 when Mr. Simon and the producer, Mr. Azenberg, replaced Mr. Saks as the director of “The Goodbye Girl,” the musical based on the film of the same name written by Mr. Simon, during a pre-Broadway run in Chicago. After his dismissal, an angry Mr. Saks said it was only the latest of the slights he’d endured from Mr. Simon over the years. “I have enjoyed conversations with him,” Mr. Saks said. “I have enjoyed moments of creativity. But I have not enjoyed his friendship, because I didn’t have it.” Directed by Michael Kidd, “The Goodbye Girl,” which starred Martin Short and Bernadette Peters, was a Broadway flop. The rift between Mr. Saks and Mr. Simon was eventually sewn; they resumed a social relationship. But they never worked together again.

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