American Theater Hall of Fame

Common card · No. 487453

The American Theater Hall of Fame was founded in 1971 in New York City. The first head of its executive committee was Earl Blackwell. In an announcement in 1972, he said that the new Theater Hall of Fame would be located in the Uris Theatre (now the Gershwin Theatre), which was then under construction. James M. Nederlander and Gerard Oestreicher, who leased the theater, donated the space for the Hall of Fame; Arnold Weissberger was another founder. Blackwell ordered that the names of the first honorees "be embossed in bronze-gold lettering on the theater's entrance walls flanking its grand staircase and escalator". The first members elected to the Theater Hall of Fame were George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson, Brooks Atkinson, Norman Bel Geddes, Marie Dressler, Jeanne Eagels, Clyde Fitch, Rudolf Friml, Moss Hart, Arthur Hopkins, Walter Huston, George S. Kaufman, Bert Lahr, Ethel Merman, Ferenc Molnár, Clifford Odets, Lillian Russell, Robert E. Sherwood, Lee and J. J. Shubert, Orson Welles...

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