Alvin Cooperman, Who Worked for Shuberts, TV and Madison Square Garden, Dead at 83
By Kenneth Jones
14 Aug 2006
Alvin Cooperman, a producer and theatre booker who worked for the Shubert Organization, in a varied entertainment career, died Aug. 13 in Manhattan, according to The New York Times.
Mr. Cooperman was 83. The cause of death was complications from a severe case of shingles, his wife, Marilyn, told the paper.
The Brooklyn-born Mr. Cooperman was an office boy for the Shuberts at age 16 who rose the be invited by the Shubert Organization to book shows into their Broadway theatres.
Gerald Schoenfeld, chairman of the Shubert Organization, told the paper that after the Shubert booker died in 1963, Mr. Cooperman — a successful TV producer by that time — was invited take on the job. A booker reads scripts, attends plays and buys rights to what he sees as best suiting the company's many venues on Broadway and around the country.
Mr. Cooperman's bookings reportedly included Love, Fiddler on the Roof and Cabaret.
"He had a good, winning way of dealing with creative people and with producers," Schoenfeld told the Times. "He had good taste. These are the essential ingredients."
In the 1960s, Mr. Cooperman was an aide to Lawrence Shubert Lawrence Jr., then the chairman of the Shuberts, during a time when the company was shifting from Shubert family connections to being run by non-family executives, including Schoenfeld and Bernard B. Jacobs.
Mr. Cooperman's TV career began in 1951 when he was production manager with NBC's "Texaco Star Theater" starring Milton Berle. For TV, he produced "Shirley Temple's Fairy Tales." He also was a producer of "The Untouchables" in its fourth season, 1962-63.
Mr. Cooperman also produced a play, Masquerade, starring Veronica Lake, but it never made it to Broadway.
In a varied career, Mr. Cooperman also served as executive vice president and director of Madison Square Garden. In 1969 he started the MSG Network to broadcast Garden events — the first regional sports network in North America and one of the first of its kind anywhere, according to the Times.
Mr. Cooperman is also survived by his daughters Margot Ford Cooperman of Manhattan, Audrey Cooperman of Manhattan, and Karen Puro of Los Angeles; his sister, Lillian Cantor of Atlantic Beach, NY; and one grandson.
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