“Chicago” musical producer Martin Richards dies at 80

PanARMENIAN.Net - Martin Richards, who began a show business career as a boy soprano and grew up to become a theater and movie producer who won an Oscar for the film adaptation of the musical “Chicago” 27 years after he helped bring it to Broadway, died on Monday, Nov 26, at his home in Manhattan. He was 80, The News York Times reported.

The cause was complications of liver cancer, said Michael Milton, a longtime personal aide to Richards and an associate producer at Richards’ production company, the Producer Circle.

Broadway dimmed its lights in his memory on Tuesday night.

His Broadway credits include “On the Twentieth Century,” Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Cy Coleman’s 1978 musical, which starred Kevin Kline, Imogene Coca, Madeline Kahn, Judy Kaye and John Cullum and won five Tonys; “Sweeney Todd,” Stephen Sondheim’s grisly 1979 masterpiece, which won eight Tonys, including best musical; “La Cage aux Folles,” Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman’s musical farce about gay-straight relations in a loopy, extended family (six Tonys); “Grand Hotel,” a 1989 musical directed by Tommy Tune about the various guests at a Berlin hotel in the late 1920s (five); and “The Will Rogers Follies,” based on the life of the plain-spoken humorist, which won for best musical and best score.

“Chicago,” directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse and starring Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera, opened in 1975 and was Richards’ Broadway producing debut.

Richards’ other stage producing credits include Beth Henley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Crimes of the Heart” (1981) and the Cy Coleman musical “The Life” (1997). His movie credits include “The Boys From Brazil,” (1978), an adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel about a Nazi cloning scheme; Kubrick’s horror thriller “The Shining” (1980); and “Fort Apache, the Bronx” (1981), a police drama with Paul Newman.