Lore Noto
| Lore Noto | |
|---|---|
| Born |
June 9, 1923 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | July 8, 2002 (aged 79) |
Lore Noto (June 9, 1923 – July 8, 2002) was best known as the producer of the off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks. The show by author Tom Jones and composer Harvey Schmidt, opened to mixed reviews on May 3, 1960 at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, but the indefatigable Noto kept it running until its audience discovered it, and made it the longest-running show in U. S. theatre history. By the time the final curtain was brought down on the production on January 13, 2002, the show had played 17,162 performances, earning it the title the "World's Longest Running Musical" in the Guinness Book of Records.
The show won numerous other honors, including an off-Broadway Obie Award, and a special Tony Award in 1992.
After seeing a 1959 Barnard production of a one-act version of a work by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, Mr. Noto commissioned the authors to expand the musical into a two-act evening of theatre. He later told the "New York Post" that he instantly fell in love with "the lyricism and poetry in its writing".
The Fantasticks — inspired by a play by Edmond Rostand — would go on to become an international sensation, and play at the tiny living-room-sized Sullivan Street Playhouse 1960-2002, playing 17,162 performances. It closed Jan. 13, 2002, and enjoyed several cast albums, countless international stagings, an expanded and revised national tour starring Robert Goulet, and a film version starring Joey McIntyre and Joel Grey (now on DVD).
Lore (Lorenzo) Noto was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 9, 1923. Losing his mother as a young child, he was raised at the Brooklyn Home for Children. It was then in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. During his teen years he helped his widowed father operate a billiard parlor in Ridgewood. Defying his father, Young Noto trained to be a commercial artist and also took an interest in acting. He began appearing on stages around the city in 1939. He studied at the New York School of Industrial Arts, the American Academy and the Theatre Studio. Although he had a career in commercial art (he was a graphic artist for publishers, including the Catholic Press, and later became an agent for artists), Mr. Noto was also an actor in such plays as Bomb Shelter (The Little Theatre, 1941) and Shake Hands with the Devil The Blackfriars' Theatre, 1949).
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