Background
Born Mechel Salpeter, Gordon was the youngest son of immigrants from Poland.
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Max Gordon
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His credits included My Sister Eileen, which he produced both on stage and on film. Cliff, an entertainer in vaudeville, died at age 32 (in 1913). They specialized in providing sketches for shows, and their material, and performers (eg Philosophy Baker and Lou Holtz), played the Keith and Orpheum circuits.
lieutenant was on May 24, 1921, the tail end of this periodmonths before the team produced their first playthat Gordon wed Mildred Bartlett, of Amsterdam, New New York
Bartlett gave up her acting careershe performed in films under the name Raye Deana few months before the wedding at the request of her fiance. Gordon soon became one of New York"s most successful producers, from the Roaring Twenties and Depression-era on into the Eisenhower years.
One of his first great hits came when he presented, with Lewis, the original stage incarnation of The Jazz Singer, which ran from September 1925 to June 1926. The year following the stock market crash of 1929- "Marx, the jig is up" is how he famously relayed the news to his friend and frequent tip recipientGordon became an independent producer.
Gordon had even greater luck with the married playwrights Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.
Foreign Kanin"s Born Yesterday - it ran 1,642 performancesproducer Gordon even had a hand in discovering its star, Judy Holliday ("The minute she walked in, I knew she was it"). His reputation during this era was immortalized in Cole Porter"s song "Anything Goes" from the musical of the same name:
When Rockefeller still can hoard enoughmoney to let Max Gordonproduce his shows--Anything goes!.
