Max Gordon

theatrical producer, was born Mechel Salpeter in New York City, the son of Heschel Salpeter and Doba Friedman, Polish-Jewish immigrants who, like many of their countrymen and coreligionists, had settled on the city’s Lower East Side. Heschel Salpeter found employment as a pants presser; on his meager salary of $11 a week he supported a family of ten. Neither parent ever assimilated to American culture; throughout their lives, Yiddish was the only language they spoke or read. Perhaps by way of reaction to his parents’ lack of interest in anything other than work and the family itself, Max, as young Mechel was called, became an avid reader as a child. He developed an interest in the theater after his elder brother, choosing the name Cliff Gordon, became a star comedian in burlesque and vaudeville and, later, a producer of burlesque shows. At that time burlesque was family entertainment, not the vulgar enterprise of strip acts and off-color jokes it later became. Vaudeville was also family entertainment but a cut above burlesque in the quality of its acts. In his senior year at Townsend Harris High School, a prestigious public school for exceptionally promising students, Max dropped out a few months before graduation to take a job as advance man for the Behman Show, another burlesque company. With this career beckoning, he took his brother’s adopted surname. In his employment, Max Gordon drummed up publicity for the Behman Show in cities where it was scheduled to play.

June 28, 1892 is the birthday of Max Gordon (Mechel Salpeter, 1892-1978). The younger brother of “The German Senator” Cliff Gordon, Max too went into vaud, but not as a performer. At the tender age of 17 he became an advance man for a Hyde & Behman show. By his early 20s he had amassed enough experience to start a special agency with a former vaudevillian named Albert “Al” Lewis. The firm of Gordon and Lewis produced finished one act plays for vaudeville, buying the scripts, casting them, booking them, and sending them around the Keith and Orpheum circuits, working with such big names as Eddie Foy and Theda Bara.

By the mid 20s they were producing Broadway shows (one of them was the original stage production of The Jazz Singer, starring Georgie Jessel). In 1930, he struck out on as his own as a producer and became one of the most successful ones on Broadway, responsible for almost 50 shows, including major hits like Roberta (1933) Dodsworth (1934), and Born Yesterday (1946). His last show was The Solid Gold Cadillac (1953-1955).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Gordon_(producer) http://chiseler.org/post/41364708090/vaudeville-broadway-the-hard-way