Friends Mourn Richard Horner
ATPAM Member since 1952
TUESDAY DECEMBER 31 2002 -- Richard Horner, a Tony Award-winning
producer who guided the Palm Springs Desert Museum's performing arts
program through some of its most turbulent years, died Saturday at his
Palm Springs home, according to family members.
He had kept his 12-year battle with
cancer so quiet, his death shocked friends and associates. Horner's widow
and business partner, Lynne Stuart, said her husband requested there be no
formal services. He was 82.
"He was a sweetheart of a man, quiet,
but always in touch with things, always aware of the people's reactions to
things," said Palm Springs Desert Museum Executive Director Janice Lyle,
who supervised Horner and Stuart as co-performing arts directors of the
museum from 1995 through 1998. "I just really liked him and I'm shocked
because I didn't know he was sick."
Horner was prominent on Broadway for
more than 50 years before moving to the Coachella Valley.
He was producer, general manager,
company manager, and/or consultant with more than 150 Broadway and
Off-Broadway productions. He received a Tony Award for the 1974 production
of Eugene O'Neill's "A Moon For The Misbegotten," starring Colleen
Dewhurst and Jason Robards, and was nominated for six other Tonys.
He served in World War II as a Navy
officer and afterward attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts. He acted in
summer stock and became an advance man for impresario Sol Hurok for a
ballet company directed by a young Agnes DeMille. That launched a career
managing theaters or companies for such legends as George Abbott, Harold
Prince and David Merrick.
Horner and Lester Osterman founded and
co-owned the Coronet Theatre Corporation in the 1960s and '70s, operating
six Broadway theaters. When Osterman retired in 1978, Horner and Stuart
formed Horner/Stuart Productions and produced "The Crucifer of Blood,"
which won an Olivier Award in London. They produced a film version for
Turner Network Television in 1990.
The Horners moved to Los Angeles in the
'90s. They joined the Palm Springs Desert Museum Performing Arts Council
and soon became its co-directors. Lyle called the Horners "a major force
in reshaping the Annenberg Theater program. "(Their job) certainly was to
create a lively array of programs that were affordable to the museum and
affordable to the audiences and they did that," said Lyle. "Dick was a
very savvy businessman who could look at the numbers and make them work."
The Horners left the museum after three
years to pursue new projects. Stuart said Rancho Mirage Cultural
Commissioner Peggy Cravens asked them to produce music programs in that
city and they staged two original tributes a year to great composers.
"They brought worlds of extraordinary experience," Cravens said. "I really
admired him tremendously."
Horner is survived by his wife, two sons,
Lindsey Horner of New York and Randall Horner of Portland, Ore.; two
daughters, Anne Cameron of Albuquerque and Robin Horner of San Francisco,
and three grandchildren.
BY BRUCE FESSIER ....THE DESERT SUN
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