Max Gordon

Gordon, Max [né Mechel Salpeter] (1892–1978), producer. The native New Yorker started his career as a press agent for Hyde and Behman, later becoming a vaudeville agent. For a time he was associated with Sam H. Harris before embarking on his own. In the 1930s and during much of the 1940s he was one of Broadway's most successful producers. His offerings included Three's a Crowd (1930), The Band Wagon (1931), The Cat and the Fiddle (1931), Flying Colors (1932), Design for Living (1933), Her Master's Voice (1933), Roberta (1933), Dodsworth (1934), The Great Waltz (1934), The Farmer Takes a Wife (1934), Jubilee (1935), Ethan Frome (1936), The Women (1936), My Sister Eileen (1940), Junior Miss (1941), The Doughgirls (1942), The Late George Apley (1944), Born Yesterday (1945), and The Solid Gold Cadillac (1953). A small, professorial‐looking man, Gordon was known for his mercurial behavior, once perching himself on a window ledge and threatening to jump if money was not forthcoming for a new production. Nevertheless, George S. Kaufman characterized him as “the comparable Max Gordon.” Autobiography: Max Gordon Presents, with Lewis Funke, 1963.