Act III

Broadway and My Golden Years

Scene 1

Jacobson, Doll and Harmon


In 1946 I made the decision to set up my own agency and invited Bill Doll and Louis Harmon to join me as partners. We were known as Doll, Harmon and Jacobson. We had an office, if you want to call it that, in The Hudson Theater at 141 W 44th Street, a second floor walk-up. It was a big old vault filled with old theater stuff and a small “count–up room” was attached with its large safe. This is where The Hudson Theater kept its daily receipts and records. We squeezed in three desks, a phone line with two extensions, and typewriters for which we paid only $60 a month. As we were just starting out, we were thankful to our landlords, Lindsey and Crouse, for renting us anything. The location was just half a block from Broadway’s theater district and worth a million dollars. In the beginning business was tough to come by.

The Hudson Theater had an interesting history: in the early 1900’s, theatrical producer Henry B. Harris built a magnificent, four-floor luxury theater in the residential neighborhood of West 44th Street. It opened with Ethel Barrymore starring in Cousin Kate. Henry and his wife, Irene, ran a successful theater business for years. Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Harris found themselves on the Titanic on that fateful day in April of 1912. A sad story followed. Irene Harris, with a bum leg caused by the iceberg collision, was carried by her husband to the last lifeboat. As the lifeboat pulled away from the sinking vessel, they waved a final goodbye. Four months after returning to New York, Irene decided she would run The Hudson Theater alone and became the first female owner and operator of a New York theater.

In 1929 she was offered a million dollars for her property, turned it down and, by 1933, The Hudson was in receivership. During the next eight years it changed ownership 18 times before being purchased by Lindsey and Crouse.

Bill Doll came from West Virginia and had the drawl to go with it. He had just finished his run as press agent for producer Alex Yokel’s Three Men on a Horse. Bill was a wonderful guy but drank too much. He had recently gotten married and resided, with his new bride, in a cheap apartment across the street from our office. It was here, in his love nest that even during working hours, he spent most of his time. That’s why Mike Todd had such a difficult time trying to contact him.

In the early ‘40s, Mike Todd, the same Mike Todd who at one time was married to actress Elizabeth Taylor, was working as a young shoe salesman at the Florsheim store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, when he placed a call to Bill Doll. Mike had recently purchased the rights from “The Federal Theater Project” to produce The Hot Mikado, a musical theater adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, to be performed by an all black cast. The musical was running in Chicago and Mike wanted Bill Doll to be his agent when it opened in New York.

Mike was working at the time, but during his break he’d go to the back of the store to make his calls to our office. And there were many calls, but to no avail. We repeatedly told Bill there was a guy in Chicago who wanted to talk to him; call him back. We finally realized that “love” had superseded work. Frustrated, I’d finally had enough and went across the street and banged on his door and then left the following note, “Get out of bed. There is a guy in Chicago who wants to give you a job.” The call was finally made and Bill Doll took the job as Mike Todd’s exclusive agent and we lost one of our partners.

The Hot Mikado ran successfully on Broadway. To publicize the play, Bill, very cleverly, had the whole cast dance down Broadway with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the star of the show, leading the way.
For the rest of our lives our Agency would be known as Jacobson and Harmon and we worked well together and became good friends. Unfortu-nately, during our twilight years, Louis became exceedingly deaf and the only way to converse with him was on the phone. You don’t realize what a cut off not hearing is, until you have to work with someone who is hard of hearing.

Once I became an agent on my own, I made a conscious decision from which I never varied for the rest of my working career: I would never take a job as an exclusive agent. Although I was asked many times to do so, my answer was always no and for good reason. I enjoyed the summers off; that’s when, as a family, we could travel together and we did, probably visiting every National Park in the US. If I was limited to being “X’s” press agent solely, I could hardly pick and choose what I wanted to do. If I didn’t like the show and wanted out, it was just too bad, or if I wanted to do something else, too bad. Exclusivity equated to indentured servitude as far as I was concerned. Being my own man gave me a much looser schedule and allowed me the opportunity to do other than Broadway plays and musicals, such as representing dance companies, or concerts or what have you. It also proved to give me a much more rounded experience. And most important it allowed me more time with my family.