Gene Persson
Encyclopedia
Eugene Persson was an American actor, theatrical and film producer
. He was, perhaps, best known for his work as the co-producer and co-creator of the original 1967 production
of the Broadway musical comedy, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
, as well as the show's 1999 Broadway revival, which won two Tony Award
s.
. He began his career in entertainment as a child actor
on radio, television and film. He returned to acting after having served in the United States military during the Korean War
, appearing in B movie
s, including Paramount Pictures
' The Party Crashers, as well as Bloodlust!
and Earth vs. the Spider
.
in 1959. He soon began switching his career focus from acting
to producing around the time of his marriage. He began producing plays in New York City
and Los Angeles
in which Knight held a starring position. Their joint productions included early plays by LeRoi Jones, who is also known as Amiri Baraka
, such as The Slave, The Toilet and Dutchman
. Their Broadway plays later included Stanley Mann
's Room
. He also produced a controversial play entitled The Trail of Lee Harvey Oswald on Broadway in 1967.
On screen, Persson produced Dutchman
with Anthony Harvey
, who was a first time director
at the time of production. The film, which starred Shirley Knight and Al Freeman Jr., is still screened at film festival
s and museums today, according to Variety Magazine.
Knight and Persson later divorced in 1969, but remained lifelong personal and professional friends.
Persson moved to London
in 1969. There he produced a total of five plays for British playwright
, Peter Barnes
, including The Ruling Class
. He later collaborated with Tennessee Williams
during the 1970s to produce the British revival of The Glass Menagerie
as well as The Red Devil Battery Sign
, both of which were produced in the United Kingdom
. Persson and Williams also teamed up to bring An Evening with Tennessee Williams and This Is (An Entertainment)
to San Francisco, California
.
in 1967. The musical was based on the Peanuts characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz
. The book in which they and their creative team adapted the musical was by John Gordon, which was a pseudonym
. According to Variety Magazine, Persson's musical "has gone on to be one of the most produced musicals ever." Persson later returned as the producer of the 1999 Broadway revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. The show earned two Tony Awards in 1999.
Persson also produced the 1973 television special
of the original musical, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
for the Hallmark Hall of Fame
. Persson continued to produce stage productions for much of the next decade. Among these included the Peanuts musical comedy Snoopy!!! The Musical
, which he both directed and produced.
Persson was working on a musical stage version of the 1965 television holiday classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas
, at the time of his death in 2008.
on June 6, 2008, at the age of 74. He was survived by his current wife of 36 years, actress and artist
Ruby Persson, and his three children, Kaitlin Hopkins
, an actress; Lukas Persson, a filmmaker and writer; and Markus Persson
, a musician
.
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
. He was, perhaps, best known for his work as the co-producer and co-creator of the original 1967 production
Theatrical production
A theatrical production is any theatre stage play, musical, comedy or drama produced from a written book or script. These works are protected by common law or statuary copyright unless in the public domain....
of the Broadway musical comedy, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a 1967 musical comedy with music and lyrics by Clark Gesner, based on the characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz in his comic strip Peanuts...
, as well as the show's 1999 Broadway revival, which won two Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
s.
Early life and career
Gene Persson was born in Long Beach, CaliforniaLong Beach, California
Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...
. He began his career in entertainment as a child actor
Child actor
The term child actor or child actress is generally applied to a child acting in motion pictures or television, but also to an adult who began his or her acting career as a child; to avoid confusion, the latter is also called a former child actor...
on radio, television and film. He returned to acting after having served in the United States military during the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, appearing in B movie
B movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
s, including Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
' The Party Crashers, as well as Bloodlust!
Bloodlust!
Bloodlust! is a horror/thriller film about a group of young adults who visit a tropical island only to become prey for a sadistic hunter. Filmed in 1959 and released in 1961, the feature was picked up for cinema release by Crown International Pictures...
and Earth vs. the Spider
Earth vs. the Spider
Earth vs. the Spider is a 1958 American black-and-white science fiction horror film produced and directed by Bert I. Gordon, who also wrote the story, upon which the screenplay by George Worthing Yates and Laszlo Gorog is based...
.
Producer
Persson married actress Shirley KnightShirley Knight
Shirley Enola Knight is an American stage, film and television actress. She has been nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, in 1960 for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and in 1962 for Sweet Bird of Youth....
in 1959. He soon began switching his career focus from acting
Acting
Acting is the work of an actor or actress, which is a person in theatre, television, film, or any other storytelling medium who tells the story by portraying a character and, usually, speaking or singing the written text or play....
to producing around the time of his marriage. He began producing plays in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
in which Knight held a starring position. Their joint productions included early plays by LeRoi Jones, who is also known as Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...
, such as The Slave, The Toilet and Dutchman
Dutchman (play)
Dutchman is a play written by African-American playwright Amiri Baraka. It played at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York in March 1964 and won an Obie Award. Made into a film in 1967, Dutchman was the last play produced by Baraka under his birth name, LeRoi Jones...
. Their Broadway plays later included Stanley Mann
Stanley Mann
Stanley Mann is a Canadian-born film and television writer. He began his writing career in 1951, and was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the 1965 film The Collector, based on the John Fowles novel of the same title. In 1957 he penned an adaptation of Death of a Salesman for television...
's Room
Room
A room is any distinguishable space within a structure.Room may also refer to:* Room , by Emma Donoghue* Room, Nepal* Room for PlayStation Portable, a social networking service* Thomas Gerald Room , Australian mathematician...
. He also produced a controversial play entitled The Trail of Lee Harvey Oswald on Broadway in 1967.
On screen, Persson produced Dutchman
Dutchman (play)
Dutchman is a play written by African-American playwright Amiri Baraka. It played at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York in March 1964 and won an Obie Award. Made into a film in 1967, Dutchman was the last play produced by Baraka under his birth name, LeRoi Jones...
with Anthony Harvey
Anthony Harvey
Anthony Harvey is a British filmmaker who started his career in the 1950s as a film editor, and moved into directing in the mid 1960s. Harvey has fifteen film credits as an editor, and he has directed thirteen films...
, who was a first time director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
at the time of production. The film, which starred Shirley Knight and Al Freeman Jr., is still screened at film festival
Film festival
A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...
s and museums today, according to Variety Magazine.
Knight and Persson later divorced in 1969, but remained lifelong personal and professional friends.
Persson moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1969. There he produced a total of five plays for British playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, Peter Barnes
Peter Barnes
Peter Barnes was an English Olivier Award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His most famous work is the play The Ruling Class, which was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole received an Oscar nomination....
, including The Ruling Class
The Ruling Class
The Ruling Class is a 1972 British black comedy film. It is an adaptation of Peter Barnes' satirical stage play which tells the story of a paranoid schizophrenic British nobleman who inherits a peerage. The film costars Alastair Sim, William Mervyn, Coral Browne, Harry Andrews, Carolyn Seymour,...
. He later collaborated with Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
during the 1970s to produce the British revival of The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...
as well as The Red Devil Battery Sign
The Red Devil Battery Sign
The Red Devil Battery Sign is a 1975 drama written by American playwright Tennessee Williams. It was revised substantially before publication....
, both of which were produced in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Persson and Williams also teamed up to bring An Evening with Tennessee Williams and This Is (An Entertainment)
This Is (An Entertainment)
This Is is a play by Tennessee Williams. Similar in plot to that of Idiot's Delight by Robert E. Sherwood, it focuses on a hedonistic countess, the wife of a wealthy manufacturer of ammunition, who arrives at an elegant resort hotel in the midst of a war-torn Central European country in search of...
to San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
.
Charlie Brown productions
Persson and Arthur Whitelaw co-produced and co-created You're a Good Man, Charlie BrownYou're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a 1967 musical comedy with music and lyrics by Clark Gesner, based on the characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz in his comic strip Peanuts...
in 1967. The musical was based on the Peanuts characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz
Charles M. Schulz
Charles Monroe "Sparky" Schulz was an American cartoonist, whose comic strip Peanuts proved one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and is still widely reprinted on a daily basis.-Early life and education:Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Schulz grew up in Saint Paul...
. The book in which they and their creative team adapted the musical was by John Gordon, which was a pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
. According to Variety Magazine, Persson's musical "has gone on to be one of the most produced musicals ever." Persson later returned as the producer of the 1999 Broadway revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. The show earned two Tony Awards in 1999.
Persson also produced the 1973 television special
Television special
A television special is a television program which interrupts or temporarily replaces programming normally scheduled for a given time slot. Sometimes, however, the term is given to a telecast of a theatrical film, such as The Wizard of Oz or The Ten Commandments, which is not part of a regular...
of the original musical, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (TV special)
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is the 29th prime-time animated TV special based upon the popular comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz...
for the Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The second longest-running television program in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2011...
. Persson continued to produce stage productions for much of the next decade. Among these included the Peanuts musical comedy Snoopy!!! The Musical
Snoopy!!! The Musical
Snoopy: The Musical is a musical comedy by Larry Grossman and Hal Hackady, with a book by Warren Lockhart, Arthur Whitelaw, and Michael Grace. The characters are from the Charles M. Schulz comic strip Peanuts. This sequel to the musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown focuses more on the life of...
, which he both directed and produced.
Persson was working on a musical stage version of the 1965 television holiday classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas
A Charlie Brown Christmas
A Charlie Brown Christmas is the first prime-time animated TV special based upon the comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz. It was produced and directed by former Warner Bros. and UPA animator Bill Melendez, who also supplied the voice for the character of Snoopy...
, at the time of his death in 2008.
Death
Gene Persson died of a heart attack in ManhattanManhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
on June 6, 2008, at the age of 74. He was survived by his current wife of 36 years, actress and artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
Ruby Persson, and his three children, Kaitlin Hopkins
Kaitlin Hopkins
Kaitlin Hopkins is an American stage, screen, and television actress, the daughter of actress Shirley Knight and stage producer/director Gene Persson....
, an actress; Lukas Persson, a filmmaker and writer; and Markus Persson
Markus Persson
Markus Alexej Persson is a Swedish indie game developer and founder of Mojang AB. He is best known for creating the sandbox building game Minecraft.- Biography :...
, a musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
.