He left his job as an agent in the 1970s to guide the careers of Jerry Seinfeld, Carl Reiner and other comics.
George Shapiro, an ebullient Hollywood talent manager who nurtured and oversaw the careers of comic personalities like Jerry Seinfeld, Andy Kaufman and Carl Reiner, died on May 26 at his home in the Beverly Hills section of Los Angeles. He was 91.
His family announced the death in a statement.
Mr. Shapiro was most closely associated with Mr. Seinfeld, whom he signed as a client soon after watching him perform at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles in 1980. He lobbied NBC to build a series around him and was an executive producer of the hugely popular “Seinfeld” sitcom.
“He was the only person to read every draft of every episode of the series and was very critical as they went from first draft to shooting draft,” Mr. Seinfeld said in a phone interview. “He was the only one who really knew what we were doing.”
He added: “The bond between George and I was, we thought show business was the greatest thing invented by man, and we couldn’t get enough.”
Mr. Shapiro was also an executive producer of Mr. Seinfeld’s Netflix series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” which is on hiatus.
A schmoozer who loved to be on sets, Mr. Shapiro was a partner for more than 40 years with his childhood friend Howard West in their talent management firm Shapiro/West & Associates.
As managers, they oversaw and protected their clients interests by being executive producers of various projects, including “The Last Remake of Beau Geste” (1977), starring and co-written by Marty Feldman; “Summer Rental” (1985) and “Sibling Rivalry” (1990), which Mr. Reiner directed; and two TV specials starring Mr. Kaufman.
Mr. Shapiro first watched Mr. Kaufman perform at the Improv comedy club in Los Angeles in 1975 and was impressed by his bizarre, idiosyncratic act. He soon signed him and persuaded him to join the cast of the sitcom “Taxi” in 1978, despite the comedian’s reluctance.
“They already had the character of Latka. And, of course, Andy did this Foreign Man character, so it was a perfect match,” Mr. Shapiro told Newsday in 1999. “Taxi,” too, was a hit.
Mr. Shapiro and Mr. West were executive producers of “Man on the Moon” (1999), which starred Jim Carrey as Mr. Kaufman. (Mr. Kaufman died in 1984 at 35.) Danny DeVito, a producer of the film, played Mr. Shapiro, and Mr. Shapiro had a role as a club owner who had once fired Mr. Kaufman.
Early in the film, Mr. DeVito tells Mr. Carrey, “You’re insane, but you also may be brilliant.”
Mr. Shapiro’s other clients included Robert Wuhl and the producer and writer Bill Lawrence, who is known for the TV series “Spin City” and “Scrubs.”
George Larry Shapiro was born on May 18, 1932, in the Bronx. His father, Ira, was a furrier. his mother, Sylvia (Lebost) Shapiro, was a social activist. George’s time at P.S. 80 in the Bronx, where he met Mr. West, was the subject of two documentaries, “The Bronx Boys,” in 2003, and “The Bronx Boys Still Playing at 80,” 10 years later.
As a youngster, he loved comedies, including those made by Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello. “I sat in the theater and felt like someone was tickling me,” Mr. Shapiro said in a Television Academy interview in 2007.
He got a stronger whiff of show business as a teenager while working as a summer lifeguard at the Tamiment, a resort in the Poconos, where writers like Neil Simon; actors like Dick Shawn, Carol Burnett and Pat Carroll; and the director and choreographer Herb Ross created revues and other shows. Agents traveled from Manhattan to scout talent on weekends — the sort of future that appealed to Mr. Shapiro.
“I said, ‘This is your job?” he said in the Television Academy interview. “To watch the show, to have a nice dinner, to come to a resort with a lake? I have to look into that.”
After graduating in 1953 with a bachelor’s degree from what is now New York University’s College of Business and Public Administration, Mr. Shapiro served in the Army for two years. He considered a career in social work and sales — his older brother, Don, was a salesman in Texas and offered him a job — but got a mailroom position at the William Morris Agency in Manhattan with help from Mr. Reiner, his uncle.
He was soon promoted to agent, with a salary of $38 a week, before eventually moving to the company’s Los Angeles office, where he specialized in packaging mid-1960s TV series like “Gomer Pyle — USMC” and “That Girl” with the actors, writer and directors represented by William Morris.
But Mr. Shapiro disliked being responsible for so many clients, and so in 1973 he started his own management firm to focus on a few preferred ones. Mr. West, with whom he had worked at William Morris, soon joined him, and they ran Shapiro/West & Associates until Mr. West’s death in 2015.
To push for a sitcom for Mr. Seinfeld, Mr. Shapiro sent numerous letters to Brandon Tartikoff, the president of NBC Entertainment. The nudging eventually led to a meeting with Mr. Tartikoff and other network executives at which Mr. Seinfeld laid down a firm rule.
“Jerry made one thing clear,” Mr. Shapiro told the Television Academy. “He said, ‘I’m not going to play a shoe salesman or an accountant or a father with a job.’ And he came up with the premise of the series, that he would play himself.”
In recent years, Mr. Shapiro produced “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast” (2017), a documentary in which Mr. Reiner talked to nonagenarians like Betty White and Dick Van Dyke, and “The Super Bob Einstein Movie” (2021), about the comic actor and writer known for his ongoing television portrayal of Super Dave Osborne, a hapless parody of a daredevil.
Mr. Shapiro is survived by his former wife, Melody (Sherr) Shapiro, from whom he was divorced; his daughters, Carrie Shapiro Fuentes and Stefanie Shapiro; a son, Danny; five grandchildren; and his brother. His marriage to Diane Barnett ended with her death in 2005.
Mr. Reiner’s son Rob Reiner, the actor and director, said Mr. Shapiro had been a nurturer, professionally and personally.
“He loved my dad, he looked up to him — he was like a father to him,” said Mr. Reiner, whose company, Castle Rock Entertainment, produced “Seinfeld.” “George loved being around my dad, and when he started getting older, he’d come over to the house and walk him around the block. That’s the thing you need to know about George: He took care of everybody.”
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
