Introduction
Roger Stuart Berlind (born June 27, 1930) is a New York City theatrical producer and board member of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. and Lehman Brothers Inc. He was one of the founders of Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill in 1960, a company that would later through Sandy Weill become Shearson Loeb Rhoades, which was eventually sold to American Express in 1981 for approximately $930 million in stock.
Early life
Berlind was born to a Jewish family in New York City, to Mae (née Miller) and Peter Sydney Berlind, a hospital administrator. He attended Princeton University and received his bachelor's degree in English in 1954 after completing an 82-page long senior thesis titled "The Quest of the Ideal in the Plays of Yeats and Synge". Berlind was a member of the Princeton Tower Club. The crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 on June 24, 1975 killed his wife, Helen Polk Clark, and three of his four children.
Theatrical career
His theatrical producing career began in 1976. Since then, he has produced or co-produced more than forty plays and musicals on Broadway and many off-Broadway and regional theatre productions as well. His Broadway productions have won numerous Tony Awards. Among them are Amadeus, Nine, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Ain't Misbehavin', Guys and Dolls, Hamlet, Passion, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Copenhagen, Kiss Me, Kate, Proof, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics, the 2004 revival of Wonderful Town, Curtains, and Deuce.
In 2003, the 360-seat Roger S. Berlind Theatre opened in the McCarter Theatre Center at Princeton University. Princeton's Roger S. Berlind Professorship in the Humanities, previously held by Joyce Carol Oates, is currently held by Tracy K. Smith. In 2009, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.