LOU WALTERS, BARBARA WALTERS' FATHER Fabled Success

 

The Real Moe Green, impresario extrodinaire

Imagine being 25 years old in 1921 and managing after hours clubs on Broadway for the boys. Men like Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, EM Loew, Florence Ziegfeld Lew Wasserman , Walter Annenberg,

In the Roaring Twenties.

MY GOD and to die at home asleep in his bed with his shoes off.

THAT’S SUCCESS

Lou Walters, one of the nation's leading: supper‐club entrepreneurs in the 1940's and 50's, owner and operator of the famed Latin Quarter in midtown Manhattan, died of a heart attack yesterday at his home in Miami. He was 81 years old.

Mr.Walters, the father of Barbara Walters, the ABC‐TV news personality, retired about 10 years ago, when the Latin Quarter, a landmark of nightlife at 48th Street and Broadway, at the head of Times Square, was in its last year.

He had opened the club in 1942 and was its proprietor and impresario until 1958 when he sold it. After a number of years producing shows in Las Vegas, New where he introduced the Folies Bergere, he returned to the Latin Quarter as manager from 1965 until his retirement.

Fabled Success

Before Mr. Walters bought it, the nightclub had been known variously as the Cotton Club, the Palais d'Or, the Palais Royal and, under the original management of George White, the Great White Way. But under Mr. Walters's guidance, it became a fabled success in an?era of big, brassy nightclubs.

It was a favorite of tourists, out‐oftown buyers and salesmen, conventioneers, people attending private parties and, to a lesser degree, regular cafe patrons.

Mr. Walters had a reputation for breathing life into faltering clubs, by adding lush decorations and handpicked and carefully blended shows. He generously plowed a large percentage of his profits into good food. During its first year, the Latin Quarter grossed around $1.5 million and attracted throngs of visitors.

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Engaged Outstanding Talents

Neither did Mr. Walters stint on the engagement of outstanding talents. He promenaded such performers as Sophie Tucker, Milton Berle, Frank Sinatra, Ted Lewis, Mickey Rooney, Dorothy Lamour, Johnny Ray, Patti Page, Mae West and a host of others.

Mr. Walters's formula for success in the nightclub industry—at one time he had after‐dark spots running simultaneously in Boston, New York and Miami — was plenty of food and a luxurious ambience.

“It's a popular fallacy in this business,” he once said in an interview, “to say that your money is made or lost in the kitchen. The man who goes to a nightclub goes in a spirit of splurging, and you've got to splurge right along with him. My motto used to be when the customer does not leave something on his plate, it's bad. I am always urging my stewards and chefs to give the customers more food than they expect.”

He followed the same idea in decorating his clubs. “I throw the book at them. I try to give them the nightclub of their dreams. Cut‐pile carpets, Velvet on the walls, satin draperies, fountains with colored water, mirrors on the balustrade. Fill them full of food and take their breath away. Let them feel all the time they are shooting the works.”

Mr. Walters was born in London. His father, a tailor, brought his family to the United States when Lou was 15. He started as an office boy in a vaudeville booking office. Soon he was checking acts at $4 a week. At 17, he was booking acts into nightclubs, and at 20 he was signing 200 acts a week. He began his own booking agency in Boston with a capital of $75, enough to pay the rent and get the lights and phone turned on.

When vaudeville died, he continued booking acts for nightclubs and prospered. By 1932, he was booking shows at a supper club atop the Bradford Hotel in Boston for a Aare of the profits. In 1937 he opened his first Latin Quarter club in Boston. He was said to have had 63 cents on opening night.

Grossed $10 Million in 10 Years

By 1940, the Latin Quarter was grossing a half million dollars a year and Mr. Walters branched out. That year he took over Earl Carroll's Palm Island club in Miami Beach. And two years later he established another Latin Quarter in New York. It grossed $10 million and was visited by more than five million people in its first 10 years.

Mr. Walters sold the establishment in 1958 and opened the Cafe de Paris at 1686 Broadway, although he suffered a heart attack and went to Florida to recover. Subsequently, he went to work for the Tropicana in Las Vegas and also ran the Casino de Paris in Lake Tahoe, Nev.

Mr. Walters ventured into the Broadway musical field as a producer in 1943. In association with the Shuberts he produced the “Ziegfeld Follies” and it was a hit. Subsequent ventures, which included “Artists and Models” and “Star Time,” were not successful.

Soft‐Spoken and Mild‐Mannered

In 1953, Mr. Walters opened Lou Walters Enterprises, a theatrical‐management office at 1576 Broadway. Cass Franklin was managing director.

Mr. Walters did not look the part of a producer of lavish nightclub shows. He was a soft‐spoken, mild‐mannered man. He was 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 125 pounds. He wore tinted glasses, conservative blue suits and white shirts. He had a well‐stocked library and a taste for fine art.

In addition to his daughter Barbara, he is survived by his wife, Dena; another daughter, Jacqueline; two sisters, Mrs. Sidney Schreiber of New York and Florence Walters of Miami, and a grandchild.