Klaw, Marc

(1858-1936)

   Born in Paducah, Kentucky, Marc Alonzo Klaw moved to Louisville with his widowed mother and later completed a law degree and practiced law before producers Gustave and Daniel Frohman hired him to stop pirated productions of their hit play, Hazel Kirke. This brought him in contact with A. L. Erlanger, who partnered with him to buy out the Taylor Theatrical Exchange to form the Klaw and Erlanger Exchange. Within a few years, they transformed it into one of the major theatrical agencies in the United States (particularly dominating the South), with stars Joseph Jefferson III and Fanny Davenport among their clients. They managed to maintain a partnership for many years, despite vastly different personalities; Klaw was as cultured and mannerly as Erlanger was brusque and coarse. With several other producers, Klaw and Erlanger set up the Theatrical Syndicate or Trust, a powerful monopoly that dominated theatre management and booking for more than a decade before it was challenged by the Shuberts and disbanded in 1916. As producers, Klaw and Erlanger presented many shows, including Ben-Hur (1899), George M. Cohan's Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway (1906) and The Yankee Prince (1908), the first American production of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra (1906), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1910), Kismet (1911), The Pink Lady (1911), and Disraeli (1917).