Fred R. Zweifel (January 13, 1866-April 10, 1953) had a six-decade career as a theatrical manager and talent manager, working from the Wild West era to the boom years of post-war Broadway musicals.
He was elected to The Lambs in 1932 as a professional member.
By Zweifel’s account, he worked with a dozen producers or enterprises; managed 75 male and 100 female stars; “handled” more than 40 shows and scores of traveling silent pictures. Zweifel said over his career he worked with 15 managers, 21 musical directors, 26 business managers and press agents, 3,000 showgirls, chorus boys and dancers. He racked up 1 million miles of railroad travel. Zweifel made 30 roundtrips to California by rail.
He worked with Charles A. Frohman, Flo Ziegfeld, Joseph M. Gaites, A.L. Erlanger, D.W. Griffith, Charles B. Dillingham, Oliver Morosco, and Sam, Lee, and J.J. Shubert. One of his most famous jobs was called New York to San Francisco a Lee Shubert-William A. Brady production, as one of his “blue ribbon shows.” Zweifel moved 120 people, seven baggage cars, and eight sleepers, for the road show across the nation.
He worked for the Shuberts for almost a dozen years, managing their road shows, and was in charge of the cross country showings of The Birth of a Nation. Zweifel’s longest professional role was as comedian Ed Wynn’s manager-producer from 1919 until 1945.
For years he worked on the 10th floor above Sardi‘s restaurant in two offices. Boys and Girls Together (1946) at the Broadhurst Theater was among his last hits. When he was 80 he could remember back to when shows were “bought at the river” in Kansas City or St. Louis to tour the mining camps of the West, when stages were lit by gas, and the Indian Wars were still being played out. He toured from coast to coast, and to England. He brought shows to mining camps and small towns across the country.
Frederick R. Zweifel was born in 1866 to Swiss immigrants on South Washington Square in Greenwich Village. His father was a Swiss-German candy salesman. When he was around seven the family moved to Galveston, Texas. As a boy he clerked in the Cotton Exchange, and kept the books for the Galveston News. Zweifel had a head for figures and worked in Texas until he was 22. He saved up $1,000 and returned to New York about 1888. Zweifel landed with the theatrical brokers Hoyt and Thomas and learned the ropes of show business from the ground up. He worked for the producers for 11 years and nine months, rising from secretary to bookkeeper.
When playwright-producer Charles Hale Hoyt died in 1900 he left Zweifel $10,000 in his will for being a “faithful and loyal employee.” He banked the money, became a freelancer, and ultimately went to work for the young Sam Shubert. He also worked for the fledgling Shubert organization for 11 years and nine months. When Sam Shubert was killed in a tragic railroad wreck in 1905, Zweifel was a pallbearer.
It was Zweifel who advised the Shuberts in 1897 to bring The Belle of New York to America after it had been a smash in London for two years. He said it “was the greatest show of the olden times—-catchy tunes and thirty-two speaking parts.” He took a road company out for three years with the show and sent back $250,000 to New York, about $8.5 million today.
There were few daily newspapers in those days when the railroad cars pulled into a new town with a show. So Zweifel paraded the whole cast across town behind a drum major, carrying as many props as possible. He set loose the chorus girls to draw the miners and pioneers to the opening, passing the word, “They’re giving a show at the Opery House.” Even when he was the oldest working producer on Broadway in World War II, Zweifel said his greatest audiences had been miners.
Following his days with the Shubert operation, Zweifel managed a Pittsburg theater for a year and took on high-paid work. He put a crew of 35 musicians, technicians, and stagehands on railroad cars to tour The Birth of a Nation cross country. And “just for the experience” he took a position in Hollywood for a year as an assistant casting director at Fox Studios.
In 1919 he began managing Ed Wynn. The pair were nearly inseparable until 1945. They were even arrested together, in 1933, and nearly went to prison for beating up a process server together.
Zweifel was married twice. In 1899, when he was 33, he married Alma Kremer. They had a son and daughter, and she lived in New Rochelle, New York, while he toured the country. She died in 1909, leaving him to raise two small children. He met his second wife, actress-dancer Grace Russell, when she was in the cast of Wynn’s Perfect Fool in 1923.
Fred R. Zweifel died April 10, 1953, in New York. He was 87 years old. He is interred next to his first wife, Alma, in the Hillside Section of Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.
Researched and written by Shepherd Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, 2023.