Dan's Papers - May 29, 2009

As the daughter of long-time Daily News drama critic Douglas Watt and Broadway actress/producer Ethel Watt, Patty Watt's fate was surely to become a producer herself.

Douglas Watt started his career as a copy boy at the Daily News before advancing to drama critic, and later the music critic for The New Yorker. He later wrote a column for that magazine called "Tables For Two," as well as profiles of luminaries in the music business.

Ethel Watt, a singer and actress in more than a dozen Broadway shows, including those by Cole Porter, decided to retire from the stage to raise a family.

"My mother, now 85, and father, now 95, met during the musical Kiss Me Kate," said Patty Watt, sitting in an office inside Guild Hall, where she has produced shows. "My Mom had a beautiful voice, and they met through their shared love of the theater and the arts."

The couple lived in Southampton, where Watt started spending summers from the age of five. When she was 10, her mother began producing Broadway shows again, including Crimes of the Heart, as well as jazz concerts.

During Watt's childhood, her parents took her and her sister to places like the Apollo Theater, the Persian Room at the Plaza, Basin Street East jazz club, the Village Vanguard and the Blue Angel nightclub, where Barbra Streisand began her career. They were friends with Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, Sy Coleman, and Frank Lesser of "Guys and Dolls."

"I recently found old letters that famous people - Jimmy Durante, Lena Horn, Bobby Short, and Duke Ellington - had written to my Dad," said Watt, who lives in Southampton and New York City. "I'm thinking of doing a play based on these letters."

Watt attended public school on the Upper West Side, and said she was "pretty shy in high school." She graduated at age 16, and went to NYU and Hunter College for awhile, but left to try other things.

As a teenager, she modeled for Wilhelmina and Ford agencies, and got acting jobs, but soon decided she was happier behind the scenes.

"Back then, I wanted to stay away from the family business, and do something else on my own," she recalled. "So when I was 17, my boyfriend and I opened a women's clothing store called, "Animal Crackers," in Southampton. In 1972, Watt opened "Havana 1919" in Amagansett, a store offering clothing, leather goods and jewelry. She recalled "many exciting moments in this store, such as when Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Yoko Ono came in to buy clothes back in the '70s.

"I even sold Duke Ellington's baby blue Cadillac," laughed Watt, who ran the store through her late 30s, helping to raise money for her mother's productions. She then took an interest in producing, joining her mother in various ventures. With Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence, whe worked on the film Widow's Peak. In 2001, Watt saw the play Love, Janis, about the life of Janis Joplin, at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, and she got the financing to bring it to the off-Broadway stage in New York. In 2002, with Mercedes Ruehl, she produced the show Manhattan Cassanova at Guild Hall.Watt produced a reading series for new plays with playwright Joe Pintauro of Sag Harbor, and she still does readings at the Neighborhood Playhouse in NYC.

Last year, Watt produced the film Vote and Die by Mark Mitchell, that went to international film festivals and won an award in Paris. The film stars Eli Wallach, his wife, Anne Jackson, Marissa Berenson, and Julie Wilson.

"Every summer, I also do a series at Guild Hall called, 'American Musical Theater Series Salutes,' with a tribute to different composers," said Watt. "It's based on Broadway and cabaret stars - from Cole Porter, to George Gershwin, to Sy Coleman, and Rogers & Hammerstein."

Watt has also produced many shows at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, and has been asked to do programming at the Huntington Hartford Museum at Columbus Circle in Manhattan.

Between productions, Watt works as a chocolatier, selling healthy "Xocai Chocolate" to her friends and family. "Performers are interested in the latest health crazes and this is loaded with anti-oxidants," she said. "I'm thinking of calling it 'chocolate theater.'"

Now, Watt and Ron Glucksman are immersed in producing the upcoming Astaire Awards, the only dance awards for Broadway and film, that will be held at the Fashion Institute of Technology on June 1. "These awards were created by the Anglo American Society, in honor of Fred Astaire, and my Dad was asked to be the President of the nominating Committee," said Watt. "He also helped start the Drama Desk Awards, and he was the founder of the Drama Critics Circle. He chaired the nominating committee of the Astaire Awards for about 30 years."

Now, The New York Times and New York Post drama critic Clive Barnes decided to establish an award in Watt's father's name, called the "Douglas Watt Lifetime Achievement Award." Last year, Brooke Shields presented the award to Tommy Tune. This year, Liza Minelli will present the Award to director and choreographer Stanley Donen, who made many films with Fred Astaire, and directed and choreographed Singing in the Rain and Funny Face.

This event will be hosted by Alan Cumming, and other presenters include actors Goeffrey Rush and Marissa Berenson. K.T. Sullivan will sing, and dancers from Broadway will do production numbers from shows and films, including Slumdog Millionaire. This event will benefit the Auditory Oral School in New York, which helps deaf children under the age of five to speak without sign language, using cochlear implants. To find out more about this event, call 646-823-7892 or go to: www.astaireawards.com