Louis James Lipton (September 19, 1926 – March 2, 2020) was an American writer, actor, talk show host, and deanemeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York City. He was the executive producer, writer, and host of the Bravo cable television series Inside the Actors Studio, which debuted in 1994. He retired from the show in 2018.[1]
Early life
Louis James Lipton[2] was born on September 19, 1926, in Detroit, Michigan, the only child of Betty (née Weinberg), a teacher and librarian,[3] and Lawrence Lipton, a journalist and beat poet. Known for writing the Beat Generation chronicle The Holy Barbarians, Lawrence was a graphic designer, a columnist for the Jewish Daily Forward, and a publicity director for a movie theater.[4][5] Lawrence was a Polish Jewish emigrant (from Łódź), whose surname was originally Lipschitz.[6] Betty's parents were Russian Jews.[7][8] His parents divorced when Lipton was six,[3] and his father abandoned the family.[9]
Lipton's family struggled financially, and he started to work when he was 13 years old.[9] He worked in high school as a newspaper copy boy for the Detroit Times and as an actor in the Catholic Theater of Detroit and in radio.[10] Lipton had initially intended to become an attorney.[3][9] After graduating from Central High School in Detroit, he attended Wayne State University for one year in the mid-1940s and enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces.[3] In an interview with Vanity Fair, Lipton talked about his time in Paris in the 1950s, when he worked for about a year as a pimp.[11] On the Today show, Lipton clarified that he had worked as a beneficent maque in the regulated prostitution business.[12][13]
He wrote the book and lyrics for the 1962 Broadway musical Nowhere To Go But Up. The show had its tryout in Philadelphia at the Shubert Theatre opening October 6, 1962, to mixed notices.[16] The show opened in New York on November 10, 1962, at the Winter Garden, to generally unfavorable reviews.[17] John Chapman wrote in the NY Daily News that the show "is delicious bathtub gin. . . . This is a happy show."[18] But Howard Taubman said in The New York Times: "Don't let anyone tell you that 'Nowhere to Go but Up' is a little horror. Because it's a big one."[19] As a result, Kermit Bloomgarden, the producer, decided to close the show on November 17, 1962, after nine performances.[20] A group of 234 small investors tried to keep the show from closing by parading in front of the theater and sought an injunction,[21] but the NY Supreme Court ruled in favor of the producer.
His book, An Exaltation of Larks, was first published in 1968, and has been in print and revised several times since then, including a 1993 Penguin Books edition.[24] The book is a collection of "terms of venery", both real and created by Lipton himself.[25] The dust jacket biography for the first edition of Exaltation said his activities included fencing, swimming, and equestrian pursuits and that he had written two Broadway productions.
Lipton was a writer and producer of The Stars Salute Israel at 30, an ABC 1978 television special celebrating the 30th anniversary of the state of Israel.[26] In 1981, Lipton published his novel, Mirrors, about dancers' lives. He later wrote and produced it as a made-for-television movie.[14] For the genre of television, Lipton produced some two dozen specials including: twelve Bob Hope Birthday Specials; The Road to China, an NBC entertainment special produced in China; and the first televised presidential inaugural gala (for Jimmy Carter).[14]
In 2004, 2005, 2013, and 2019, Lipton appeared on several episodes of Arrested Development as Warden Stefan Gentles. In 2008, he provided the voice for the Director in the Disney animation film Bolt. He played "himself" as Brain Wash, interviewer of the monster Eva's acting teacher in the Paris-Vietnam animated film Igor. Lipton also appears twice in the same episode of Family Guy in cutaways where he simply says "Improv!" both times.
In the early 1990s, Lipton was inspired by Bernard Pivot and sought to create a three-year educational program for actors that would be a distillation of what he had learned in the 12 years of his own intensive studies.[14] In 1994, he arranged for the Actors Studio—the home base of "method acting" in the United States—to join with New York City's New School University and form the Actors Studio Drama School, a formal degree-granting program at the graduate level.[14] After ending its contract with the New School, the Actors Studio established the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in 2006.[citation needed]
Lipton created a project within the Actors Studio Drama School: a non-credit class called Inside the Actors Studio (1994), where successful and accomplished actors, directors and writers would be interviewed and would answer questions from acting students.[14] These sessions were also taped, edited, and broadcast on television for the general public to see. The episodes were viewed in 89 million homes throughout 125 countries.[27] Lipton hosted the show and conducted the main interview.[14] In a 2008 interview, when asked if he had anticipated the show's success, Lipton responded, "Not in my wildest imaginations. It was a joint, arduous effort involving many people. At a point and time not too distant in the past, I had three lives. I was the dean of the Actors Studio, the writer of the series, its host and executive producer. I maintained a preposterous sixteen-hour schedule."[28] He was awarded France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2014 for his work on the show.[27]
Lipton's last Inside the Actors Studio, an interview with Ted Danson, aired on January 11, 2018. In September 2018, Lipton stated that he was stepping down from the program after more than 24 years.[29]
Personal life
He first married Shirley Blanc in 1947.
Between 1954 and 1959, Lipton was married to actress Nina Foch.
He was married to Kedakai Turner Lipton, a model and real estate broker, from 1970 until his death. Turner was known as the model playing Miss Scarlet on the cover of an edition of the boardgame Clue.[5] She was the book and illustration designer for Lipton's book, An Exaltation of Larks, The Ultimate Edition.
In the 200th episode of Inside the Actors Studio, Lipton stated that he was an atheist.
