TUTS founder pioneered musical theater
Leader had a hand in composing, conducting and choreographing many of more than 300 productions
Frank M. Young, a tireless arbiter of American musical theater and the founder of Houston’s Theatre Under The Stars, died Wednesday in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 77.
He has no immediate survivors.
Considered by some to be one of the most influential theater leaders in the country, Young was an explosive presence and a relentless champion of the musical theater art form.
In 1968, Young founded TUTS as an open-to-thepublic musical theater company that performed under the night sky at the then-new Miller Outdoor Theatre. He led the company to become one of the city’s largest performing-arts groups.
His influence grew far beyond Houston. In 1986, Young founded the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, a New York-based company that advocates and provides services for the development of musical theater and includes 160 member organizations.
And he galvanized taste for local musical theater in Seattle by founding the 5th Avenue Theatre Association as an extension of TUTS.
Young often had a hand in nearly every aspect of his productions, composing, conducting and choreographing in many of the more than 300 productions over his career.
As leader of TUTS, he premiered the original Disney production of “Beauty and the Beast.” He collaborated with Gregory Boyd, artistic director of the Alley Theatre, in the first production of “Jekyll & Hyde,” which later became a Broadway hit. He worked with top talent, including Juliet Prowse, Robert Goulet and Debbie Reynolds, sometimes luring them to Houston.
Young was a showbusiness man, a warmhearted Texan and a hottempered artist all rolled into one. He discovered Patrick Swayze. He performed with Tommy Tune and Jaclyn Smith. And he once shouted Reynolds off the stage — the actress took too long with her curtain speech for “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” so he rushed out of his seat and forced the orchestra to stop playing, causing Reynolds to leave the stage in silence. It was an act of prudence; he didn’t want to pay the orchestra overtime.
Young created musical theater in an era when everything was more experimental. He staged a “Gone With the Wind” production that went astray after he brought on live horses. Nature took its course, and the dancers began to slip on the horses’ droppings. He once hired a bird trainer so he could include doves in “Scrooge: The Musical,” but the doves didn’t behave properly and languished on the ground. He owned an airplane and would often jet friends around the country.
But he was also an important pioneer for an art form that he once called “the stepchild in the arts in America.” During the 1960s, Zelda Fichandler, Alley Theater founder Nina Vance, Jules Irving and others spearheaded the American regional theater movement, spurring the creation of nonprofit theater companies dedicated to making locally bred plays, in much the same spirit as the recent locavore and craft-beer movements.
But that same movement excluded musicals. With TUTS, Young sought to change that dynamic, becoming, over the years, a founding father of regional musical theater.
That journey began in the ’60s, with an organization operated from his two-bedroom apartment and consisting of a ragtag group of volunteer performers. By the late 1980s, Young led the largest organization of its kind in the country. With 5th Avenue, Young’s Houston-Seattle company then had a combined budget of $29 million and 66,000 subscribers at its peak. Young’s company was consistently featuring top talent, and nearly brought on Julie Andrews for a production of “Victor/Victoria” (she had a sore throat).
Born to a junk man in Pasadena on May 22, 1940, Young found a passion in music at an early age. He took the $1 bus to Houston to see the Houston Symphony. In high school, he became the captain of the largest high school band in Texas, staging gigantic halftime shows.
He attended the University of Houston, the University of Texas and then UCLA, where he received a degree in psychology. He moved back to Houston in 1963 and tried out medicine, working at the Baylor College of Medicine and at Methodist Hospital’s intensive care unit.
But he eventually returned to the stage, working at the Houston Grand Opera for several years before creating Theatre Under The Stars.
“One of my decisions to come to Houston was the legend of Frank Young,” TUTS artistic director Dan Knechtges said. “What he germinated in Houston was exported and became talking points throughout the musical theater community.”
Young suffered from Alzheimer’s disease toward the end of his life. Local actress June Terry, one of Young’s closest friends, said even as his famous personality faded recently, glimmers of it nevertheless emerged.
“He just wanted to put on a show,” Terry said. “He was kind and gentle, and I never found him without a smile on his face.”
Though Young does not leave any family behind, he wrote in his will yet another symbol of his dedication to theater: He requested that his ashes be scattered on the hills of Miller Outdoor Theatre.
“I’m going to figure out how to do that,” Terry said. “I loved him. You couldn’t not love him.”