Broadway big Smith dies at 89

Philip Smith, the beloved Brooklyn-born theater enthusiast who climbed from movie usher to the chair of the Shubert Organization, the largest Broadway theater company, died Friday at a Manhattan hospital. He was 89.

The cause of Smith’s death at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center was complications of COVID-19, said Bill Evans, a spokesperson for Shubert.

Smith, a burly Broadway powerhouse, retired in June after more than two decades as the president of Shubert and more than 60 years in the New York theater world.

He said the coronavirus crisis, which shuttered the Theater District in March, created a natural time for him to step down from his perch at the company, which operates 17 Broadway theaters. Robert Wankel succeeded him as Shubert’s chairman.

Smith (photo) became the president of the organization in 1996 after the death of its previous president, Bernard Jacobs, and helped push Shubert into the digital frontier. He was heavily involved in the rollout of discount Broadway tickets at TKTS, the popular glass-windowed Times Square booth that has made the shows of the Great White Way more accessible.

In addition to his work at Shubert, Smith served on the board of governors of the Broadway League, a trade group, and as vice chairman of the board of the Actors Fund, a nonprofit that supports theater workers.

Philip John Smith was born July 29, 1931, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the eldest of four sons of Irish immigrants. His father was a mechanic and his mother a nanny.

In 1951, he met a dancer named Phyllis Campbell, who was working at the Palace as an usher. They fell in love and married in 1960, raising two daughters before she died in 1994. Meanrose while, Smith in the theater world as a treasurer. By 1969, he had become Shubert’s vice president, and he innovated credit-card use in Broadway ticket purchases.

He worked for years with Jacobs, and became Shubert’s president when the titan of the theater world died at age 80. Following the 2008 death of Gerald Schoenfeld, the organization’s chairman, Smith added chairman and co-CEO to his title.

Smith is survived by his daughters, Linda Phillips and Jennifer Stein, and by his five grandchildren.