HOLLYWOOD TALENT MANAGER FOR SEINFELD, KAUFMAN
George Shapiro, an ebullient Hollywood talent manager who nurtured and oversaw the careers of comic personalities such as Jerry Seinfeld, Andy Kaufman and Carl Reiner, died May 26 at his home in the Beverly Hills section of Los Angeles. He was 91.
His family announced the death in a statement.
Shapiro was most closely associated with Seinfeld, whom he signed as a client soon after watching him perform at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles in 1980. He lobbied NBC to build a series around him and was an executive producer of the hugely popular “Seinfeld” sitcom.
“He was the only person to read every draft of every episode of the series and was very critical as they went from first draft to shooting draft,” Seinfeld said in a phone interview. “He was the only one who really knew what we were doing.
“The bond between George and I was, we thought show business was the greatest thing invented by man, and we couldn’t get enough.”
Shapiro was also an executive producer of Seinfeld’s Netflix series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” which is on hiatus.
A schmoozer who loved to be on sets, Shapiro was a partner for more than 40 years with his childhood friend Howard West in their talent management firm Shapiro/West & Associates.
As managers, they oversaw and protected their clients’ interests by being executive producers of various projects, including “The Last Remake of Beau Geste” (1977), starring and co-written by Marty Feldman; “Summer Rental” (1985) and “Sibling Rivalry” (1990), which Reiner directed; and two TV specials starring Kaufman.
Shapiro first watched Kaufman perform at the Improv comedy club in Los Angeles in 1975 and was impressed by his bizarre, idiosyncratic act. He soon signed him and persuaded him to join the cast of the sitcom “Taxi” in 1978, despite the comedian’s reluctance.
“They already had the character of Latka. And, of course, Andy did this Foreign Man character, so it was a perfect match,” Shapiro told Newsday in 1999. “Taxi,” too, was a hit.
Shapiro and West were executive producers of “Man on the Moon” (1999), which starred Jim Carrey as Kaufman. (Kaufman died in 1984 at 35.) Danny DeVito, a producer of the film, played Shapiro, and Shapiro had a role as a club owner who had once fired Kaufman.
Early in the film, DeVito’s Shapiro tells Carrey’s Kaufman, “You’re insane, but you also may be brilliant.”
Shapiro’s other clients included Robert Wuhl and producer and writer Bill Lawrence, who is known for the TV series “Spin City” and “Scrubs.”
George Larry Shapiro was born May 18, 1932, in the New York City borough of the Bronx. His father, Ira, was a furrier. His mother, Sylvia (Lebost) Shapiro, was a social activist. George’s time at P.S. 80 in the Bronx, where he met West, was the subject of two documentaries, “The Bronx Boys” (2003) and “The Bronx Boys Still Playing at 80” (2013).
As a youngster, he loved comedies, including those made by Laurel and Hardy and by Abbott and Costello. “I sat in the theater and felt like someone was tickling me,” Shapiro said in a Television Academy interview in 2007.
He got a stronger whiff of show business as a teenager while working as a summer lifeguard at the Tamiment, a resort in the Poconos, where writers such as Neil Simon, actors such as Dick Shawn, Carol Burnett and Pat Carroll, and director and choreographer Herb Ross created revues and other shows. Agents traveled from Manhattan to scout talent on weekends — the sort of future that appealed to Shapiro.
“I said, ‘This is your job?” he said in the Television Academy interview.
Shapiro is survived by his former wife, Melody (Sherr) Shapiro, from whom he was divorced; his daughters, Carrie Shapiro Fuentes and Stefanie Shapiro; a son, Danny; five grandchildren; and his brother. His marriage to Diane Barnett ended with her death in 2005.