THE LAST IMPRESARIO
Hugh Pickett was loved by Hollywood legends and Vancouverites alike
For most of the 20th century, the word “impresario” in Vancouver was followed by the name Hugh Pickett. After he died in 2006, the media virtually retired the term.
Pickett’s sparkling wit and wicked tongue made him a favourite of such Hollywood legends as Marlene Dietrich, Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn and Mitzi Gaynor. His friends referred to him as the Queen of Vancouver Theatre, and he loved it.
Pickett’s Famous Artists agency was the leading talent booker in Vancouver from the 1940s to the mid-’80s. Pickett promoted Igor Stravinsky, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, Lillian Gish and Liberace. He led the movement to save the Orpheum Theatre in the 1970s, and when he turned 90, the city celebrated by throwing his birthday party there. Pickett always had a special fondness for the Orpheum; he was among the opening-day crowd on Nov. 7, 1927.
Pickett was born on April 11, 1913, and grew up in Marpole and Kerrisdale. He landed his first job at age 16 at the old Colonial Theatre at Granville and Dunsmuir.
By chance, the Colonial became the local venue for Dietrich’s breakthrough film, the Blue Angel. Pickett was smitten.
“I fell in love with this woman,” he related. “(But) she was not the kind of woman you fell in love with, because (the character) was a whore, and awful to everybody. Eventually I got to know Marlene well, and handled her business for 12 years.
“She used to introduce me with, ‘This man is the biggest idiot who ever lived. He fell in love with the woman in The Blue Angel, for Christ’s sake.’”
He was a very elegant, gracious man. One time, comedienne Phyllis Diller was feeling down after the death of her son. She phoned up Pickett, stated, “I want to go to dinner with an older man,” and hung up.
The next morning Pickett and his companion hopped on a plane to Los Angeles, grabbed a limo and picked Diller up. After dinner, drinks and laughs at Spago, they dropped her off at home, went back to the airport and flew home.
During Expo 86, Princess Margaret needed a date for a Vancouver engagement, and Grace McCarthy recruited Pickett.
“We laughed all through dinner,” McCarthy recounted. “I’m not going to name the person, but somebody in Vancouver, very wellknown, at the end of the dinner comes up and says, ‘God, I watched you all through dinner. You were laughing all the time. What were you talking about?’ I said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but royal protocol forbids me to repeat a word.’”
They really don’t make them like Pickett anymore.