By Andie Arthur

	Broadway producer and South Florida resident Arthur Whitelaw Photo: Henry Perez

At first glance, Arthur Whitelaw doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. A 67-year old man who lives in a beautiful house with two hyperactive terriers, he’s not out of place with all the other older people who have moved to Florida.

Whitelaw has been a prolific Broadway producer for decades – he produced the original production of You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown and its recent revival, as well as Minnie’s Boys, which chronicled the lives of the Marx Brothers; Butterflies are Free, starring Blythe Danner and Paul Michael Glaser; Sweet Sue, starring Mary Tyler Moore and Lynn Redgrave; and many more productions.  As head of drama for HBO, he originated a theatre series that included the television versions of Camelot, starring Richard Harris; Barefoot In the Park, starring Richard Thomas and Bess Armstrong; Plaza Suite, Sherlock Holmes, Vanities, The Rainmaker, and Wait Until Dark.  Whitelaw has also produced 10 plays in London's West End, including Hildegarde, Charlie Brown, and Snoopy.  His numerous television specials including Charlie Brown, part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame, The Gershwin Years, for PBS and BBC; and Separate Tables, starring Alan Bates, Julie Christie and Claire Bloom, directed by John Schlesinger for ITV. A production of one of the musicals Whitelaw produced and helped write, The Taffetas, is running at the Stage Door Theatre in Wilton Manors through August 11.

	Whitelaw with Vanessa Redgrave

Whitelaw’s stories aren’t cut and dry stories of money and difficult stars. His voice is full of wonder and awe at life and the people he has known.

David Merrick. Liza Minnelli. Gloria Swanson. Groucho Marx was a grandfather figure to him. But unlike some people who namedrop for the sake of name-dropping, Whitelaw mentions these people as friends.

“If you treat people nicely, you get it back,” says Whitelaw.  “There’s that continuity. You don’t grow old friends.”

A self-described Pollyanna, Whitelaw approaches his life and his work with a sense of wonder that shows in everything he says.  He recalls being in an apartment, drinking coffee and looking out over Central Park while in the next room John Kander and Fred Ebb were plunking out the first notes of Cabaret. There is no superiority in his voice, just wonder at having witnessed such creativity.

	Arthur Whitelaw with Frank Langella

That sense of wonder infiltrates his work as well – he acknowledges that he has been “unbelievably lucky” in his career. When recalling the first production of Butterflies are Free, he said that he “stood back and did nothing.” He knew that the play would stand alone and that all he needed to do was let it fly.

However, there are times where he had to be a more active producer.

“Just because you can write a check, doesn’t make you a producer,”  Whitelaw says. When doing an out of town tryout of A.R. Gurney’s Sweet Sue, Whitelaw remembers getting terrible reviews. He sat down with Gurney and three pages of notes, with the instructions to “take them or not.” Whitelaw had no expectations of the playwright listening to him, but Gurney changed the entire play.

“Hits are nicer,” he says.  “But you have to have the flops to learn. You have to make your own mistakes. I thought I knew it all…but the older I get the less I seem to know.”

Whitelaw has always been involved in the theatre; he remembers seeing the original production of The Glass Menagerie. That was the exact moment when he realized that he wanted to be a part of the theatre.

	Arthur Whitelaw with Stuart Burstein and Diane Sepler at the opening of the Carnival Center in Miami last October Photo: Henry Perez

The sense of wonderment of being in the theatre hasn’t gone away for Whitelaw.

“There’s nothing like a good story,” he says. When asked about his favorite theatre experience, he mentions some of the shows that he saw recently – calling Frost/Nixon “wonderful” and the revival of A Chorus Line “magical.”

Not that he loves everything. Underneath the bubbly inner child, there is a hint of a curmudgeon. He didn’t like Rent or Spring Awakening, noting that they simply may not be for his generation, although he fell in love with Hair when it first opened.

And sometimes he dislikes plays because they don’t tell a story. He thinks that sometimes Tom Stoppard forgets “the drama” or storytelling aspect of stories and gets far too caught up in wordplay. For that exact reason, he disliked Copenhagen, which he calls “90 minutes of nothing happening.”

	Whitelaw with the cast of the London revival of Snoopy

The refreshing part is that after he admits he didn’t like something, Whitelaw goes straight to something he does like. “I still get excited about going to the theatre,” he says Whitelaw is also very protective of his inner sense of wonder, his inner child. He doesn’t watch the 24-hour news cycle, as he knows focusing too much on the negative will kill the inner spark. He never wants to be “desensitized by life.”

And he isn’t. Nor is he slowing down. Whitelaw has started a lecture series, and is working on setting up a theatre in South Florida devoted entirely to new musicals. He is most excited about the book he is writing, and has finished three chapters.  He recalls reading Moss Hart’s book Act One as a child, a book which propelled his interest in theatre.