Fred Weintraub, an 85-year-old Bronx native, who has spent more than 50 years in the entertainment business, is coming to NYC March 29 - April 5, to promote his new memoir, "Bruce Lee, Woodstock and Me." The founder of the Greenwich Village nightclub The Bitter End (which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year), began his adventurous life in the Fort Apache section of The Bronx, after which it took him to Greenwich Village and the founding of the world famous Bitter End, where he launched the careers of such famous entertainers as Woody Allen, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Joan Rivers, Billy Crystal, Bill Cosby, Judy Collins, Peter, Paul and Mary, Dustin Hoffman, Carly Simon, David Amram, and Neil Diamond, among others, and then out West to Hollywood where he discovered Bruce Lee and produced "Enter The Dragon," and then produced the originAl Woodstock movie and 40 more films with stars such as Steve McQueen, George C. Scott, Robert Duvall. Karen Dunst and dozens of others.
Along the way, he owned a jazz club in Havana where he was arrested while eating Cuban frogs legs and jailed, worked in network television during the McCarthy era, and then spent the next decades making movies in Hollywood and around the world. The book is full of anecdotes recalling his memorable adventures and mis-adventures.
In NYC, he is scheduled to do two Book Signings -- the first one on Wednesday, April 4, at 7 PM at The Bitter End (147 Bleecker Street) which will be hosted by Judy Collins and which will be attended by some of the entertainers he discovered at The Bitter End; the second book signing will take place a day later on Thursday, April 5, at 6 PM at Barnes & Noble (97 Warren Street) in Tribeca. At each book signing, Fred will introduce a six-minute highlight film he has prepared featuring clips with some of his famous discoveries, Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, Stiller and Meara and others.
Visit http://www.bitterend.com/ for more information on the night club.
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