Dann Byck Jr., Broadway & Film Producer Dead at 72

The Courier-Journal of Louisville reports that Broadway and film producer Dann Conrad Byck Jr., who stepped down from his family retail business to pursue his lifelong passion for theater, died Tuesday at the Louisville home of his daughter, Amy Byck. He was 72.

He died of kidney cancer, his son Peter Byck told news outlets on Tuesday.

As the first president of Actors Inc., Byck was considered a co-founder of Actors Theatre of Louisville, which he and the late Ewel Cornett, as director, started in 1964.

"Dann has never gotten the recognition he deserved for starting professional theater in Louisville," Cornett told The Courier-Journal in 1980.

He moved to New York with his second wife, playwright Marsha Norman, whose success was just beginning after the 1978 debut of her play "Getting Out" at Actors Theater of Louisville.

It was the second marriage for both of them, Byck had previously been married to Marlene Grissom.

Once Byck and Norman arrived in New York, Norman began writing her play "‘Night, Mother," which would win the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Byck produced the Broadway play, starring Kathy Bates and Anne Pitoniak, as well as the motion picture starring Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft.

Soon after photography for the film was complete, Byck and Norman divorced. Peter Byck told the Courier Journal that was in 1986, and his father never remarried.

Byck later produced the film "The Laundromat" for HBO, directed by Robert Altman and starring Carol Burnett and Amy Madigan, and continued working as a producer, returning to Louisville in 1998.

Byck is survived by his three children from his first marriage, Peter, Amy and Dann C. Byck III.

To read the full article on Byck's passing click here.