Obituary for John Kenley, a Midwest theater impresario renowned for taking large-scale productions to small towns and cities and festooning the shows with headliners like Mae West, Gloria Swanson and Burt Reynolds, died on Oct. 23 in Cleveland. In 1928 Mr. Kenley began reading plays for the Shuberts. In 1930 he became assistant to one of the Shubert brothers, Levi, who was known as Lee - “Mr. Shubert’s left-hand man,” as Mr. Kenley put it in an interview with Martha Schmoyer LoMonaco for her history “Summer Stock! An American Theatrical Phenomenon” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

Published in The New York Times on 10/31/09