George Abbott, 107, the legendary Broadway director and producer whose many hits included "Pal Joey," "The Pajama Game," "Call Me Madam" and "Damn Yankees" died of a stroke Jan. 31 at his home in Miami Beach.
"His is the theater of snappy curtain lines, wisecracking dialogue . . . periodic excursions to the lavatory . . . and various analogous condiments, all staged as if the author had used a pepper shaker in lieu of an inkwell," the critic George Jean Nathan wrote.
"No one can move actors around faster, get more laughs out of a joke or slide so gracefully over a play's weak spots," Time magazine said in 1978. Mr. Abbott was a brisk, no-nonsense director. When a performance worked, his highest praise usually was, "That's good."
"I'm in a business so full of hyperbole that I shrink from it," he said. "I hate phonies, and I think phonies exaggerate praise or blame."
Mr. Abbott first came to Broadway in 1913 as an actor, appearing in the play "The Misleading Lady." He acted regularly until 1934, by which time he had established himself as a writer, director and producer. He had a brief, final fling as a performer in 1955, playing Mr. Antrobus in a revival of "The Skin of Our Teeth."
Among his collaborators in musicals were Leonard Bernstein, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser and Stephen Sondheim. He launched the theater careers of such luminaries as Bernstein, Carol Burnett, Shirley MacLaine, Gene Kelly, Bob Fosse, Eddie Albert, Nancy Walker, Jerome Robbins, Jule Styne, Richard Adler, Garson Kanin and Harold Prince.
Mr. Abbott's movies were made mostly in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He went to Hollywood in the 1950s to translate "Where's Charley?" "Damn Yankees" and "The Pajama Game" to the screen, and he had a dialogue-writing credit in the 1930 classic "All Quiet on the Western Front."
Twice, in 1934 and 1939, he was the director of five plays that opened on Broadway in the same year. During an extraordinary 15-year stretch, 1948 through 1962, Abbott shows won 40 Tony awards, including five for himself as author, director or both.
His Tony-winning productions included "Where's Charley?" "Call Me Madam," "Wonderful Town," "The Pajama Game," "Damn Yankees," "New Girl In Town," "Fiorello!" "Take Her, She's Mine" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."
"Fiorello!" also won him the 1960 Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Circle Award.
In 1965, he staged "Flora, the Red Menace," whose young star, Liza Minnelli, won a best-actress Tony. Mr. Abbott's life achievements were recognized with a special Tony award in 1976. Two more Tonys were awarded for his 1983 production of "On Your Toes," which he originally directed and wrote with Rodgers and Hart in 1936.
In recent years, he worked as a revivalist of some of his earlier hits, including "On Your Toes," "Damn Yankees" and his first success, "Broadway."
In 1989, at the age of 102, Mr. Abbott wrote and directed "Frankie," an off-Broadway musical adaptation of "Frankenstein."
He said he kept busy because "I'd hate not to have a job of some kind." He told a Washington Post interviewer in 1987 that challenges filled his life with pleasure: "You wake up in the morning thinking, I've got to write that scene.' It's always fun, to work in the theater."
Mr. Abbott also was the last of a small group of theatrical miracle-workers known as play doctors, who turned out-of-town flops into New York hits, sometimes anonymously, other times for co-author credit. He was good at spotting the weak points in a play's construction and clarifying muddled stories.
A lanky, austere 6 feet 3 inches, he was "Mr. Abbott" to all but his friends. His imposing presence made first-name familiarity unthinkable, even for a president of the United States.
"I don't dare call him George, because I am temporarily between jobs," President Ronald Reagan, a former actor, said when Abbott was honored by the Kennedy Center in 1982.
George Francis Abbott was born in Forestville, N.Y., and spent some of his youth in Wyoming, while his father was a land agent. The younger Abbott worked as a cowboy in Wyoming. After the family moved back to New York, he worked at a steel mill and as a delivery boy. He enrolled in the University of Rochester to study journalism but caught the theater bug after the college drama club produced one of his plays.
After graduation, he studied drama for a year at Harvard University and won a $100 prize and a professional production in Boston of his play "The Man in the Manhole."
In 1914, he married Ednah Levis, who had been a teacher at his high school in Hamburg, N.Y. She died in 1930. Their daughter, Judith, became a casting director.
Mr. Abbott's 1946 marriage to Mary Sinclair, an actress, lasted five years. In 1983, at 96, he married a third time, to Joy Moana Valderrama, a 52-year-old fur company president.
In addition to his wife, survivors include a sister, three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. MICHAEL A. STERLACCI Lawyer
Michael A. Sterlacci, 51, a lawyer and former White House aide who had been president since last year of American Transport Services Inc., an airport limousine company, died of a heart ailment Jan. 31 at his home in Annandale. He had lived in the Washington area for 25 years.
Mr. Sterlacci was a former deputy general counsel and assistant general counsel at the Defense Department. He worked at the White House from 1974 to 1977 as deputy special assistant in the office of public liaison, deputy to consumer affairs adviser Virginia H. Knauer and principal assistant special counsel to the president. He began his career in Washington as assistant general counsel at the U.S. Information Agency and later was managing partner for the law firm of Jenkins, Nystrom & Sterlacci.
Mr. Sterlacci was born in Staten Island, N.Y. He was an honors graduate of Seaton Hall University and received a law degree and a master's degree in administrative law from George Washington University. He served as an Army intelligence officer in Vietnam during the Vietnam War and was awarded a Bronze Star and Joint Service Commendation Medal.
Mr. Sterlacci was a member of the D.C. and Virginia bar associations and St. Matthew's United Methodist Church in Annandale, president of the Lido Civic Club, commissioner and coach of the Turnpike Basketball League and manager of Falls Church Select Soccer.
Survivors include his wife, Linda Sterlacci, and three children, Brett Sterlacci, Lauren Sterlacci and Molly Sterlacci, all of Annandale; his mother, Jean Sterlacci, and brother, Jerry Sterlacci, both of Staten Island; and a sister, Marie Allen of Toms River, N.J. DONALD A. MESSIER Airline Pilot
Donald A. Messier, 49, a United Airlines pilot who flew Boeing 727, 737 and 767 aircraft from the Washington area's three major airports, died Jan. 30 of a heart attack at his home in Fairfax Station.
Mr. Messier had been a pilot for United Airlines in the Washington area since 1979. From 1967 until 1979, he served in the Air Force. He was a pilot in Vietnam, and from 1974 until 1979, he was assigned to the 89th Special Air Mission at Andrews Air Force Base. In the latter capacity, he flew aircraft carrying Cabinet members, the vice president and foreign dignitaries.
He was born in Troy, N.Y., attended the Air Force Academy and graduated from Long Island University. He received a master's degree in business administration from Southern Illinois University.
Survivors include his wife, Bonnie K. Messier, and a son, Christopher R. Messier, both of Fairfax Station; and his stepfather, T. William Bossidy of Poestenkill, N.Y. CAPTION: GEORGE ABBOTT
