Don Buchwald Dies: Founder Of Don Buchwald & Associates And Howard Stern’s Longtime Agent Was 88

Don Buchwald, who founded his eponymous Hollywood talent agency Don Buchwald & Associates in 1977 and counted Howard Stern among his many clients, died Monday of natural causes. He was 88.

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Buchwald passed away peacefully surrounded by his family, the company said in a statement Tuesday.

He got the nickname “Superagent” from Stern and is mentioned often — but rarely heard — on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show .  “I’m not a particularly boastful person,” he told The New York Times in a 2018 interview .

Buchwald founded Don Buchwald & Associates in New York City with an original team of five agents and eventually opened a Los Angeles office in 1992. The company since has rebranded as Buchwald and currently has 130 employees spanning film, TV, theater, comedy, literary, commercials, social media, sports, animation, radio, gaming, voice-over digital/branded lifestyles and more.

The privately held agency is headquartered in its own building on East 44th Street between Madison and Fifth avenues in Midtown Manhattan, with the L.A. HQ on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile.

The Buchwald client list has included Kathleen Turner, Ralph Macchio and Ali MacGraw, and among its recent signees are Djimon Hounsou , Chris Parnell , Adam Goldberg , Reno Wilson and Billy Ray Cyrus .

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Buchwald grew up in Brooklyn and started at Brooklyn College when he was 16 — aspiring to be an actor. He left school to join the Army in 1954 and was stationed in Korea after the armistice was signed. Buchwald later returned to Brooklyn College and earned a degree in 1959. The school’s George Gershwin Theater later was renamed Don Buchwald Theater.

“When I began making gifts to the Theater Department, it was suggested that the reconstructed space of the Gershwin should have a new name,” Buchwald said in an interview with Brooklyn College Magazine last year. “I was taken aback to replace the George Gershwin with the Don Buchwald. Gershwin will never be forgotten. I’ll go the way of a mere mortal.

During the early 1960s, he worked as an actor and business manager in regional theater, where he discovered a talent for negotiation. He soon began working as a agent for talent he met.

“One Brooklyn College actor pal, who had seen me perform thought I was smart enough to stay away from the stage and to use my enriched family brain cells and look at the business side of the entertainment community,” he told BC Magazine . “I took a business management course and began managing the activities of summer stock playhouses and more.

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Buchwald also worked as a travel agent, working with colleagues who aspired to work in radio or voice acting. He began repping them too, and by the 1980s, Buchwald had built a rep as one of the top agents for local news and radio talent. Enter Howard Stern.

In the mid-2000s, the shock jock self-professed “King of All Media” had been doing his successful syndication radio show for nearly 20 years and had expanded into film and TV — but he wanted more. Buchwald helped to negotiate Stern’s earth-shaking $500 million, five-year deal with Sirius Satellite Radio, which was on a spending spree as it looked to draw big-name talent and content to shut out rival XM Satellite Radio.

The Howard Stern Show relaunched as a sat radio entity on January 1, 2006, with a pair of dedicated channels. It was a watershed moment for the burgeoning satellite radio industry, and Sirius later would sign a mammoth NFL rights deal. Sirius had about 600,000 subscribers when Stern joined and boasted more than 20 million by the time he re-upped for another five years in 2010. In the meantime, the competing satcasters had merged, forming SiriusXM in 2008.

Still, Stern boasted more than a million faithful listeners.

I learned to be careful of who you are in business with and never have forgotten that in our hirings — on all levels,” Buchwald told BC Magazine . “Do you complement one another, or are you competitive with each other, do you respect your colleagues, etc.? But, mainly I learned that all people are not the same and employ folks for their unique abilities and talents.”

His daughter, Julia Buchwald, president of Buchwald’s West Coast offices, said Tuesday: “I promised my father that the incredible agency he built from the ground up 47 years ago will not only continue to flourish but will evolve as we forge our path ahead. I, along with my devoted teammates, intend to keep this promise and make Don proud.”

Buchwald’s other daughter Laura, a novelist, wrote on social media: “My father was the epitome of the self-made man and he built his brilliant legacy with grace and generosity,” Laura added. “He was generous to a fault, he loved our mom, his wife of nearly 60 years, the way we all deserve to be loved, he was philanthropic, he believed in Democracy, and wanted nothing more than for those he cared about to understand their value and ability to contribute to the greater good.”

Buchwald is survived by his wife of 59 years, Maggie; daughters Julia and Laura, a novelist; grandchildren Sebastian and Scarlett Gatta; and son-in-law Bryan Smith.

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