Don Buchwald, the colorful talent agent who spent the past four decades in the entertainment business representing Howard Stern and many others, has died. He was 88.
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Buchwald died Monday of natural causes at his home back east in the Berkshires, his agency announced.
The Brooklyn native launched Don Buchwald & Associates in 1977 with an original team of five agents, and he would open an additional office in Los Angeles in 1992. The bicoastal firm, which now goes by Buchwald, employs 130 employees who work across many platforms of entertainment and media.
Buchwald served as Stern’s agent, manager and publicist since the early 1980s. He got his most famous client a landmark deal with Sirius XM satellite radio in 2015 that was estimated to be worth about $90 million a year. Stern nicknamed him “Superagent.”
When they first met, “We sat down in his office and we talked for an hour,” Stern told The New York Times in a 2018 interview. “He turned to me and said, ‘You know, your career could be as big as Johnny Carson’s.’ I thought this guy might be a little bit nuts. But he believed in me from the very beginning, more than I believed in myself.”
Buchwald also repped Stern’s sidekick, Robin Quivers.
“Everybody will say, ‘He’s full of baloney,’ but I don’t lie,” he said in the Times piece. “When you’re telling the truth, it can be a disarming thing.”
One of four kids, Donald Buchwald was born in May 1936. His mother was a history teacher, and his father worked in the curtain business. He entered Brooklyn College at age 16 and following a stint in the U.S. Army in Japan and Korea returned to the Flatbush school, where he majored in theater and was active in the Radio & TV department.
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After graduation in 1959, Buchwald worked as an actor and theater manager in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere and as travel agent before he joined fellow B.C. alum Monty Silver to open a Manhattan talent agency in 1964. Back then, he was “a good telephone salesman” he said .
Other Buchwald clients have included Kathleen Turner, Ralph Macchio, Ali MacGraw and Geoffrey Holder.
Lloyd Braun, who served as Stern’s attorney before landing top jobs at Brillstein-Grey Entertainment and ABC, told the Times that negotiating on the same side of a deal with Buchwald was “a joy.”
That’s not the case when he had to negotiate against him, Braun noted. “There is a nightmare quality to it. Because you’re only going to do so well,” he said. “If you want to do better than that, you’re probably going to have to grovel.”
Fond of a fedora, Buchwald was a member of the Friars Club for about 50 years and a dedicated supporter of Brooklyn College. (A theater at the Leonard & Claire Tow Center for the Performing Arts on campus is named for him.)
Survivors include his wife of 59 years, Maggie; his daughters, Julia, who is president of his firm’s West Coast office, and Laura, a novelist; his grandchildren, Sebastian and Scarlett; and his son-in-law, Bryan.
“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,” Julia said. “I, along with my devoted teammates, intend to keep this promise and make Don proud.”
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