Woods, A(lbert) H(erman)

Woods, A[lbert] H[erman] [né Aladore Herman] (1870–1951), producer. One of his era's most successful and colorful showmen, he was born in Budapest and brought to this country as an infant. After growing up on New York's Lower East Side he tried various odd jobs in the garment trade and then became an advance agent for a traveling show. Woods's first productions were cheap touring melodramas on the order of The Bowery after Dark and Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl. Many of these were mounted by Sullivan, Harris and Woods, the firm he founded with P. H. Sullivan and Sam H. Harris. In 1909 he braved Broadway with The Girl from Rectors, and during the next thirty‐four years produced over one hundred shows, including Potash and Perlmutter (1913), Kick In (1914), Common Clay (1915), Cheating Cheaters (1916), Business Before Pleasure (1917), Eyes of Youth (1917), Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1917), Friendly Enemies (1918), Up in Mabel's Room (1919), Ladies' Night (1920), Lawful Larceny (1922), The Shanghai Gesture (1926), The Trial of Mary Dugan (1927), and Five Star Final (1930). He leaned heavily toward the lurid melodrama that had given him his start, as well as to bedroom and ethnic comedy. Woods also built the Eltinge Theatre and named it after one of his most profitable stars, female impersonator Julian Eltinge. In his heyday Wood was famous for sitting in front of his theatre, smoking his big cigar, and calling all visitors “sweetheart.”