Don Buchwald dead: Talent agent was 88

Don Buchwald

Courtesy of Buchwald

Don Buchwald, the flamboyant talent agent who spent the last four decades in the entertainment business representing Howard Stern and many others, has died. He was 88.

Buchwald died of natural causes at his home in eastern Berkshires on Monday, his agency said.

The Brooklyn native founded Don Buchwald & Associates in 1977 with an initial team of five agents and opened a Los Angeles office in 1992. The bi-coastal firm, now known as Buchwald, employs 130 people working across many platforms in the entertainment and media industries.

Buchwald had been Stern’s agent, manager and press secretary since the early 1980s. In 2015, he secured his most famous client a groundbreaking contract with satellite radio station Sirius XM, estimated to be worth about $90 million a year. Stern nicknamed him “super agent.”

When they first met, “we sat in his office and talked for an hour,” Stern said 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 crazy. But he believed in me from the beginning, more than I believed in myself.”

Buchwald also represented Stern’s buddy Robin Quivers.

“Everyone will say: ‘He’s talking nonsense,’ but I’m not lying,” he said in the Just piece. “If you tell the truth, it can be disarming.”

Donald Buchwald was born in May 1936, one of four children. His mother was a history teacher and his father worked in the drapery industry. At age 16, he attended Brooklyn College and, after serving in the U.S. Army in Japan and Korea, he returned to school in Flatbush, where he studied theater and worked in the radio and television department.

After graduating in 1959, Buchwald worked as an actor and theater manager in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere, as well as a travel agent, before opening a talent agency in New York with his former BC colleague Monty Silver in 1964. At the time, he said, he was “a good telephone salesman.”

Buchwald’s other clients included Kathleen Turner, Ralph Macchio and Ali MacGraw.

Lloyd Braun, who worked as Stern’s lawyer before landing top jobs at Brillstein-Grey Entertainment and ABC, told the Just that it was “a pleasure” to negotiate on the same side as Buchwald.

That was not the case when he had to negotiate against him, Braun noted. “There’s something nightmarish about it. Because you can only be successful to a certain extent,” he said. “If you want to do better, you’ll probably have to crawl.”

He loved wearing fedoras, was a member of the Friars Club for about 50 years, and was a dedicated supporter of Brooklyn College. (A theater in the Leonard & Claire Tow Center for the Performing Arts on campus is named after him.)

He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Maggie; his daughters Julia, who heads his firm’s West Coast office; and Laura, a novelist; his grandchildren Sebastian and Scarlett; and his son-in-law Bryan.

“I made a promise to my father that the incredible agency he built from the ground up 47 years ago would not only continue to thrive, but also continue to evolve as we continue down our path,” said Julia. “I and my dedicated teammates intend to keep that promise and make Don proud.”