The star of Atlanta’s longest-running theatrical blockbuster utters all his lines before the curtain ever goes up.
His song and dance days began — and pretty much ended — more than six decades ago back in Elyria, Ohio.
He’s worked with all the big names of stage and screen: Yul Brynner, Angela Lansbury, Jennifer Holliday, Paul Lynde.
Wait, Uncle Arthur from "Bewitched"? The center Hollywood Square? That Paul Lynde?
"He cost me a lot of money and it was a crap shoot," Chris Manos said of his initial decision to cast Lynde in Theater of the Stars (TOTS) comedies here in the 1980s. The longtime producer shook his head in admiration. "He gave us five years of absolute sellouts, every night for eight performances. And then he would come out a few minutes later and go into the lobby and sign autographs for two hours. He was really something."
It takes one to know one.
Technically, the 81-year-old Manos is listed as the "producer" at TOTS, metro Atlanta's oldest, continuously operating theater company. Yet no mere job title seems adequate for describing the impresario responsible for bringing Broadway-level productions of "Annie" here 20 times and more complex Sondheim musicals. For more than half a century, Manos has been the supernova guiding TOTS, which staged its first production in 1953 at the Chastain Park Amphitheatre.
The show that night was "Desert Song," a Morocco-set operetta. The organization was not-for-profit. After all these years, it still is, a fact that likely surprises the average patron who knows TOTS mostly for its big- and just-big-enough-name stars ("Cathy Rigby is 'Peter Pan!'") tromping the boards at the opulent Fox Theatre, its home since 1988.
If TOTS is the “Cats” of regional theater companies, surviving even in a down economy thanks to a cagey blend of hummable crowd pleasers (opening Jan. 25: “The Producers”), irresistible star casting and taking the occasional risk, that makes Manos what? Head pussycat?
“Some would say he’s hard-boiled,” chuckled Edgar Neiss, general manager of the Fox from 1981 to 2006. “I would say he’s hard-boiled in an endearing way.”
He’d almost have to be to maintain TOTS’ increasingly rare regional theater formula of bringing in touring companies of some popular shows and mounting its own versions of others. (TOTS’ upcoming version of “The Producers” was delayed by six months so Manos could assemble his desired cast of Broadway vets, including Tony winner Gary Beach, who earned his Equity card years ago appearing in the chorus of a TOTS show.)
"Chris is old school," current Fox GM Allan Vella observed appreciatively. "A lot of Broadway these days is so corporate, especially the touring productions. They're unique here, because they're presenters and producers. They still produce shows from the ground up and put them on the road. They do it for the community. They do it for the love of Broadway."
For Manos, that affair began in high school in Ohio, when he swooned for “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and tried to replicate star James Cagney’s hoofing. He first got bitten by the producing bug while attending the famed Pasadena Playhouse acting school. Marriage to a ballerina brought them to her native Atlanta, where he first met the president of the deficit-plagued company then known as Theater Under the Stars.
“I told him it’s stupid how you’re running this and you should hire me to do it,” Manos recalled somewhat ruefully. “Bromo said, ‘No, we’re losing enough money as it is.’”
That would be Maurice B. Seltzer, colorfully known as “Bromo.” And if that’s not enough of a “Guys and Dolls” touch, then surely this is:
“I offered to work for free for six months,” Manos said.
The gamble paid off all around. The 1960 season was Manos’ first as producer and the company’s first without a deficit. TOTS has shared the wealth, creating an organization in 1968 that spawned the Atlanta Children’s Theater, the Atlanta Repertory Theater Company (which became the Alliance Theater) and the Atlanta Opera Company (which evolved into the current Atlanta Opera). In 1976, TOTS founded Just Us, Atlanta’s first African-American theater company.
Meanwhile, Manos, who appears onstage before TOTS shows to welcome the audience and provide Braves scores or spring training updates, keeps looking ahead.
Planning already is well along on next season’s lineup of shows, and the Tony voter still regularly travels to New York to catch the latest on Broadway.
When he’s asked if he’s ever planning to retire, Manos instead tells a funny story about a guy he was once engaged in tough negotiations with over an upcoming show. Manos told him he’d need a final answer by Friday. When his phone rang on the appointed day, the other man’s son informed Manos his father had just had a heart attack.
“Dad said I had to get to you right away, and tell you, ‘I need until Monday,’” Manos recalled the conversation with a cackle. “Now, I don’t really know what that story means, but … .”
But nothin’. It means the curtain’s never going down on this blockbuster.
