Roger Horchow

Samuel Roger Horchow (born July 3, 1928, in Cincinnati, Ohio) is a catalog entrepreneur and Broadway producer.

In 1971, Horchow started The Horchow Collection,[1] the first luxury mail-order catalog that was not preceded by a brick-and-mortar presence. He sold the Horchow Collection to Neiman Marcus in 1988.

In 1992, he produced his first Broadway show, Crazy for You, a George Gershwin musical, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The London version of Crazy for You won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical. Though Crazy for You was inspired by an earlier Gershwin musical, Girl Crazy, which opened in 1930, theater critics and the American Theater Wing ultimately considered it to be a "new musical." Crazy for You was directed by Mike Ockrent and choreographed by Susan Stroman.

In 2000, Horchow and co-producer Roger Berlind staged a revival of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate, for which he won his second Tony Award, for Best Musical Revival.

In 2007, Horchow along with other producers produced Curtains, a comedic murder mystery nominated for 8 Tony awards and 10 Drama Desk awards and in 2008 was a minor producer in the Broadway Revival of Gypsy with Patty Lupone.

Horchow is a member of The Hill School Class of 1945. In 2002 he received the school's highest alumni honor, The Sixth Form Leadership Award. Horchow was awarded an honorary doctorate by his alma mater, Yale University, in 1999, and is a subject of The Tipping Point (Little, Brown, 2000) 2002 edition ISBN 0-316-34662-4, an influential book by New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell.

Horchow is the author of three books, "The Art of Friendship: 70 Simple Rules for Making Meaningful Connections" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and Neiman Marcus Exclusive, 2005) ISBN 0-312-36039-8, Elephants in Your Mailbox: How I Learned the Secrets of Mail-Order Marketing Despite Having Made 25 Horrendous Mistakes (Times Books, 1980) ISBN 0-8129-0891-0, and Living in Style: In A Time When Taste Means More Than Money (Rawson Assoc, 1981) ISBN 0-89256-166-1.

Horchow is on the Board of Selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service.[2]

References