Jay Weston Dies: ‘Lady Sings The Blues’ Producer Who Gave Al Pacino Broadway Break Was 93
deadline.comJay Weston, who was working as a publicist when a chance meeting with Billie Holiday at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival would lead to the producing of her 1972 biopic Lady Sings the Blues, died February 28 of natural causes at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, CA.
He was 93. His death was announced by spokesperson Jeff Sanderson on behalf of the Weston family. A prominent restaurant critic later in life, Weston’s show business career in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s was marked by such high points as producing Billy Wilder’s last film (Buddy, Buddy starring WalterMatthau and Jack Lemmon), Chu Chu and the Philly Flash with Carol Burnett and Alan Arkin, W.C.
Fields and Me with Rod Steiger and For Love of Ivy starring Sidney Poitier. In his sole excursion to Broadway, Weston produced the storied 1968 production of Don Petersen’s play Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, launching the career of a young Al Pacino.
Born John Weinstein on March 9, 1929, in Brooklyn, Weston and his younger brother Stan lost their mother at a young age and were raised by their opera-enthusiast father and jazz pianist stepmother. (Stanley Weston later would become an inventor who created the iconic G.I.
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