Grand Theatre Producer Leaves

Frank Wyka, the longtime producer of the Grand Dinner Theatre at the Grand Hotel, said Tuesday that a disagreement with hotel management over how to run the theater led to his recent departure.

“It was a mutual termination,” said Wyka, 60, who began running the 399-seat, professional dinner theater in 1978, then called Sebastians-at-the-Grand. “They knew I was planning to leave. We had discussed it. They are not theater people, and I asked them to terminate me.” Wyka was sacked Sept. 23, he said.

Michael Moser, the general manager of the hotel, did not return several phone calls. Joan Serot, the theater administrator, said: “I can’t really comment. All I know is that (Wyka) is no longer with us. Nobody ever made any formal statement to us.”

The current show, “Damn Yankees,” has continued without the producer and has been doing well at the box office, she said.

Wyka, however, said business at the theater went into a general decline nearly two years ago, about the time the hotel management changed. “I felt we were not growing,” he said. “We were just repeating all the shows we did in past years.

“They wanted to do ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ for the fifth time, ‘Annie’ for the second time, ‘Camelot’ for the third time and ‘Gypsy’ for the second time,” he said. “You have to do blockbusters, but how many times?”

With the former hotel management, Wyka said, he had made all production decisions.

Wyka, a Cleveland native who moved to Los Angeles in 1953 and started a Hollywood showcase called the Three Arts Studio and Theatre, signed many older celebrities for shows at the Grand. The latest was Dorothy Lamour, who is scheduled to star there in “Side by Side by Sondheim,” beginning in February.

The Grand Dinner Theatre is one of only two in California that hires only professional players under a union contract with Actors Equity. The other is the Lawrence Welk Dinner Theater in Escondido.