Mandell Weiss Calls Theater the Secret of His Longevity

Mandell Weiss turns 100 years old Monday.

In a phone conversation this week, Weiss revealed two primary secrets to his longevity: the Mandell Weiss Theatre and the soon-to-open Mandell Weiss Forum, both on the corner of Torrey Pines and La Jolla Village Drive in La Jolla.

“I gather a tremendous amount of enjoyment in the theater, and I know that added a few more years to my life,” said Weiss, a Romanian immigrant and one-time penniless actor who has lived in San Diego since 1923, when the population was just 75,000. Weiss made his fortune in San Diego through business investments, and he used some of it to help create the two theaters.

The theaters are shared by the La Jolla Playhouse and the UC San Diego Department of Theatre. The former produces at the facilities from May through November, while the theater department has it for the rest of the year.

In previous years, the two organizations shared the management of the Mandell Weiss Theatre and the Warren Theatre, which will eventually be torn down.

Weiss donated $1.14 million in 1981 to help build the Mandell Weiss Theatre, which has been in operation since 1983. In 1988, he gave $1.3 million toward the Mandell Weiss Forum, which will be previewed for the public on Weiss’ birthday and officially opens June 23 with the La Jolla Playhouse world premiere of Lee Blessing’s “Fortinbras.”

Weiss takes pride in pouring not just money but also “my energy, my heart and soul” into the operations. He attends every opening night for both Playhouse and UCSD productions, meets the casts, reads the reviews and works actively on the Board of Trustees at the Playhouse.

In recognition of his contributions to local theater, the city has proclaimed his birthday Mandell Weiss Day. UCSD and the La Jolla Playhouse are hosting a party for him at the Mandell Weiss Forum on Monday at 4:30 p.m.

It’s been a long road for a fellow who came to San Diego with $40 in his pocket and decided to work temporarily as a jeweler until he saved up enough money to try his luck in New York theater.

He never did get to New York. Instead he kept working as a jeweler until 1953, when he lost his lease at 5th Avenue and F Street downtown. The next year he started FedMart Corp. with his lawyer at the time, Sol Price. The next investment he made was in the Price Club in which his fortune was made.

It was Price who talked him into giving the $1.2 million in Price Club stock to build the first theater.

“You’re a rich man now,” Weiss said Price told him. “And you always liked theater.”

For Weiss, the investment in theater has reaped a special harvest. It has given him an opportunity to relive his memories as an actor, and it has given him something to look forward to. Tuesday, just six days before his 100th birthday, he already was talking about a third theater he would like to see built as part of the Mandell Weiss Center for the Performing Arts.

He has seen hundreds of plays in the last decade--not just Playhouse and UCSD productions, but those of theaters throughout the city. But there is one play he would like to see more than any other. It’s called “Love in the Shadow of the Umbrella Bamboo” and is a story of his own boyhood written by playwright Oana-Maria Hock, a fellow Romanian immigrant who became friendly with Weiss after her play, “Berlin, Berlin” was produced by UCSD at the Mandell Weiss Theatre.

The play, which ran in December at Company One in Hartford, Conn., tells the story of a 100-year-old man called, simply, The Man. With the help of overly slick theater technicians, The Man struggles to recall a time when he was 6 years old in the village of Galati, Romania, and his mother was adjusting a button on his jacket because he was anxious to look his best.

Weiss said the story is true, and he remembers how, as a boy, he wanted to look good for a little girl he used to walk to see at concerts many miles away from his home.

“I was just happy to get a glimpse of her,” Weiss recalled, although he’s long since forgotten the girl’s name. “I don’t think she ever knew that I existed, but I still remember her to this day, a little blonde girl. I just got an awful thrill just seeing her. I never knew what happened to her, but I grieved when we left Romania. I never told my parents. It was my own secret.”

PROGRAM NOTES: Dan Sullivan, longtime drama critic for the Los Angeles Times who recently retired to Minneapolis, will give a lecture, “Putting God on Stage” at UC San Diego April 25 at 8 p.m. in Peterson Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public. Call 452-7557 for further information. . . .

If you miss the Mystery Cafe production of “Murder at Cafe Noir,” which was replaced by the popular “Killing Mr. Withers” at the Imperial House restaurant after an over eight-month run that ended New Year’s Eve, there is relief in sight. Mystery Cafe is opening up a second location at the Lake San Marcos Resort where it will stage “Murder at Cafe Noir” beginning May 4--again as part of a dinner package in which the actors double as waiters. Meanwhile “Killing Mr. Withers,” a mystery spoof directed by Will Roberson (director of “Suds,” “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” and “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune”) continues to sell out. The show, which opened Jan. 12, is slated to continue at least through the summer. . . .

The price is right: The $5 sneak preview ticket program, sponsored by the San Diego Theatre League, continues with the Friday performance of “Lady Macbeth,” a co-production of Ensemble Arts Theatre and the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company Space. This American premiere by British playwright Jean Binnie poses the question of whether Lady Macbeth was really having an affair with Macduff behind the scenes. . . .

‘Tis the season for “Evita”: Not only are Starlight Musical Theatre and Moonlight Amphitheatre presenting Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita” this summer, but the Francis Parker School will also present the show April 25-28 at the Theater in Old Town. . . .

CRITIC’S CHOICE: PERFORMANCE PROPELS “A SHAYNA MAIDEL”

Susanna Thompson gives a searing performance in “A Shayna Maidel,” Barbara Lebow’s poignant drama about two sisters separated by the Holocaust and trying uneasily to reforge family relationships afterward. The rest of the cast was not quite up to Thompson’s intensity on opening night, but the overall feeling still was tremendously moving. Performances at 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre, 444 Fourth Ave.