Doolittle’s Greatest Gift to L.A. Was Access for All

The death of impresario James A. Doolittle at age 83, apparently of a heart attack over the weekend, came as a personal loss to those of us who grew up in Los Angeles during the years when he managed the Greek, the Biltmore and the Huntington Hartford theaters (the last renamed the Doolittle after he sold it in 1986).

The companies he presented on those stages were, of course, tantalizing. But Doolittle’s most indelible achievement may have been the gift of access: creating a system of ticket vouchers to attract a much wider audience in the local community than anyone else acknowledged.

Doolittle distributed the vouchers throughout the city--especially to places that the black-tie crowd was not likely to frequent. With a voucher, one dollar would get you into any of several seats that Doolittle set aside for each performance. It was a far more democratic system than “student rush,” where one waits in line for admission until the “real” audience has been accommodated.

With a voucher, anyone could afford to go often to Doolittle events--not just to the ones we knew we’d like, but to such mysterious attractions as the Grand Kabuki of Japan on its first American tour.

Doolittle vouchers became passports to cultural discovery and even to eventual connoisseurship: allowing us to sample Greek tragedy in Greek, to see every cast of the Royal Danish Ballet, or go over and over to Giorgio Strehler’s sublime Piccolo Teatro di Milano like “Star Trek” addicts or the teens who’ve seen “Independence Day” 15 times.

Because they encouraged freedom of choice, the vouchers represented something very different from the experience of your whole school being bused to the opera once or twice a year (and never to the best casts).

With other impresarios, we had to pay retail or, more likely, sneak in at intermission. With Doolittle vouchers, we thought of ourselves as subsidized, the audience of the future.

In a sense, we became Doolittle’s kids, with our appetite for multicultural adventure forever shaped by his imports--not to mention our perception that a much bigger and younger audience existed for ballet, opera and other highfalutin idioms than those who could afford tickets on a regular basis.

Doolittle’s final presentations in 1996 included the Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Donald Byrd “Harlem Nutcracker” at the Wiltern--and he brought the American Ballet Theatre back to Los Angeles in adult repertory for the first time this decade. Not exactly shabby.

In 1997, he planned to implement his newly expanded role of permanent dance tenant at the Music Center with a bigger and arguably more middlebrow season--”Cinderella,” “Dracula,” an Elvis ballet and the like, perhaps chosen to reassure those who remember the huge losses suffered by Music Center dance before he arrived.

But a week before his death, he also spoke enthusiastically about buying into the American premiere of the radical new Matthew Bourne “Swan Lake” (the one with bare-chested men as the swans) and helping Palm Desert achieve its potential as a theater center. Not exactly sure-fire.

The day after his death, Doolittle was called “the last of the great impresarios” by Gerald Arpino, artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet. “It’s a great loss to Los Angeles and the arts,” Arpino said. “He was my counselor, he was my friend. I just loved him.” Doolittle had planned to present the Joffrey at the Ahmanson Theatre in June.

Gordon Davidson, artistic director of the Center Theatre Group, said, “Jimmy was a great impresario and a great force in this city. I will miss him terribly because he was so active, even in his later days. You could always approach him, he would always listen and he would always want to participate. He loved to be either the instigator or the partner in things. He really cared about all forms of entertainment.”