W. LeRoy; Flamboyant Restaurateur

Warner LeRoy, who brought showmanship to the operation of two of New York’s most beloved restaurants, Tavern on the Green and the Russian Tea Room, has died.

LeRoy died Thursday night at New York Presbyterian Hospital of complications from lymphoma. He was 65.

LeRoy made his mark with a series of restaurants that were generally favored more by design critics than food writers.

He converted a mere coffee shop into one of New York City’s dazzling shrines, the restaurant Maxwell’s Plum. During its 22 years of operation, which began in 1966, show business stars including Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, gathered at its tables, surrounded by objects from LeRoy’s collection of Tiffany glass.

In 1973, he rescued Tavern on the Green from financial problems. It emerged from three years of renovations as a palatial destination that in the 1990s took in more cash than any dining spot in the nation.

Leroy followed a similar course with the Russian Tea Room, which he bought in 1995. Known as a meeting place for top artistic and show business figures, it was closed for a $30-million, three-year make-over in 1996 and reopened three years later.

“A restaurant is a fantasy, a kind of living theater in which diners are the most important members of the cast,” he once told an interviewer.

LeRoy, the son of “The Wizard of Oz” producer Mervyn LeRoy and Doris Warner, the daughter of Warner Bros. Studios executive Harry Warner, grew up around movie stars and movie sets, which helped form his personal credo on what a restaurant should be. He studied drama at Stanford University, had some success as a producer and director, and was described as influential in the off-Broadway theater movement.

LeRoy made headlines in the 1990s when his second wife, Kay, sued for divorce. She claimed that he abandoned her and their three children for an aspiring singer.

The long, very public divorce , with intimate details of the couple’s extravagant lifestyle splashed daily in local tabloids, resulted in a judge awarding Kay LeRoy $15 million in cash and the couple’s $5.5-million Long Island mansion, among other assets.