Albert Jeffcoat, 77; Founded Theater Group

Albert E. Jeffcoat, co-founder of the Manhattan Theatre Club and a former Paris bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, died March 10 at his home on Puget Sound in Washington after battling colon cancer. He was 77.

Jeffcoat conceived the theater group in 1969 to specialize in presenting original works by such rising playwrights as Donald Margulies and Terrence McNally. It also supported new works by writers Athol Fugard and Arthur Miller.

Originally an off-off-Broadway showcase, it has become one of the country’s most acclaimed theater groups, featuring seven plays a year on two stages with the support of 20,000 subscribers.

Jeffcoat, also a former corporate executive and author, worked for the Wall Street Journal in London and was its Paris bureau chief in 1954-55. He later worked in corporate public relations for IBM and Ford Motor Co., then started his own New York firm, Jeffcoat, Schoen & Morrell.

He served as chairman of the Manhattan Theatre Club’s board from its founding in 1970 to 1982.

Jeffcoat turned to book writing after he moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1993 to be closer to several of his six children.

His first book, “Spirited Americans: A Commentary on America’s Optimists From the Puritans to the Cyber-Century,” was published in 1999.