Alan Shayne

Shayne was born in Boston, Massachusetts on November 21, 1925. He started acting in theatre in the 1940s, where he encountered a young Marlon Brando in acting school.^[1] He appeared in the Broadway plays Antony and Cleopatra (1947–1948) and The Madwoman of Chaillot (1948–1950). In 1958, he was in the multiple Tony-nominated Broadway musical Jamaica.^[2] Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he appeared in several television series such as The Philco Television Playhouse, Man Against Crime, and Kraft Television Theatre.^[3] In 1953, he portrayed Bernardo in the TV film Hamlet.^[4]

Having been encouraged by Michael Shurtleff, Shayne became a casting director in the 1960s. He recruited actors for films such as All the Way Home (1963), Johnny Belinda (1967), Catch-22 (1970), and All the President's Men (1976). In 1976, he became the president of Warner Bros. Television Studios, a position he held for ten years. He retired from the entertainment industry in the 1990s.^[5]

Shayne served in the United States Army during World War II. Between 1947 and 1955, he was married to Jacqueline Babbin. In 2004, he married graphic designer and visual artist Norman Sunshine, who had won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Design at the 28th Primetime Emmy Awards in 1976. He is openly homosexual.^[5] In 2023, he published his autobiography The Star Dressing Room: Portrait of an Actor.^[6]