About Billy Rose

Billy Rose, 1899-1966

Billy Rose, center, as depicted by Ed Sorel in his mural at the Monkey Bar, New York

He was amazing.

"A little man with a Napoleonic penchant for the colossal and magnificent, Billy Rose is the country's No. 1 purveyor of mass entertainment," announced Life magazine.

"Billy was good at everything," said playwright Abe Burrows. "I admired him, I was dazzled by him."

"He's clever, clever, clever. He's a smart little goose," said Rose's first wife, the great Fanny Brice. "He had to know about everything. He had to be an expert in everything."

"A very shrewd, highly complex and oddly likable character [who was] forever churning up new ideas, each more adventurous than the last," said composer Richard Rodgers. "Even when one of his schemes fell through it was never for want of boldness or imagination."

With 1,400 people on his payroll, he ran a larger organization than any other producer in America, reported the Times.

"He had a marvelous capacity for throwing himself at a million projects and no theater was big enough," said screenwriter Ben Hecht. "He would have been good producing the landing of the Pilgrims or the battle of Gettysburg. That would have been ideal for Billy."

The Saturday Evening Post summed it all up. "It is likely that no more dynamic combination of artist, psychologist, businessman and salesman has ever struck Broadway." 

On top of all that, he secretly rescued a Jewish refugee from Nazi Europe, worked behind the scenes on behalf of Holocaust survivors in Europe's displaced persons camps, and created the Billy Rose Art Garden at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. 

Not Bad for Delancey Street: The Rise of Billy Rose is the first biography to tell the whole story of his Jewish American life, an identity he helped define.