LITT, JACOB

(1860-1905)

   Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the impresario worked theatre jobs from boyhood, learning the business and working up to acquisition of his own theatres in his hometown, where he produced melodramas that then lucratively toured the Midwest. The self-made man eventually also held theatres in Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and the Broadway Theatre in New York. He had a management association with Charles Frohman, and in 1901, formed a partnership with A. W. "Sandy" Dingwall, who in 1890 had left his position as drama critic on the Milwaukee Sentinel to work with Litt. Litt became a millionaire after his stock company produced In Old Kentucky by Charles T. Dazey in 1893 and then sent it on the road, where it remained perennially popular, returning annually to many cities for two decades. Illness forced his early retirement in 1902.