Vince Waldron (who was, by the way, the first person to respond to my fishing for donations so I'll plug his website) writes to ask…
Nice of you to note that the powers that be in the big apple finally got around to renaming the martin beck to honor the recently departed Al Hirschfeld. But this begs the question, who was Martin Beck, anyway? By the way, didn't Broadway just displace some other guy to make way for the Neil Simon moniker on one of their other marquees a few years back? Sheesh, but they're fickle.
Martin Beck was a vaudeville promoter and businessman. The theater was built in 1924 and he died in 1940 so he had 16 years of seeing his name on the place. But he was a pretty obscure theatrical figure so it's kind of amazing they didn't decide to rename the place long ago. The Neil Simon Theater was originally the Alvin, named for two producers — Alex Aarons and Vinton Freedley.
Maybe I'm sensitive to this point because I have a last name few can pronounce…but it seems to me that getting a business named after you is partly a function of having a simple name. "Martin Beck" is a simple name. It sounds like it belongs to someone of great importance. "Neil Simon" is a name everyone can remember and pronounce — "Driver, drop me off at the Neil Simon."
"Al Hirschfeld" is a good name. Anyone who could possibly have any interest in going to the theater can remember "Al Hirschfeld." But supposing that instead of international relations, Zbigniew Brzezinski had gone into the theater and been just as important as Martin Beck or Mark Hellinger or John Golden or any other person who got their name on a theater. Do you think anyone would have ever named a theater for Zbigniew Brzezinski? Would you tell a taxi to take you to the Zbigniew Brzezinski? Could you call Directory Assistance and get the number of the Zbigniew Brzezinski?
Just a thought.