Harry Frazee, New Yorker
One hundred years ago today … In the aftermath of the sale of Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees, a feud erupted between Ruth and Boston owner H. Harrison (Harry) Frazee, about whom Ruth said, “Frazee is not good enough to own any ball club, especially one in Boston.”
1920 Boston Red Sox stock certificate, signed three times by Harry Frazee. Heritage Auctions.
Frazee has become heavily identified with Boston lore, but was, in a way, as New York as they come. A working class Chicagoan, he decided to become a theater mogul and soon made his way to New York City. In 1913 he built and opened the Longacre Theater at 220 West 48th Street, a venue that still stands, having been landmarked in 1987.
The Longacre Theater, 1923. Bill Morrison Collection, Shubert Archive
Though history often casts Frazee as a failed, or second-rate producer, he had several hits, including Leave It to Jane (1917) written by the 36-year-old P.G. Wodehouse. Frazee had accrued enough wealth by 1916 to buy the Red Sox along with two partners. He ran the team from his New York offices at West 42nd Street and later 270 Park Avenue while living with his family in his New York home at 565 Avenue, spending little time at his Boston residence. Though an active and energetic baseball owner, Frazee remained committed to his passion, believing that there was no business like show business. At the time of the Ruth deal, he was preparing to mount a show called My Lady Friends at the Comedy Theater (110 West 41st Street)—a venue made famous two decades later when Orson Welles and John Houseman salvaged it and turned it into the Mercury Theater. Despite the legends, it is simply untrue that Frazee sold Ruth to finance No No Nanette, the musical that became one of his most successful ventures four years after the Ruth deal, when it debuted in Chicago and then opened in New York in 1925. The popular understanding that Frazee used the Red Sox to subsidize his stage productions, though, is on the money.