THE AUDITORIUM THEATRE AND ROOSEVELT UNIVERSITY
by Ted Gross
Delivered to The Chicago Literary Club
January 13, 2003
The following material comprises Chapter 5 from Our Mutual Estate, the memoirs of Ted Gross. A major portion of it was delivered as the Arthur Baer Fellowship Address to members and guests of the Club at its mid-year meeting at The Chicago Historical Society.When I first saw the Auditorium Theatre, I fell in love with it. It was February 1988 and I had just been appointed president of Roosevelt University. I had never seen a theater quite so stunning-- electroleers that cast a golden glow, murals that reflected a nineteenth-century American landscape, rows and rows of seats that embraced the audience intimately. Standing at the back of the highest balcony, which rises six stories into the core of the monumental Auditorium Building that was bought by the university in 1946 for $85,000, I listened to a custodian drop a quarter on the stage below in a demonstration of brilliant acoustics. The Auditorium Theater occupies forty percent of the larger Auditorium Building and has 4,200 seats. Created by Louis Sullivan, Dankmar Adler, and Frank Lloyd Wright in 1888, it had fallen into disrepair before World War II and then declined severely in the early 1940's. For me, 100 years later, the Auditorium Theatre was love at first sight. That Auditorium Theatre, Roosevelt University, and the symbolic coin which multiplied into millions of dollars of ticket revenues spent on legal fees and adversarial public relations -from December 15, 1994 to October 3, 2002 tell a disturbing story of the struggle for control of the theater ever since the university had decided to open it in 1960 and create an Auditorium Theatre Council to manage and raise funds for restoration. The story is linked to the various uses of this elegant, formidable icon of a bygone era one of Chicago's treasures, its most beautiful public space. It is a story of popular art and the conflict with a university's fundamental purposes, of some of the most profitable musicals in the history of show business and the appropriate use of their profits by the university that owns the theater, of class and race and philanthropy, of the city and the suburbs, and of how the struggle for power and ownership can almost destroy a great theater and diminish a university and result in the near death of at least one man's dream, one man's love affair. It encompasses the ethics of modern public relations, the law, and human motivations that range from the innocent to the pernicious and that dance around the claims of trust and control. It is a Chicago story, finally. But like all stories, it is personal as well. My story. Sullivan and Adler's Auditorium Building at Congress Parkway, Michigan and Wabash Avenues was built with the financial support of Ferdinand Peck, Marshall Field, Samuel Insull and other financiers and was Chicago's first multi-purpose building-- a huge structure of 400,000 square feet that rose ten stories high and was capped by a tower, with a spectacular view of Grant Park, the outer drive, Buckingham Fountain, and Lake Michigan. The building took six years to complete. Its fashionable hotel on Michigan Avenue and the offices on Wabash were intended to sustain the theater; commerce would nourish culture; and the Auditorium, developed during a generation of great fecundity of American architecture and in the period of Chicago's most rapid growth in population, would stand at the very heart of Daniel Burnham's "metropolis of the mid-west"-- a monument of unageing intellect, an American masterpiece, an architectural tribute to the common man. The architect and engineer had "made no little plans," in Burnham's famous phrase, and had surely "stirred men's blood." From 1889 until the early years of the next century, the Auditorium Theatre was Chicago's showcase: celebrating the presidential nominating conventions of William Harrison and Teddy Roosevelt; featuring the orchestra and opera; presenting Sarah Bernhardt, Enrico Caruso, and other great actors and singers; and serving as the primary example of Chicago's rebirth into a major American city. But in 1906 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra abandoned the Auditorium for Orchestra Hall, a few blocks north, and in 1929 Samuel Insull moved the opera to the Civic Opera House Center on Wacker Drive, west of Michigan Avenue. Those who operated the Auditorium Theater could not replace it with entertainment of comparable quality or popularity. Then the economic depression of the 1930's weighed heavily on the theater and the hotel until they appeared to become at best architectural artifacts, at worst a white elephant unsustainable in a modern economy. By 1941, when the curtain descended upon Hellzapoppin, the Auditorium Building was closed and the Auditorium Theatre went dark. And no one knew what to do with it. During the war, parts of the building were used as barracks for soldiers. The stage of the theater became a bowling alley. This great work of architecture no longer seemed functional, and by the end of World War II there were serious discussions about demolishing it. But the cost of leveling the building was prohibitively expensive, and it continued to stand at the crossroads of the mid-west, staring at Lake Michigan like some defiant, brooding dowager, her youth gone, unwilling to allow Chicago to forget her past, uncertain about her present, wondering whether she could ever have a future. In 1946, James Edward Sparling, Roosevelt's first president, and his idealistic faculty of sixty took over the Auditorium Building, with all prior real estate taxes forgiven by the city, and sought to dream it into a university. Roosevelt struggled to survive from 1945 to 1959, suffering from budget deficits each year, but Sparling kept watch over the unused Auditorium Theatre, knowing he possessed a buried jewel, and listening to the ghosts of its original glory, its checkered past, and its moribund present. In the late 50's, he proposed that Roosevelt reopen its haunted heirloom. The Auditorium Theatre would not only bring in great shows for the people of the city, he argued, but could be connected technologically with the public schools so that poor children would enjoy performances. Like most university presidents, like me years later, Jim Sparling had his dreams. The majority of trustees, who saw themselves as community leaders eager to help the president implement his vision, supported him; but the chairman, Leo Lerner, and a few others felt that the university had no business being in show business. Roosevelt possessed no endowment, Lerner protested, and was entirely tuition driven; faculty salaries were low; there was no reserve fund; and the Auditorium Building itself needed constant repair. The conflict within the Board of Trustees and specifically between the chairman and the founding president reached a crisis at a meeting on February 18, 1960. Leo Lerner was a short, heavy-set, feisty and determined man. He was the publisher of a network of local newspapers, an active trustee since the inception of the university, and a man of passionate principles who believed deeply in Roosevelt's egalitarian mission, its commitment to the Jeffersonian ideal of "natural aristocracy." But he could not imagine how this impoverished university might assume the burden of a rundown 4,200-seat theater and, in a grand gesture of defiance, resigned: It is very sad that the Board has to break up over the Auditorium issue. . . The glamour pants will attempt to restore an unneeded theater (which will probably remain empty most of the time) and the drones are expected to raise the money for faculty salaries and student facilities. It won't work. Those who have given the best part of the last 15 years of their lives to help raise funds for the University can't be put into that position. We refuse to go out on the street from door to door to look for money to keep the college going when the president and some of the Board members insist on going off on this fantastic tangent. This is a job that is difficult enough when everyone is co-operating. . . .Several trustees left with Lerner. Those who had voted with Sparling shared Lerner's concern and, in order to keep the idealistic president focused upon the university, created an Auditorium Theater Council [ATC] to raise funds to open and then manage the theater on behalf of the university. Fearing that Sparling would divert his attention disproportionately to the theater and neglect the university in the process, they had the ATC report directly to the trustees-- and by doing so made the fundamental mistake that would haunt the University and Council for the next forty years. In eliminating the administrative leadership of the university from control of the theater, the trustees sowed the seeds of separation and, ultimately, dissension. Of course, this is easy for me to observe four decades later, and I recognize that this divided board was struggling to find a compromise to a difficult and public problem that required good faith on everybody's part. But good faith is never enough. Structure determines later strategies and administrative clarity-- or the lack of it. If there is a lesson to this tale of a board of trustees and an advisory council --if there is a lesson for other universities with well-intentioned volunteers who serve on committees of museums and concert halls and theaters and athletic teams and churches-- it is that the executive director must report to the president or his designee. Once any director does not work within the framework of the university's administration, control is lost, independence encouraged, and division or even secession potentially the result. This is what happened with Roosevelt University and the Auditorium Theatre Council-- original sin was committed in the faulty relationship of the Council to the Board of Trustees, which governs the entire University. A Roosevelt University trustee, Bea Spachner, volunteered to lead the capital campaign. She was a short, compact, determined woman who lived on the North Shore, had considerable contacts in the arts, and knew that the theater was a Chicago institution cherished by thousands of people. A tenacious woman who accomplished whatever she set out to do, Spachner had helped to restore Ganz Hall --a concert hall within the Auditorium Building itself that was named after the famous pianist, composer, and conductor, Rudolph Ganz, who in 1954 had brought his bankrupt Chicago Musical College to Roosevelt-- and soon initiated a capital campaign of significant proportions. Indeed, she identified with the Auditorium Theatre so closely and fundraising grew so intense that she came to think of the theater as her personal possession. By 1967, she had raised enough funds, $3.5 million, to open the Auditorium Theatre and preside over a spectacular program that promised its renaissance. Opening night was a glorious moment, with Swan Lake featured on the stage; but it was only a moment, to be followed by other sporadic moments that hinted at what the theater could become if only it could find its appropriate vehicle in the modern world, if only it could identify the right management. In the years that followed, the Auditorium Theatre Council was never really able to establish financial stability of the theater or discover its artistic focus. Part of the problem was sheer size, part was the lack of resources for promotion but the real reason was inadequate management. The university allowed the Council to set up a parallel entity called the Auditorium Theatre Council, Inc. in 1981, for fundraising purposes only. The argument that Bea Spachner and other ATC members made was that the theater needed a development focus distinct from Roosevelt University --people might think they would be contributing to the university rather than the theater, they claimed, and therefore would give less-- but it never really worked and by the time of her death in 1982 fundraising was already floundering. The real reason for the creation of ATC Inc., which held the same membership as ATC, was a desire for further separation from the university-- the spirit of separation started with the creation of ATC, was perpetuated in the establishment of ATC Inc., and ended with the dissolution of ATC. The Council remained quite distinct from the university and Roosevelt trustees considered the Auditorium it governed a burden rather than a blessing, the university's elegant albatross. Unlike the leaders of the Opera and Symphony, ATC could not boast a resident company. It managed a venue, arguably the greatest of its kind in the world, that could accommodate varied entertainment. Rock shows came and went; ballet companies performed; the Royal Shakespeare Company was there, and individual artists created momentary excitement. But the theater was too often dark and could scarcely sustain itself financially. Success was elusive and the management of the theater too weak to carve out a clear mission or the strategies to implement it. By the mid 1980s, ATC was running deficits the university had to absorb from a modest budget supported primarily by student tuition and Lerner's statements proved to be prophetic. Without the university subsidy, the Auditorium Theatre would have been darkened and ceased to exist as a performing arts space. Tensions between the University and Council grew. Throughout this period, Roosevelt leaders dealt with the ATC in only financial terms-- and, in fairness to the council leaders, they were left alone, made to feel inadequate, and pestered to repay a debt, which had risen by 1987 to approximately $400,000. The Council wanted independence, the University consistently claimed ownership but asked ATC simply to balance its budget and not be a burden. It was inevitable that resentment would intensify as each group confronted a problem that appeared insoluble. The Auditorium now looked like a huge, obsolescent theater that could not find productions to finance essential refurbishments, and the admonition of Leo Lerner returned to plague ATC and the University as though it was their destiny. Twenty-five percent of the ATC was composed of Roosevelt administrators and trustees, but really the university representatives sat awkwardly at meetings like uninvited, unwanted watch dogs. When I was asked to attend a meeting in August of 1988, one month before I began officially as president, I was amazed at the tension between the two groups and felt, even then, that their hostility had to be reconciled into a relationship of reciprocity and harmony. Like Sparling, I had a dream-- and mine was of a Center for Performing Arts, in which the theater was a centerpiece. But T. S. Eliot's warning echoed in my mind --"between the conception and the reality falls the shadow"-- and in 1988 I did not dare to share my long-term vision for the performing arts at Roosevelt University. In its desperate attempt to make the Auditorium Theatre economically viable, ATC hired a consultant, Dulcie Gilmore, in 1987. As a young woman, she had worked successfully at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora. Gilmore analyzed the problems of the theater acutely and made recommendations that clearly indicated she could move it financially from red to black and carve out a fresh future. A smart, savvy woman, she immediately saw the possibilities of the theater as a commercial enterprise. Within less than a year, the Council leaders who had all but given up on making the Auditorium successful appointed her as executive director, without even the courtesy of a traditional search process and without consulting the university administration; the assumption was that she would report exclusively to the Council. The root of the problem, separation, was intensified. My predecessor, Rolf Weil, had not appointed Dulcie Gilmore and, as a consequence, never engaged her loyalty or even sympathy. She cast her lot with the Council, dug her heels in, and resisted every overture at collaboration that I made once I became president. Gilmore proved to be focused, unsentimental, tough, and utterly determined to make the theater prosper. Although she expressed devotion and loyalty to the ATC that hired her, she was really independent-- she reported to no one but herself. For her, Roosevelt University was irrelevant-- physically there, obstinately, sometimes uncomfortably there, but utterly beside the point. She wanted glamour and elegance and a touch of class for her theater. Roosevelt, with its multi-ethnic student body from Chicago's neighborhoods yearning to become middle class, was stubbornly present, a little embarrassing to her and to the ATC that wanted a modern performing arts center on Congress Parkway independent of the university-- a little Lincoln or Kennedy Center for Chicago. Dulcie Gilmore gazed back upon a century of mixed achievements and recent mismanagement and confusion, at a theater grown musty from deferred maintenance, and then wiped the slate clear, as if to have all of us see it for the first time: an Auditorium Theatre that could be reborn and reinvented for the modern world. Her determination was tenacious, her ambition overweening, her authority absolute. When Cameron MacIntosh, the producer, considered bringing Les Miserables to the Auditorium in 1989, it only strengthened my own view of the huge potential awaiting us. That show proved to be a defining moment in the history of the Auditorium Theatre-- a theater created for the large spectacle so popular at the time, a venue that drew to it thousands from across the mid-west and realized the vision of Louis Sullivan, Dankmar Adler, and Frank Lloyd Wright. The Auditorium Theatre was indeed the architectural home of the middle class. In order to present Les Miserables, ATC had to borrow money to reupholster most of the 4200 seats and make other renovations but it could do so, the Tribune Foundation insisted, only with the financial guarantee of the University. The show was a great success and lasted eight months, followed by lengthy runs of Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, the return of these shows and shorter productions like Crazy for You, ballet productions by the Joffrey, American and Feld Ballet companies, and many special presentations representing the cultures of other countries. The theater was on a roll. During the next few years, more than $5 million in net proceeds went into renovations throughout the Auditorium, an external arcade of exceptional beauty, and into the beginning of a reserve account that all of us hoped would become an endowment. The Auditorium glistened, as it never had before. It prospered, and for the first time in its history was able to contribute $200,000 in two separate years to the university. From 1988 to1994, the recommendations for refurbishment that the Auditorium Theatre Council made to the university's Board of Trustees were passed along by me and approved automatically. At the same time, every effort on the part of Gilmore and ATC, from the signing of contracts to renovations of the theater, was made to keep the Roosevelt administration and Board of Trustees in the dark, to exclude the University from oversight of the management of the Auditorium Theatre. Whenever I tried to participate in negotiations, I was kept in ignorance and at a distance. When I suggested we build the Council with leading patrons of the arts and start some serious fundraising while the shows enjoyed these long runs, I was largely ignored. When I tried to integrate the ATC within the university, I was a rebuffed suitor. Gilmore was mentored by Margie Korshak, a publicist who introduced her to theatrical celebrities, and her husband at the time, Jerry Gerson, an attorney from Winston Strawn, who handled legal affairs for the theater. The three of them really ran the theater and Korshak, an intense, flamboyant woman who had succeeded in dominating theater publicity throughout metropolitan Chicago, had a deep influence on Gilmore; they visited productions across the world, and Dulcie made no decision without consulting Margie. At one point, as I would later learn, Gerson had the Phantom contract signed by Gilmore as "ATC Inc." instead of "ATC" (the unincorporated council or committee) in an attempt to legitimize the independence and autonomy of the Council. At another, he concocted the concept of a public charitable trust, which claimed that when Roosevelt established ATC in 1960 it surrendered the theater to the Council, creating in effect an implied trust with the people of Chicago. Other members of ATC scarcely knew what was happening. I certainly didn't. I had become the embodiment of the university itself: Roosevelt, the unwelcome, undesired, distant relative-- even, at times, the enemy. By now I knew that the fatal flaw in the relationship between the Auditorium Theatre Council and the University was that the director, Dulcie Gilmore, did not report to the president. I tried to draw her into Roosevelt's administrative orbit by including her into my administrative council of vice presidents, deans, and directors and my cabinet of top executives. I had her formally report to the provost and urged him to meet with her regularly to learn what was going on. I took her to breakfasts to seek information myself and even to advise her. My wife and I socialized with her. We sent each other flowers, Gilmore and I, and exchanged books and were superficially cordial. But as the theater prospered, she grew more independent --she was now calling herself CEO as well as executive director-- and the ATC to which she nominally reported supported her, protected her. Separatism had grown deeply entrenched, and Dulcie Gilmore would not share her theater with anyone. I tried to assure her that within the university's structure she would gain greater financial security-- she listened but was unconvinced. I told her that in the long run she personally would be safer within the university rather than within this smaller volunteer group. She listened but did not believe me. I assured her that I had no intention, desire, or ability to run the theater-- but she did not trust me. Trust-- this simple word would prove to be essential in the adversarial relationship between her and me, between the Auditorium Theatre Council and Roosevelt University, and most importantly between the wealthy, obsessed, uncompromising, and most quietly dominant ATC member who would become my nemesis, Fred Eychaner, and me. Trust or, more accurately, distrust. I knew that if I did attempt to intercede, to exert authority, to fire Gilmore for insubordination or to take overt control, I would precipitate the conflict that ultimately did occur; I would invite a public relations nightmare that finally erupted anyway; and I did not have the courage or the will to exert that kind of authority-- not when the Auditorium was at the crest of financial success and Gilmore was its heroine. I had a university to run and I could not afford the condemnation of the arts community, the most prosperous and influential group of people in the city. Given a choice between the Auditorium Theatre and Roosevelt University, they would choose --I knew they would choose-- the Auditorium. Some of the university trustees and my colleagues in the administration felt that the net proceeds of the shows should be used for scholarships, refurbishment of the Auditorium Building that encased the theater, and other needs. Unlike direct donations to the theater, they argued, the net proceeds from performances belonged to the university, which owned the theater, as in the usual corporate relationship to its auxiliary enterprises or subsidiaries. These profits were the counterpart to the revenues from tuition and were fungible-- they could be used for whatever purposes the administration deemed appropriate. But none of my associates was having my personal experiences with the members of ATC, who now were enjoying enormous success, feeling more in control of their destiny than ever, and exercising more and more autonomy. The theater was thriving and the money was rolling in; but these profits were like medicine concealing an underlying cancer ATC and the University were growing farther apart each day and were on a collision course. Who were the members of this Auditorium Theatre Council? The leader for many years was Edward Weil, whose great grandfather was Dankmar Adler and who was so enamored with the theater that he had his second wedding on its stage; Stanley Warshauer, the long-time owner of the Auditorium Theatre Garage who depended financially on a thriving theater season for his parking revenues; Gordon Newman, who was the chief counsel at Sara Lee and wanted the Auditorium Theatre to be the popular counterpart to the Lyric Opera and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and who withdrew when ATC made the conflict personal and bitter; David Smerling, who had once owned concessions for the theater we called him the popcorn man-- and at one meeting found himself unwittingly elected chairman of the Council and then its spokesman; Thomas Kallen, who had inherited his wife's cookie company, Bakeline, and when he sold it for a fortune spent much of his time micromanaging the theater; others who had a sentimental attachment to the theater, its preservation and restoration and architecture. And then Fred Eychaner, wealthy entrepreneur, owner of Channel 50 and Newsweb, which printed neighborhood newspapers, and real estate across town; Fred Eyachner, a man who was the ninth largest contributor to the Democratic party and entertained President Clinton when he came to Chicago; Fred Eychaner, a man of silences, a nondescript loner who was intent on controlling that theater regardless of what it would cost in legal fees. I never fully understood his obsession, I never understood him. But he would not yield nor compromise and he had reserves of money that seemed endless. (I first met Fred Eychaner when we served on the nominating committee of the Auditorium Theatre Council. A mysterious, elusive man who spoke in staccato whenever he uttered his words and always seemed in a hurry to enter or leave a room, he watched me out of the corner of his eye, measuring me, suspecting me, wondering at first how I would relate to control of the theater. Once he knew I wanted that theater for the university he sought to manipulate me. We had so much in common: political liberals, supporters of Clinton, devotees of the arts, fast-talking entrepreneurs. He invited Marion and me to a Clinton fundraiser; we invited him, when he was briefly a trustee, to our home. Even then I noticed he kept his back to the wall, observing, measuring, calculating, with the darting eyes of a paranoid who forces his smile and needs to be an outsider. He had taken journalism courses at Roosevelt in the sixties. Early on he invited me to a Thai dinner at Aruns and said, rather melodramatically and in connection with nothing whatsoever, "I'm gay." Later, when a private discussion got tense, he said, "You think that this is the most traumatic event in my life? No way. It was when I came out of the closet." I looked at him non-plussed and felt like saying, "So what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?" I could never understand him, but I have never met a more cunning, tenacious, focused human being a man capable of almost anything to gain his way. He had a scorched earth attitude in this conflict and I thought sometimes that he would rather have the theater burn down than surrender it to Roosevelt.) Soon, ATC sought legal separation from the University. At one point, they brought to the trustees and me a proposal to condominimize the theater and pay rent to the university. At another, they wanted to buy the theater for $1 million and when rejected sweetened the offer to $3 million, two million of which was from an anonymous donor who had to have a decision within days or he would withdraw his offer; I later learned, at the trial, that the donor was none other than Fred Eychaner, who would ultimately file a lawsuit against the University. We told them that the Auditorium was not for sale at any price and that it was our greatest physical asset. Unsuccessfully I sought to bring the leaders of the theater and the university together, knowing how valuable each could be to the other, sensing that the theater would be of great advantage to the university in its efforts at fundraising, its search for enrollments. I invited Eychaner, Newman, and Weil to be trustees in the attempt to have them see the theater in the context of the entire university and (in a Machiavellian moment) to co-opt them and make them part of us. They accepted, but it never really worked. Their resistance simply hardened. They claimed that now that the theater was financially successful, I wanted to grab the money and use it for non-theatrical purposes. I argued that the net proceeds belonged to the university, that the university had sustained the Auditorium when it was bankrupt and in debt and should benefit since the theater was successful, so long as the theater itself was not sacrificed and restricted gifts were not at issue. Two irreconcilable views developed. ATC asserted that an "implied contract" had developed since its creation in 1960, which was tantamount to independence and local autonomy; that the theater belonged to Chicago and was being held "in public trust" for the citizens of the city; that it had always been perceived as a separate entity and that donors had contributed to it with that belief in mind; that its relationship with the university was an accident of proximity; that volunteers would be attracted to the theater if it were distinct from the university and any attempt to link the two was utterly confusing; that donors might think, despite our disclaimers, that they were contributing to the university as well as the theater; that far more money could be raised if the Auditorium Theater had a clear identity as a theater. A university, a theater: two different enterprises. Or were they? A university, a football team. A university, a museum. A university, a concert hall. These entities co-existed throughout higher education. Why couldn't we have a university and a theater that nourished each other? I was convinced that the separatist position was not only contrary to the legal rights of the University to own and operate the theater but was finally myopic and harmful to the theater itself; for we were in an age when the arts were devalued by public officials, support from business had become more precarious than ever, and even in education performing and visual arts always seemed to be sacrificial lambs. With enough external support, the university could become a Medici of the Arts, an anchor and sympathetic protector, so long as professors and scholars did not stifle them with their intellectuality. My own view was that the Auditorium Theater should be operated independently but be a subsidiary of Roosevelt University. Its successful programming of mega-hits had to continue. The university would become its home and provide long-range fiscal stability. The tax-free status of the theater, so vulnerable now that it was enjoying huge profits from commercial shows, would be protected by this relationship and an extraordinary cultural and educational and commercial symbiosis would be forged. Was there any more noble use of the theater's net proceeds from ticket sales than scholarships for music and theater students who would be our future artists or for programs that would promote their development or for distinguished faculty who would teach them? But between the conception and the reality does fall the shadow, and I knew that it did not matter what grandiose notions I might have about the arts and society or how surpluses could be nobly used. Distrust had grown to the point where the Council and the University were fated to do battle on the fundamental question of who controlled the Auditorium Theatre. My public statements, I must confess, had private passions. I was convinced that the real reason ATC members wanted independence was not only to have a theater of their own but to separate themselves from the image of the university-- from the scruffy working class, the upwardly mobile, struggling and straining, multi-ethnic student body, many of whom were black and brown and yellow, most of whom were poor or had memories of recent poverty, almost all of whom could not afford the price of admission to Phantom of the Opera or Show Boat, future Ellingtons and Perlmans and Midoris among them. At one point, I imagined inner-city youngsters watching these shows from our balconies --I suggested that we make a request of the producers for free or discounted tickets-- and was told that the kids would make the theater dirty. Would there be, I asked in a heated moment of provocation, this desire for independence if the Auditorium Theatre were on the campus of the University of Chicago or Northwestern? They vehemently denied the suggestion --class and race and ethnicity were not the question, they protested-- but I did not believe them. I did not trust them. I did believe that underlying the public reasons for autonomy was the search for an image of high status and class and snobbery, and the discordant music in my mind was buried deeper than the words I dared to speak, and I found it repugnant. I also saw, in my mind's eye, a Center for the Performing Arts, which I obviously could not present to hostile ATC members because they would have viewed it as a diminishment of the theater itself. It was the kind of dream university presidents often have: a Center that includes a conservatory for music, theater, and dance; a pre-college division; an MBA in arts management; a forum for discussion of issues concerning the arts and American society; programs in the schools to build future audiences; and the Auditorium Theatre itself, the jewel in the crown, the pearl in the oyster, the great emporium that would make the appropriate connections with all of these entities. But this dream had to go unexpressed, for ATC would have considered it an attempt to capture and dwarf the independence of the Auditorium Theatre itself. The hardening of the division between the Council and the University had already gone too far; the craving for total separation had passed beyond reconciliation. My dream went unmentioned because, at bottom, there was no trust between us, and the Council's hunger for control now had to be gratified. They thought I wanted only the money; I thought they wanted only the theater. My dream and the political reality of the moment-- they too were on a collision course. At my behest, the trustees tightened the university's grip. The Board passed a resolution in July 1989 asserting its ownership, indicating that the executive director had to report to the president of the university and defining other stipulations of accountability. As some of the ATC leaders recognized that Roosevelt was intent on claiming ownership of the theater and had the right to use net proceeds from the shows, they resigned. Indeed, Clair Hansen of Duff and Phelps, one of the most militant members and a man I scarcely knew, called me at 6:30 on the morning of August 25, 1989, and asked if he could meet me in my office at 7:30. We met. He stated bluntly that I had won. It was clear that Roosevelt owned the theater and that I wanted greater control over its management than ever before. He disagreed profoundly, but he recognized reality. He would therefore resign and have the resignations of all other Council members by noon of that same day. I told him that he should do whatever he saw fit. By late afternoon there was indeed a letter of mass resignations which I now regret having rejected, for I could have used it as an opportunity to reconstitute the governance on university terms before any legal suit materialized. But I was afraid of adverse public relations. Those who remained rescinded their resignations a few weeks later --they had never really intended to resign at all-- and promptly elected me chairman of the Auditorium Theatre Council in recognition of the university's authority. Mirabile dictu. I had enough to do as president, but I accepted the ATC chairmanship because I thought finally I might bring the two camps together. Somewhere in my mind, of course, I knew I was deluding myself. I knew I was no more than a nominal chairman, a token chairman, and a puppet. I grew to know the truth that Alan Anixter had once confided in me: he who controls the budget controls the organization. ATC controlled the budget; ATC controlled the theater. That was the reality behind superficial appearances. The hard core of ATC members wanted a theater that was separate, independent, and autonomous-- a theater of their own, the greatest theater in Chicago and one of the greatest in the world. Control. Ownership. The treasure of the Auditorium Theatre had become a kind of holy grail in the minds of those of us, so few of us, who truly cared. For the public at large, the Auditorium Theatre was now realizing its renaissance-- the shows were on the stage for an average of 285 nights a year. Phantom sold out completely every night. More than $5 million in profits had returned to the refurbishment of the theater. Black tie galas welcomed some of the most popular shows in theater history -- Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Show Boat. The governance seemed superficially stable and sensible, although the relationship between the theater and the university was never truly clarified and mutual grievances rumbled just beneath the public success. There was so much unresolved bitterness: those prior years in which ATC had managed the theater without any cooperation from the university; the recurring theater debt that the university had to absorb in its operating budget during those same lean years; the view of Council members that the university had surrendered its ownership of the theater when it created the Auditorium Theatre Council and the university's opposing position that ATC was simply managing the theater for the university. So much distrust. So many grievances over so many years-- mutual accusations that would never be forgotten and had created this long period of separate loyalties and divided opinions. They would all arise, like pus from an encrusted wound, and be tested by the need of the university for funds to purchase a second campus in Schaumburg. The suppressed, defensive grievances and mistrust exploded into the questions of who owns the Auditorium Theatre and who has the right to its profits. The answers would now be determined in court in a public battle that deserves a case study in public relations, litigation and leadership. It all started at a meeting of the Auditorium Theatre Executive Committee on December 15, 1994. When I awoke that Thursday morning, my stomach knew there would be trouble. I had made a number of verbal pledges to the Auditorium Theatre Council during the period from 1988-1994 that all monies raised by the theater would be discretely returned to refurbish it and establish an endowment. I had resisted internal pressures to use theater funds for the university, even though they were desperately needed and even though the university deserved to share in the success of its theater. I knew that there was a critical distinction between direct donations and net proceeds from ticket sales: that no one could (or ever did) divert donations restricted to the Auditorium but that net proceeds from operations belonged to the university that owned the theater. The arguments for using the net proceeds from productions in the Auditorium Theatre for university purposes were compelling. Every university does so; every corporation transfers the profits of one of its entities to another; and the idea of converting some funds into scholarships for students in the performing arts, for example, made great sense and reinforced the nonprofit status of the theater. Still, I had always felt that it would be very difficult to ask people to serve on an Auditorium Theatre Council without profits returning to the theater and a license agreement that would allow the university to share in a modest percentage of them. Indeed, there were continuing meetings between Council members and Trustees, between lawyers for the Council and the University, in the attempt to arrive at an agreement that was mutually fair; but discussions always seemed to break down on petty differences concerning money and governance and then were entirely suspended once a law suit was filed by two members of the ATC on December 16. The theater reserves at the time were $3.2 million and I needed to have $1.5 million held as collateral-- not spent but held in reserve. Before the critical meeting on December 15, I asked Dulcie Gilmore if she could manage the theater until the opening of Show Boat --which was to occur sixteen months later, in March 1996-- and she reluctantly assured me she could; indeed, the theater had operated with far fewer reserves in the past. Later I would learn that six weeks before I made my request she had sent a confidential memo to the members of the ATC executive committee and warned them rather hysterically, hyperbolically, and personally: . . . .If he [Ted Gross] wins, the community loses. The institution we know as the Auditorium Theatre Council will die. The dreams of our forefathers, our elders and our contemporaries will vanish. When the theatre bookings have moved on to other venues, when the University has shuttered its downtown campus and taken the theatre's endowment funds, when some developer is about to gut the interior of the Auditorium Building because only the facade is land marked. . . .nobody will remember why they should care.At the trial, this would become known as the infamous Dante memo. Gilmore did indeed remain publicly neutral, although I do not remember her behavior as having been particularly sweet. It was all the petty, local version of Julius Caesar since she would ultimately be betrayed by those she chose as fellow combatants-- three years later she would be fired by the ATC. At the time, Dulcie Gilmore was protecting her job and made a fatal mistake in her own career. With the knowledge that Gilmore would make public assurances that $1.5 million was not essential to the operation of the theater, I entered the meeting with confidence that the deal with Unocal, the oil company that had its headquarters in Schaumburg, could be completed, that the Auditorium would not suffer, and that I would never have to draw upon the $1.5 million; but I also knew that the four other executive committee members of the ATC would resist any transfer of funds, even if they were to be held in collateral. How much resistance I would encounter I could not predict-- but it turned out to be worse and more expensive than I ever could have imagined. The meeting in Roosevelt's board room was, to use an understated word, tempestuous. Three of the four other ATC members were present --Fred Eychaner, Tom Kallen, and Gordon Newman. Dulcie Gilmore and her staff positioned themselves nearby but within touching distance of my colleagues and me-- they were neutrals, ostensible neutrals. I had brought Roosevelt's attorney and my vice president for business and finance with me in the hope that the meeting would be conducted collegially and professionally; but immediately Eychaner and Kallen wanted to know why these outsiders were there, were we in executive session, what the devil was going on? We sparred. Newman approved of their presence. Then Eychaner reluctantly approved, under protest. As we entered into the real discussion, Eychaner and Kallen found various reasons why I could not transfer the theater profits to a reserve fund for the purchase of the Schaumburg Campus. Their arguments were the familiar ones. The Auditorium Theatre had its own restoration needs and was independent of the university. I explained that the reserves would be returned once the expected donations materialized, which would be in a matter of weeks. No, they countered, these reserves all belonged to the theater. I claimed I did not intend to use the money for the Schaumburg Campus but simply to hold it until other contributions came through so that the trustees could approve the project at its meeting on January 25, 1995, and the university would be able to close the deal with Unocal. Eychaner and Kallen mocked a financial plan that depended so absolutely on $1.5 million from the theater; they derided trustees who had not come through for me. At one point, I lost my cool and told them I would take the money whether they authorized it or not-- it was the university's in any case. I told them that the purchase of the Schaumburg Campus was the most important event in the history of the university, after its move into the Auditorium Building. Finally, at another moment, I burst into self pity and lamented the fact that I had to be here asking for these funds and that the trustees hadn't supported me completely. The rhetoric grew intense as the lines between us rigidified. I tried to reassure them-- but they would not be reassured. I sought their trust, but there was no trust. They were sitting in the board room of the university that owned the theater, but they saw the two as entirely separate-- most importantly they did not trust the university and they did not trust me. In the middle of the meeting, Eychaner marched toward me in a dramatic, defiant flourish, his eyes so hostile I thought they would burn through me, I even feared that he might pull a knife, and submitted his letter of resignation from the Roosevelt University Board of Trustees-- he was, he said, in an impossible conflict of interest. I agreed with him-- as a trustee who needed to see this transfer of funds in a larger university context, he did have a conflict. Toward the end of the meeting, Gordon Newman, who was more moderate than his two colleagues, sympathized with my dilemma and wondered whether transfer of the funds was legal. He asked our attorney to secure an opinion. He needed an opinion before he could act. The Greeks had it right, after all: character is finally fate. All of us left that board room with the agreement that we would wait for a ruling of whether it was legal to transfer theater revenues to Roosevelt accounts. But Eychaner had already instructed his lawyers to prepare a lawsuit and was ready to strike-- he had no intention of waiting for any legal opinion. In the "order and decision" that Judge Jaffe wrote after a ten week bench trial during the summer of 1998, this premeditated action was critical. Indeed, Jaffe called Eychaner's behavior "malicious, willful and wanton," and indicated he would fine him for damages to the theater and the university: "Eychaner, the one who was going to protect the theatre for the public good, was the one who threw the theatre into a situation where their treasury would be greatly dissipated. Eychaner has attempted to portray himself as a person who only had the theatre's interest and well-being in mind. His actions speak just the opposite." He was, in Jaffe's view and certainly mine, an obsessed man. I did not realize that a tape of this meeting was being taken, transcribed into hard copy by the afternoon, and immediately leaked to the press. The next morning I awoke to read the story of the meeting in the Tribune and immediately faxed a memo to all trustees, describing the need for the $1.5 million reserve fund to construct the Schaumburg Campus and underscoring the pledge that Roosevelt would be there to protect the theater, as it had in the past. By that afternoon, December 16, Fred Eychaner had filed an injunction together with another Council member, Betty Lou Weiss. She was married to the nephew of Bea Spachner and was a new member of the ATC. She did not know Eychaner and was totally unfamiliar with the origins and history of the case-- she simply wanted to "protect" the theater for her Aunt Bea. I dreaded that the Schaumburg project had slipped through my fingers. "Filial ingratitude," I remembered from King Lear. We had sustained the Auditorium Theatre in the eighties, and now when we needed help it wasn't there. At that moment, with Unocal demanding a decision, the trustees requiring a fiscal guarantee, the Auditorium Theatre Council refusing to help, and the university in desperate need of a new campus that promised fabulous growth, I did indeed feel sorry for myself and was probably a little paranoid. "Filial ingratitude," I kept mumbling to myself. "Filial ingratitude." And the loss of a dream because of a wealthy man who wanted to have a theater of his own. The media blitz that ensued deserves an essay in and of itself and surely could be a case study for anyone entering public relations or concerned with the ethics of this industry. The ATC hired Jascula/Terman, a well-known firm with political connections throughout the city and, most importantly, within the mayor's office, to distribute a continuing barrage of documents, notes to the editor, statements in playbills, yellow leaflets shoved at patrons as they entered the theater that resembled old Vietnam War protests. There were statements in neighborhood newspapers and a regular newsletter developed by a newly created organization, "Friends of the Auditorium Theatre," that went to people in the arts community and was clearly calculated to scare them and alienate them from Roosevelt and make them feel that this insensitive, rapacious university would sacrifice a theater for its own self-serving purposes when the Auditorium really belonged to the public, that Roosevelt would take money from the financially pinched city and use it in the affluent suburbs, that it was greedy and controlling. In a typical issue of its newsletter, ATC repeated its gospel: "Auditorium Theatre-- Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?The university originally had hired and fired Jascula/Terman, the firm that was orchestrating this blitz, so that the ethics of whether a public relations firm ought to have agreed to work for ATC, when it possessed private records of the university, could be the first question raised in any case study. The demonization of me might be the second, for the strategy called for a personal attack that would scapegoat me and characterize me as some sort of Svengali who could manipulate seventy trustees and scores of administrators and faculty to comply with my authoritarian wishes. The slander of the university could be the third-- the separation of Roosevelt from its theater, the accusation that the university would take money from a struggling icon of the city and spend it in a thriving suburb like Schaumburg-- as if it had no right to the surplus funds. On and on. To me, it was the most shameful and unprofessional performance of a public relations firm, the hired gun of a litigious client, that I had ever encountered. As the personal assaults against the university and me intensified, a fourth and perhaps most perplexing question might also yield interesting answers. What should be the appropriate response to such highly publicized assaults and misrepresentations that were often inaccurate and injurious to the university and libelous of me? How could we cease being on the defensive? In pursuit of my own answers, I sought advice from some of the leading public relations executives in Chicago and found them so varied they simply confused me: * Answer these accusations blow by blow in print. Go for the jugular.Every time we acted on one of these suggestions, we became increasingly defensive and reactive and impotent; we were always in the position of explaining ourselves. There seemed no way in which we could gain the offensive except by having the university conduct a battle in the press. At the same time, I was sensitive to the fact that many of our trustees represented major corporations --banks, law firms and insurance companies-- and did not relish controversy; many did business with the mayor, who had chosen to support ATC on the assumption --as he was told-- that Roosevelt University was taking money from Chicago and bringing it to Schaumburg; many remained silent or neutral or diffident. A public brawl was the last association they wanted with a university they served voluntarily. We decided to work through the courts. One statement was sent out, but it simply engendered a heated rebuttal, and I realized that the ATC was not going to yield-- they had adopted a scorched-earth policy. They were convinced that the university would back off so as to avoid embarrassment, and they calculated that a blitzkrieg as well as a vilification of me personally would result in our compromising on their terms. They also assumed that Roosevelt would be unwilling to spend the legal fees necessary. Some trustees wanted to sue the individual ATC members for wasting theater funds on legal fees. Others urged moderation. But all supported the administration and me on the matter of principle; they knew keenly how valuable the theater was to the university and were unwilling to have it stolen away. We attempted compromises privately with Eychaner and more formally through our lawyers, feeling that a bad settlement is better than protracted, expensive litigation. Every negotiation foundered on who would have majority control over any new council-- who would control the theater. Word got to me that members of the ATC had gone individually to many of our trustees, seeking to divide and conquer; that they had spoken to leaders in the arts; that they had influenced the mayor, his wife, Maggie, and the commissioner of cultural affairs, Lois Weisberg. When I did meet with Mayor Daley to explain the university's position, he listened with ostensible neutrality, but I knew that he and therefore all who had to follow his cue believed that Roosevelt University had betrayed the city for the suburbs and, as Jascula/Terman suggested, might even sell the Auditorium Building and actually leave Chicago. (Never had I seen a political figure so powerful as Richard M. Daley: almost nothing was done in the city without his approval. Once he decided upon an issue, he was inflexible and he had been persuaded that the ATC represented Chicago, not Roosevelt University. Eychaner was a huge donor and spoke to Daley's associates and Daley himself. Once the mayor's position was known, others fell in line, and in our case it was the commissioner of cultural affairs, Lois Weisberg, a woman whose influence on the arts in Chicago was extensive; it was his wife, Maggie, so close to Lois; and it was the arts community in general. To his credit, Daley never took a public position on the issue; but I knew that Roosevelt's tough decision to control its own theater, together with the purchase of the Schaumburg campus, would reduce his support for the university still further in ways that I could scarcely calculate.) ATC had spread the propaganda that Roosevelt was breaking faith with all the people who had ever contributed to the theater by misusing its funds for what Eychaner characterized as a "construction project in Schaumburg. In fact, the lion's share of ATC reserves was from ticket sales-- personal donations had been pitifully small; yet ATC repeated the lie that I was raiding restricted funds. The misrepresentation that the university was abandoning the city for the suburbs was particularly and personally distressing, for by now we had carved out the metropolitan vision of a university with two campuses, one faculty and one curriculum; we had made the case for regionalism and its goals of harmony between city and suburbs; we had insisted that suburbanites were patrons of the arts and our success in Arlington Heights during the 1980s had given the university the surpluses needed to sustain the Auditorium's deficits-- we were interdependent, we had to work together, we had to trust each other. But there was no trust between Roosevelt University and the Auditorium Theatre Council. Although the university was involved in a whole variety of city projects and would have been suicidal even to consider reversing its fifty-year commitment to the city of Chicago, we had indeed entered into a $21 million project in Schaumburg, and there was a reallocation of internal resources. The competition among universities in Chicago was ferocious, but never had there been even a thought of Roosevelt's leaving the city. We knew that we could not let perception dictate reality and hoped that it would change over time. Rather than counter false representations meant to undermine our ties to Chicago, we simply continued our work with the schools in an Educational Alliance, with the neighborhoods through our Institute for Metropolitan Affairs, with programs like hospitality management, integrated marketing, and clinical psychology so central to urban life, and with other projects that were testament to our inextricable relationship with the city. We would, in the vernacular, walk the walk rather than simply talk the talk and blow rhetoric to the winds of passing perceptions and momentary misapprehensions. Meanwhile, the lawyers grew richer, and the legal process took an unconscionable length of time almost eight years ultimately (from December 1994 to October 2002) at a cumulative price of almost $6 million. ATC now filed a lawsuit. Eyachner had his own suit. The attorney general entered the case. We hired Sidley & Austin to counter Winston Strawn, and I found myself lost in a blizzard of documents and depositions, while I was admonished not to say a word lest it be used against the university or me in court. Briefs were presented to Judge Jaffe of the Circuit Court, and on July 17, 1995, he issued a critical ruling which held that 1) Roosevelt has the authority, right and prerogative to operate, maintain and restore the Auditorium Theatre, 2) ATC's sole right is to raise money for the operation, restoration and maintenance of the Auditorium Theatre, and 3) funds held by ATC which are the positive net operating revenues from performances at the Auditorium Theatre are the property of Roosevelt." Most people naturally thought the case was over, but the clarity and firmness of this ruling did not deter ATC. Its members were clearly going all the way-- to the appellate court, which took months to rule and then after asking for more facts in the case remanded it to the circuit court for a bench trial where Judge Jaffe would confirm or reject his original opinion by answering one simple question: Did Roosevelt, when it established ATC in 1960 to manage the theater for the university, create a public charitable trust? Did it surrender its ownership of the Auditorium Theatre? As our board chairman and lawyers failed to reach settlement with Eychaner, his followers and their attorneys, Show Boat was on the stage and the profits accumulated in an ATC account that amounted at one point to $10 million. Other less profitable performances went on River Dance, Kodo, the dance companies of Chicago and revivals of Les Miserables and The King and I-- and, except for a few people, the public did not care and was unaffected by the litigation. Rumors reached me about ATC and the management of the theater that would ultimately turn out to be true. The ATC had hired Peat Marwick to review the theater accounts and discovered that Dulcie Gilmore had used donated United Airline tickets for personal purposes; she was summarily allowed to resign, ostensibly because of the fiscal impropriety but also because ATC felt that since Jaffe's ruling in favor of the University, Gilmore would now favor Roosevelt and could no longer be trusted to be loyal to the Council. So the woman they had hired in 1987, the woman who had appointed many of them to the ATC initially, the woman who really was responsible for the ten-year renaissance of the theater, who once was ready to fall on her sword for them and whom they had formerly deified-- was fired. Others who had worked at the Auditorium for years were also purged, like so much excess baggage, as if they too could be potential subversives. A new executive director, Jan Kallish, who was Eychaner's editor of the ATC newsletter and who had no experience in managing a theater, was suddenly appointed. The locks of the theater offices were changed. Kallen amended the 1995 and 1996 tax returns so that ATC could represent itself as not only operating but owning the theater-- tax returns that historically had been filed with Roosevelt's statements to the IRS. These and other attempts to assert the authority and independence and control of ATC created a kind of bunker mentality; but what was most disturbing was the amateur quality of the new management that resulted in the theater once again floundering. Whatever one might say about Dulcie Gilmore, however morally solipsistic she was, she was a professional. Now she was betrayed by those she had chosen to support and who had confided in her only a few years before-- a scenario that was more pathetic than tragic. More than once, I'm sure, Dulcie Gilmore must have muttered to herself, et tu, Fred Eychaner; et tu, Bettie Lou Weiss; et tu, Margie Korshak; et tu, Tom Kallen and Ed Weil and David Smerling. et tu, ATC. The trustees began to wonder whether further litigation made sense. In a trial, many pointed out, you are always in a crapshoot, and however justified you feel your position may be, you can lose-- we had tasted that bitter possibility when the appellate court reversed Judge Jaffe's original decision. The argument of one group of trustees was that the university should never yield to renegades who simply claimed the theater was a "public trust" and thus their own-- it should litigate the case to its bitter end. Other trustees were more moderate, and their position ultimately prevailed. We had spent almost $1 million on legal fees by this time and faced the prospect of a trial and then another appellate court hearing that would continue for at least two more years and incur at least another million dollars in legal fees. The entire theater matter diverted the attention of all the university leaders when there were so many more pressing matters to deal with. Our trustees and lawyers continued to seek compromise. The new chairman of the board --James Mitchell, executive vice president of Northern Trust-- tried to negotiate with Eychaner and Kallen and finally recommended to the board a business deal-- $200,000 guaranteed annually, with $1,500 for each performance beyond 135 shows in a given year, 25 per cent Roosevelt representation on the ATC, and a license agreement that contained important conditions for the university. (I remember sitting with Mitchell, Eychaner, and Kallen at lunch in the Drake Hotel. Mitchell had considerable negotiating skills as well as charm, wit, and intelligence; it was ironic that the ATC accounts were held at his bank, Northern Trust. He commanded the respect of Eychaner and Kallen as a corporate leader and brought a fresh perspective to the conflict. In the eyes of Eychaner and Kallen, I had become such a lightning rod and so embodied the controversy that every one of my remarks elicited, from Eychaner especially, a suspicious, hostile remark. Somewhere early in our tense conversation, he blurted out, "Well, Ted may be a wonderful president, but he doesn't understand in his gut the independent nature of the Auditorium. He's from New York. He doesn't understand in his gut the significance of architecture to Chicago and especially of the Auditorium as a masterpiece. . . . Ted just doesn't get it. . . ." Each time I said a word, he refuted it, until I laughed. "Fred, the sky is blue." No, it's " "Fred, I'm silent from here on out. We'll all be better off if you speak directly to Jim." Afterwards, Mitchell walked arm in arm with me down Michigan Avenue, passed the Pumping Station and Water Tower toward the river, trying to reassure me, to give a balanced context to my repressed hostility, my pent-up passion. "I guess you guys do tend to get a little overwrought a comment I took to be the WASP's stereotype of Jews and which, I'm sure, was a hyper-sensitive over-reaction, Later, he would discover the resistance of Eychaner, Kallen, and the ATC and express his own irritation in his own way as he realized that nothing short of capitulation would satisfy them.) This resolution that Mitchell had worked out with Eychaner, Kallen, and the ATC was difficult for me to accept. I had inherited a conflict of 28 years and had thought that through the force of my personality and diplomacy, through the power of a morally compelling case, I would prevail. But the few remaining core members of the ATC hung in tenaciously since it was theater money and not their own that they were spending for legal fees. Eychaner seemed willing to part with an endless amount of his own funds for his own lawyers, far more than he had ever donated to the theater, and I knew that without him the opposition would collapse like a house of cards. The ATC had exhausted the trustees and our lawyers and finally me. Whatever romantic feelings I had about the Auditorium Theatre had been lost in the personal abuse I had suffered, in the hostility toward the university, in the relentless public accusations, and in the wilderness of litigation to which I saw no end. I no longer cared-- or, perhaps more honestly, I no longer allowed myself to care. I did not believe in the terms of this settlement, I thought we were capitulating-- but I yielded to those trustees who assured me that a bad settlement is better than protracted, expensive litigation The negotiations broke down over petty points of dispute. A special board committee of moderate trustees, overruling the hawkish demands of others, recommended binding arbitration to reconcile the few outstanding issues. But Eychaner and the Auditorium Theatre Council refused to arbitrate. The case would go to trial. More depositions would be taken. The lines would be hardened. We would all return to Room 2405 of the Daley Center, facing Judge Aaron Jaffe once again. It was now the summer of 1998. I sat in Room 2405 of the Daley Center from June 3 to August 12, 1998 like a man obsessed with his own fate, awaiting (as it were) my verdict. I did not miss one moment of testimony. By now, the trial had gone far beyond institutional concerns for me-- it had become an act of self-justification and morality and fairness, an act that had reduced itself to something absurdly personal. After all the mistrust and the hunger for control, the accusations and counter claims, I needed a judge to tell the truth-- to vindicate the university and me. On one of the walls within that room were words that stared at all of us in bold relief: "In God we trust." God had become Judge Aaron Jaffe. The opening arguments joined the issue predictably. The plaintiffs --ATC, Eychaner, and Weiss-- claimed that the theater had been held in a public trust ever since the Auditorium Theatre Council was created in 1960. The defendants --Roosevelt and I-- asserted that the Auditorium Theatre Council was rewriting history: no public charitable trust had ever been established; the University had owned the theater from the time it bought the building and had appointed ATC in 1960 to raise funds to open the Auditorium and then manage it for the University. Witness after witness appeared. For the plaintiffs, the trust theory seemed to depend upon a note that the founding Roosevelt president, J. Edward Sparling, had sent to a theater critic, Claudia Cassidy, waxing poetically that the theater was being held in trust by ATC for the people of Chicago. It became clear that Sparling's language was metaphoric and hyperbolic, and Jaffe called it "hearsay"; still, he admitted it into evidence. Other witnesses claimed that at best there was confusion over who owned the theater, at worst a conflict of interest between Roosevelt's officers raising funds for the theater and the university at the same time -- but so many Council members had multiple loyalties that this argument lost its force. One elderly man, Elmer Gertz, a trust attorney who had issued an opinion letter on behalf of the ATC when the Council was first created, maintained that it had been his intention to form a public charitable trust-- but our attorneys flew in an authority from Yale University as an expert witness who proceeded to destroy the case that any trust had ever been created; the term had never been used until this litigation commenced. He asserted that sophisticated attorneys, sitting on both sides of a transaction, would have explicitly used the word trust if that had been their intention; the idea of a committee or council of a university asked to operate its theater, raise funds for it, and then claim ownership was absurd. He hammered away, as compelling a witness as I had ever seen. As the trial proceeded, the case that the Auditorium Theatre had somehow been turned over to the Council and that its members were holding the theater in trust for the people of Chicago disintegrated under the unrelenting interrogation of our attorneys. Of course, I am biased; but the judge, I trust, was not. He issued a 75-page decision and order which had a 9-page conclusion that he read aloud in court to a stunned Auditorium Theatre Council. This man, who had scarcely betrayed his emotions during the trial, who seemed so disinterested, and had included evidence that often seemed marginal at best, wrote a clear, unambiguous, and angry opinion. These fragments provide a flavor of Jaffe's order. ". . .This case is about raw power. The main issue is who was going to control the Auditorium Theatre. . . .There was no express trust, there was no implied trust, there was no constructive trust as alleged in Count II, there was no trust of any kind. . . .As to their sole power to restore, operate, use and maintain the Theatre, the Court finds that these powers do solely reside in the University. . . .The ATC was an agent of Roosevelt. . . . The ATC Inc. was created only for fund raising. . . . Fred Eychaner was the dominant individual who pulled all the strings for the ATC Inc. . . . By his action, which this Court deems willful and wanton, he threw the organization into litigation. . . His actions were deliberate and premeditated and done with malice. . . . The Court will find for the Defendants, Roosevelt and Gross, and against The Plaintiffs and Counter-Plaintiff in each and every count of the Complaints and ATC, Inc.'s Counterclaim."Jaffe ordered that the finances and records and management be turned over to Roosevelt University immediately. He demanded an accounting by December that would separate earnings from contributions so that he could then impose punitive damages on Fred Eychaner. But the ATC would not accept the judge's decision. Jaffe signed his order at 3:30 pm, Monday, September 28, 1998. The council members withdrew to the Winston Strawn law offices to determine their next course of action. Jan Kallish, the executive director, then went to the theater offices, shut them down, and told the personnel to go home and stay there until further notice. At 6:45 am the next morning she called her staff and ordered them to stay home-- stalling, as it soon became clear, so that the ATC attorneys could formulate a brief that would stay Jaffe's order. Our lawyers cited Kallish for contempt of court that very morning, testimony was heard, and Jaffe did indeed hold her in contempt of his court, threatening to impose punishment that would range from community service to a prison term. Meanwhile the appellate court honored the stay, referred the case to still another judge for a pre-hearing of lawyers. That led in turn to another review by another appellate court, composed of three new judges who waited a year before deciding in favor of ATC 2 to 1. Now the year was 2001. We were in the Chicago appellate court's version of Dickens' Bleak House, a legal squabble that went on and on and on legal fog was everywhere. Still the university persisted and appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, which held a hearing in March 2002 and rendered its verdict in October: "We now reverse the judgment of the appellate court, affirm the order of the trial court, and remand the case to the trial court for further proceedings" or, the imposition of damages. . . . . Finally, finally, the Auditorium Theatre was turned over to Roosevelt, and a new council --the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University [ATRU]-- was put in place. The damages Jaffe threatened to impose were absolved and a private settlement was made in which Eychaner agreed to make restitution for $750,000 damages -- far less than Jaffe probably would have imposed. And we invited some of the less militant members of ATC to join ATRU for the transitional period it would take for the new council to organize itself. We followed Churchill's admonition: be magnanimous in victory. The case was filled with so many ironies. While we had waited for the Supreme Court to act, Eychaner and the ATC were successful in attracting $13 million from the state to refurbish the theater. The university could never have secured this funding it simply did not have the clout politically but Eychaner's influence on democratic leaders, especially the Senate Majority Leader, Mike Madigan, was powerful and deep; and though I could never prove it, his moneyed fingerprints were all over that allocation, as they had been all over so many aspects of the litigation and the views of leaders in the arts and various politicians who simply owed him. Still, he did secure $13 million from the state, and the Auditorium Theatre now has expanded its orchestra pit and created new lighting and raised its stage, with optimal sight lines, and modernized its dressing rooms and other amenities. (I could never measure the precise nature of Eychaner's influence, but I had heard enough rumors to make me paranoid. He seems omniscient and through his philanthropy omnipotent. He took the time to speak to trustees and leaders in the arts and politicians and theater journalists; his public relations attack, personally funded, must have had some impact on various judges, and even at the very end, just before the time the supreme court ruled, he must have smelled defeat, for he went to the most powerful banker in Chicago, a man whose friends were trustees, and said he was prepared to buy the Auditorium Theatre. I never knew how much he offered, but he was told that the theater was not for sale. His money and all of its influence finally ran up against an unwavering board of trustees and a supreme court of judges who did not know him and did not owe him anything.) For Roosevelt University, the dispute with the Auditorium Theatre resulted in huge legal fees, amounting finally to $3.3 million from our own budgets and $1.8 million from the Theatre, which of course was our money as well. In addition, Eychaner had his own legal fees and whatever he was spending on public relations. It was conviction that bordered on zealotry and, I often thought, a kind of madness. These accumulating expenses as well as adverse publicity for the university were the primary reasons for our seeking compromise and avoiding litigation. Enough, we often told ourselves: we have a university to run, this is distracting and out of proportion to the university's purposes, wasteful and destructive to our image and troubling to trustees who do not want controversy. Enough, we often thought, but then we reconsidered-- the case is too important, the theater is 40 percent of our physical space, this is a decision that will affect the university for years to come. Enough, I thought, this is all ego and will and personalized pettiness. Eychaner and the ATC, which seemed to follow him blindly so long as he was willing to pay part of the bills, were truly irrational not to have settled, for they would have controlled the theater and simply shared profits with the University. They would have had almost all they wished; but if there is any truth to the cliche that pride goeth before a fall, it was embodied in their egoistical, uncompromising behavior. They wanted all or nothing, and they got-- nothing. For me, at the time, the future governance of the Auditorium Theatre was critical. We had to learn from the fundamental mistake made forty years before when the administration of the theater was left in the hands of volunteers rather than an executive director who reported to the administration of the university; we had to learn or we did not deserve to have won the case. We appointed a new director who reports directly to the president, and ATRU is a volunteer group of distinguished citizens, chaired by a trustee, with a majority of its members trustees and therefore directly accountable to the chairman and the full board. The university is now protected from any possibility of separatism, and the Auditorium Theatre functions, as it should, for all the citizens of Chicago side by side to a first-rate conservatory, open at times to faculty and student performances, available for fundraising and recruiting, a central part of what should ultimately become a great Center for the Performing Arts. Of course, given its inherent dimensions, it will always be primarily a venue for the great musicals and spectacles of popular culture. And so that should be, too. Louis Sullivan, Dankmar Adler, and the young draftsman, Frank Lloyd Wright, created a great theater in 1889. But after the Chicago Symphony Orchestra left in 1906 and the Chicago Opera of Chicago in 1929, it lost its focus and declined, then closed in 1941, reopened in 1967 with great expectations, and floundered for the next twenty years as it searched for definition. In 1988, a renaissance began that brought the modern musical and spectacle to the stage of the Auditorium Theatre and revealed the appropriate kind of production for this theater. Now that our petty dispute over ownership is past, it has at least resulted in administrative clarity. The public, of course, will not care who runs the theater so long as the shows go on. The Auditorium Theatre is the perfect venue for the modern musical-- the finest in Chicago and one of the city's greatest assets. A special feature of the performing arts in twentieth century America was the musical spectacle that formed our native version of light opera. The revival of popular shows like Guys and Dolls, Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, and Carousel is economically driven, to be sure --proven successes do carry less risk and they return to the stage because they are continuously popular and part of our folklore. All of us connected with the Auditorium were fortunate that three of the most popular musicals in the history of show business Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon-- appeared on our stage at the moment the theater needed to be revitalized. Each had a long run and has been revived, followed by a nine-month run of Show Boat, which is yet another example of a revival. Now the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University searches for its next long-run hit. Who knows what the future will bring? Metropolitan Chicago is becoming a city of large theaters: the new Rosemont, the old Arie Crown and Shubert, the refurbished Oriental, Chicago, and Bismarck-- not to speak of smaller theaters throughout the region. Most of these theaters feature commercial products, but those that mount plays of a more serious nature and on occasion works that are genuinely original --the Shakespeare Repertory, Steppenwolf, Goodman, Lookingglass, and some of the off-Loop theaters-- have developed spectacular spaces, and one can only hope that they will continue to thrive. So long as large commercial shows come to Chicago, the Auditorium Theatre should remain the venue of first choice. It has the finest acoustics of any sizeable theater and is by far the most beautiful, an historical jewel that never seems to tarnish. It is in the heart of the city and at the center of a south loop which reaches to the Museum Campus and has become a vital new cultural and residential community-- a student quarter, a cultural crescent. There is never a period free of anxiety in show business, and those of us responsible for theatrical and musical performances will always worry about how to fill the house, as university administrations worry about enrollments; but the renaissance of the Auditorium Theatre does seem as though it has truly been realized-- Roosevelt University is the Auditorium Theatre's security, its modern Medici. Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler would be pleased. And even cantankerous Frank Lloyd Wright --who stood on the stage shortly before his death in 1959 and told the audience to "be kind to this theater and it will be kind to you"-- even Wright might be satisfied. Years from now, like most litigation, the conflict between Roosevelt University and the Auditorium Theatre Council will be a blurry footnote-- and the public will not have cared so long as the Auditorium is filled with music and drama and dance. Years from now, we who were the intense, sometimes self-righteous principals who knew the TRUTH and pleaded with the public and the courts to justify us, will set about like Lear "and tell old tales, and laugh/At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues/Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them, too/Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;/And take upon's the mystery of things." . . .The mystery, in this case, is the music, the drama, the dance. So long as there is music, drama, or dance upon the stage of the Auditorium Theatre, the public will not care who won or lost, who wins or loses. The public will applaud. The Auditorium Theatre will have won. |