Norby Walters obit

Norby Walters, Host of Oscar Parties and an Iconic Hollywood Poker Game, Dies at 91

He started out as a New York club owner and music agent, with his clients including Dizzy Gillespie, Patti LaBelle, Tito Puente, Grandmaster Flash and LL Cool J. 

He was not on the list.

Norby Walters, a music agent who worked with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, Kool & the Gang and Public Enemy before gaining renown in Hollywood for his annual “Night of 100 Stars” Oscar party and weekly poker game, has died. He was 91.

Walters died Dec. 10 of natural causes at an assisted living facility in Burbank, his son, producer Gary Michael Walters (Whiplash), told The Hollywood Reporter.

Walters hosted his first Oscar night gala in 1992 and the last in 2019, most often inside the Beverly Hilton’s Crystal Ballroom. Among those who attended were Shirley Jones, Robert Forster, Charles Bronson, Patricia Neal, Richard Dreyfuss, Eva Marie Saint, Martin Landau, Louis Gossett Jr., J.K. Simmons, Cliff Robertson, Red Buttons, Jon Voight and Allison Janney.

Walters for years also presided over a weekly poker game at his West Hollywood high-rise condo. The low-stakes $2 game was, his son said, “designed to be a place where actors could kibbutz, tell jokes and war stories and just hang with their longtime friends in a very haimish environment where they could relax among their own.”

Those at the table included Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Shecky Greene, Harvey Korman, Ed Asner, Hal Linden, Adam Sandler, Robert Downey Jr., Angie Dickinson, Alec Baldwin, Sharon Stone, Richard Lewis, Larry David, Jerry Vale, Frankie Valli, James Woods and Jason Alexander.

Said his son: “Whether it was Charles Durning telling his harrowing story of being a soldier at Normandy on D-Day, then spending three months in a foxhole at the Battle of the Bulge; Rod Steiger recounting the taxi scene in On the Waterfront that led to his legendary feud with Marlon Brando; or Jan Murray sharing stories of opening for Frank Sinatra, they were epic nights filled with Broadway and Hollywood lore and laughter.”

Born in 1932 in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Walters performed as a child in a Coney Island carnival sideshow that his father, Joseph, a diamond courier and bar owner, operated. He then served as a medic during the Korean War.

In 1952, Walters began booking jazz luminaries including Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz into his dad’s bar, which he renamed the Brooklyn Bop Shop. He gave Miles Davis his first solo booking and went on to own a string of pizzerias, restaurants and nightclubs in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, including the Latin Jazz club Flamboyant, where Tito Puente sang.

At his Norby Walters supper club on East 60th Street, next door to the legendary Copacabana nightclub, he hosted the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Rocky Marciano and Rocky Graziano. Stars playing the Copa would use a peephole in the dressing room to watch comedy legends such as Mort Sahl and Stiller & Meara perform, and to avoid fans and reporters, they often would enter the Copa via his club’s kitchen, which was used in a shot that opens Goodfellas (1990).

In 1968, Walters left the club business and launched the music agency Norby Walters Associates (later General Talent International), booking acts into nightclubs, lounges and hotels across the country. He handled Joe Pesci and Chazz Palminteri when they were starting out as lounge singers.

In 1974, his acts Carol Douglas and Gloria Gaynor had hits with “Doctor’s Orders” and “Never Can Say Goodbye” respectively. (The latter disco sensation reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100.)

Walters built a huge roster of disco, funk, R&B, soul and rap artists over the next decade, with his clients including Gaye, Kool & the Gang, Patti LaBelle, Rick James, Parliament-Funkadelic, The Gap Band, the Four Tops and, briefly, Michael Jackson.

Walters also repped hip-hop pioneers like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the Sugarhill Gang, Kurtis Blow, Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane, NWA, Kool Moe Dee, LL Cool J and Fresh Prince (Will Smith) and helped launch the career of Russell Simmons, who founded Def Jam Records for his brother Joseph’s group, Run-DMC.

In 1988, Walters and partner Lloyd Bloom were charged with racketeering and mail fraud after signing football and basketball players to contracts before their college eligibility expired. Their eventual convictions were overturned on appeal.

Walters would retire to Los Angeles, where his son said he concentrated on what he called the “Three P’s”: poker, parties and Palm Springs, where he designed and built a home on the Tamarisk Country Club golf course.

Walters was buried with military honors Dec. 15 at Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary in Culver City.

In addition to Gary, survivors include his other sons, Steven and Richard, a music supervisor. His childhood sweetheart and wife of 70 years, Irene, known as Tootsie, died in July at 89.

On Instagram last week, comedian Jeffrey Ross wrote that his “old poker pal Norby Walters finally folded. … Buddy Hackett took me over there for the first time. Lots of great stories and free Chinese food. Norby was in the music biz and is mentioned in a lot of early rap songs. His Oscar parties were epic. Norby kept all the stars humble by repeating his mantra, ‘Never too big!’”