Roger Horchow, whose eclectic talents and tastes fueled his desire to launch a luxury mail-order catalog he later sold to Neiman Marcus, and who produced a string of Broadway musicals that won him two Tony awards, died Saturday of cancer. He was 91.
Friends praised Horchow for being a gentleman, for displaying a rare blend of order, control and kindness, and for a calm and measured persona that made him both an astute businessman and a board member of hospitals, theaters and museums.
“I never thought I would create a catalog. It was just an idea I had, and I went with it,” Horchow said in a 2017 interview with The Dallas Morning News. “I never thought I’d be a producer. But once I did, I went for broke. I didn’t skimp. I didn’t want to look back and say it would have worked if only I had done this or that. My belief is that in life you stumble into things, but once you do, you do everything you can to make it work.”
Those mourning Horchow on Saturday included former President George W. Bush, who once painted a portrait of Horchow.
“Dallas lost a wonderful man today with the passing of Roger Horchow,” the former president said in a statement. “Roger was a person of culture, humor, and generosity. He was important to Laura and me — and to so many fortunate friends. We send our heartfelt condolences to Roger’s daughters and grandchildren.”
Horchow was a Yale University graduate, who kept a gleaming black Steinway in his elegant Dallas home. He marveled at its pedigree and past, which included a childhood memory of the great George Gershwin gracing its keys. Horchow, who played by ear, often impressed friends and family by playing Gershwin’s “I’ve Got Rhythm,” which resonated throughout the house.
“I love plays and musicals,” he once said, and indeed, he was able to parlay his lifelong fascination into producing Crazy for You, which won him his first Tony Award in 1992.
Horchow said later about Crazy for You that it was a show he nurtured because “I wanted to see a Gershwin play on Broadway.”
His last producing effort was Bandstand, which made its Broadway debut in 2017, when Horchow was 88. (Its roadshow engagement was scheduled to open at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in late May, but has since been canceled because of the spread of COVID-19.)
Before Bandstand won its Tony Award for choreography in 2017, Horchow won the Tony for Crazy for You in 1992 and for Kiss Me, Kate in 2000. Three other musicals he produced — Curtains in 2007, Gypsy in 2008 and Annie in 2013 — were Tony nominees.
“He was the best,” said Regen Horchow Fearon, the oldest of Horchow’s three daughters, whose sisters are Lizzie Routman and the youngest, Sally Horchow. “He was our biggest cheerleader.”
He was, Fearon said, “a collector of people, but first and foremost as a father, he was all about relationships. He was proud of us. He pushed us.”
Fearon and Routman said they cherished their father’s favorite expressions, “It all works out for the best” and “on the other hand.” And they reveled in having a Depression-era dad who “drove a beat-up old Chevrolet Caprice Classic for years.” And yet, in Fearon’s words, he did "love to live it up.”
His girls will also remember him, they said, for his boundless generosity, shown to family members and those in need. Fearon quoted her dad’s parting letter, in which he wrote: “My life deserves to be celebrated and not mourned, please. Be ever mindful of those less fortunate than yourselves and help them in any way you’re able. Treasure your family and friends, as I have.”
The people Horchow treasured included military veterans, of whom he was one. He served in the Korean War and was the son of a dad who served in both World War I and II. Horchow once said that that he was drawn to the musical Bandstand for how it championed the veterans’ experience.
Horchow remembered being drawn to music as early as 6, when as a boy growing up in his native Cincinnati, he heard what he called “the most wonderful, otherworldly music.” He later said he had no idea who could make such a glorious sound. He only knew he wanted to hear more. So, he walked downstairs, to see a man with long, fluid fingers sitting at the keyboard, making the most beautiful music he’d ever heard. The man’s name was George Gershwin, who had come to the home at the invitation of Horchow’s mother.
Terry D. Loftis, the president and executive director of The Arts Community Alliance, known as TACA, shared a partnership with Horchow in co-producing the Tony Award-winning Bandstand.
Loftis is 52, but Horchow, who lived to 91, impressed his younger friend and colleague with an uncanny knack of how to make a Broadway musical a reality.
“Roger was one of the principal lead producers on Bandstand, and I was one of its co-producers,” Loftis said Saturday. “On a social level, Roger could be extremely dynamic and engaging. If you didn’t know him or saw him from a distance, you might think he was quite shy. And that was part of his personality.
“He had a dry sense of humor — but a great sense of humor. And professionally, he was incredible. What he achieved in retail with the Horchow Collection and Neiman Marcus is truly an amazing story. His knowledge of the business of Broadway, in particular being a lead producer from Texas, is another amazing story. And let’s be honest, people don’t typically think of Texas when it comes to producing Broadway shows.”
He was, Loftis said, “like a mentor to me.”
Despite the fact that Bandstand won one Tony, got rave reviews and earned a standing ovation every night, he was disappointed in the end, Fearon said, that the show lost money. And even more so that its investors included some of his closest friends.
Born into a family of retailers in 1928, Horchow grew up surrounded by shopkeepers and entrepreneurs. His grandfather, born in the shadow of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, immigrated to America, where he owned a general store in Crooksville, Ohio. Some of the largest stores in the area were owned by Horchow relatives, and Horchow later said he developed an early fascination with catalogs by immersing himself in the one that arrived in the mail each year from the Sears-Roebuck Co.
He even met his wife, the late Carolyn Pfeifer, in the fashion department at Bloomingdale’s in New York.
Horchow became the first retailer to sell high-end goods by mail-order catalog, without first having the benefit of a bricks-and-mortar store as its financial foundation. In later years, he became the example of the collector used by renowned author Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.
Photographer Allison V. Smith got to know Horchow as the daughter of Fred and Jerrie Smith, whose father — Allison Smith’s grandfather — was the late Stanley Marcus.
Smith said on Saturday that she’d known Horchow since birth. Her parents were friends with Horchow and his wife, Carolyn, and she is the “lifelong best friend" of Horchow’s youngest daughter, Sally.
Smith described Horchow as being “genuine and unique and creative and an incredible piano player. A friend, one of the best friends to my parents. A very unique person in my life.” She said she’d always remember Horchow for sitting down at the piano, “after every dinner party and playing Broadway show tunes. That was one of my favorite things growing up and throughout my life, listening to him play the piano.”
In addition to everything else, she said, he was a published author, having written Elephants in Your Mailbox and co-authoring The Art of Friendship: 70 Simple Rules for Making Meaningful Connections, with his youngest daughter, Sally Horchow.
Rick Brettell said he and his wife Carol met the Horchows even before they came to Dallas in 1988, when Brettell became director of the Dallas Museum of Art, which Horchow served as a board member. But Brettell and Horchow remained close friends even after Brettell left the DMA in 1993.
Brettell said he most admired Horchow for his candor and his integrity.
“A lot of people don’t know how charity board meetings really work, meaning you’re not supposed to say what you think," Brettell said. "But Roger was famous for saying what he thought everybody else was thinking. He instantly became unpopular with the staff at the museum, when in fact he was the one who was telling them the truth. He had this wonderful way of being honest, which is not an altogether common thing.”
He was, Brettell said, the consummate “people person,” whose philanthropy extended to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Yale University Art Gallery.
“His philanthropy was not just in Dallas or Texas. It was national,” Brettell said, noting that Horchow was “close friends with professors, musicians, actors, writers … The book he wrote that he was the proudest of was the book on friendship. And that was what it was all about with Roger. It was about trusting people. And doing things together. When Roger did something with you, it was out of friendship, and for life.”
In addition to his daughters, Horchow is survived by five granddaughters; Lizzie Routman’s husband, Dan Routman; and Horchow’s brother-in-law, Eugene Pfeifer III and his wife, Linda. No service is planned.
As daughter Sally Horchow said, “Dad would have wanted to be at his own memorial, but since he can’t be, we’re honoring his wishes.”
Members of the public who wish to honor him, the family said, are encouraged to send donations to Visiting Nurse Association, UT Southwestern and KERA.
