Irving Ned "Jay" Landesman (July 15, 1919 – February 20, 2011)[1] was an American publisher, nightclub owner, writer, and long-time expatriate resident in London, England.
He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of the four children[2] of Benjamin Landesman, an immigrant Jewish artist from Berlin, and his wife Beatrice,[3] who dealt in antiques.
Back in St Louis, Landesman with his brother[8] opened the Crystal Palace nightclub in 1952;[5] the venue was previously used as a gay bar called Dante's Inferno.
[1] Despite its overall failure in a more prominent location, several of the songs written for the work by his second wife Fran Landesman and the composer Tommy Wolf – "Ballad of the Sad Young Men" and "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" – have endured.
[14] For Dearest Dracula, a musical staged at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1965, he persuaded actor Vincent Price and choreographer Busby Berkeley to participate.
[8] Later enthusiasms included macrobiotic food and a talent agency Creative Arts Liberated which had the slogan: "We take the sting out of success and put the fun back in failure!