Mortimer V. Halpern (May 12, 1909 – January 3, 2006) was an actor and long-time production stage manager who worked on over 45 Broadway plays in a theatre career that spanned some 60 years.
Halpern's mother was born in Austria and would later work as a sewing machine operator at a dress factory after the death of her husband.
[1][2] He first appeared on Broadway as Murray Codner in Kith and Kin, a three-act play by Wallace A. Manheimer that disappeared after its May 13, 1930, debut at the Waldorf Theatre.
Halpern's return to Broadway came fourteen years later as a performer (chorus) and assistant stage manager with Walter Kerr's 1944–1945 musical revue Sing Out, Sweet Land, which was staged at the International Theatre on West 59th Street with Alfred Drake and Burl Ives.
[4][5] As production stage manager Halpern worked on a number of Broadway hits, including Leonard Bernstein's Peter Pan with Jean Arthur and Boris Karloff, Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952 and New Faces of 1956, The Disenchanted with Jason Robards, Sr., Jason Robards, Jr. and George Grizzard, The Andersonville Trial with George C. Scott, Rhinoceros with Zero Mostel, I Had a Ball with Buddy Hackett and Richard Kiley, Purlie with Cleavon Little and Sherman Hemsley, In Praise of Love with Julie Harris and Rex Harrison and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom with Charles S. Dutton and Theresa Merritt.