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发表于 2007-7-14 16:56:12
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《多伦多的伟大英雄》
欧内斯特．艾迪．米洛施
企业家、剧院经理人
第一次把折价自助零售概念 引进北美，
一个穷孩子深知穷人除了钱什么都不缺。
多次赞助扶植戏剧戏院，
一个商人深深地卷入了不够商业的文化事业。
一个十五岁失学的少年，
最终获得二十几个荣誉学位。
这是一种伟大的饥渴，
终生渴求，
终生获得。
面对欧内斯特．艾迪．米洛施，谁还好意思强调困难？
（我在想，深度折扣的零售方式并不符合犹太人的理念。现在明白了，加上自助两个字就成了完美的、面向穷人的商业模式。）
《欧内斯特幽默语录》
"Don't faint at our low prices -- there's no place to lie down."
“看了我们的低价别晕过去，这没地方给你躺。”
"If you think you're so terrific, let someone else boast about it,"
“要是觉得自己了不起，留着让别人吹，”
"what the city can give if you treat it well."
“你对得起这个城市，这个城市就对得起你”
＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
Entrepreneur and theatre impresario Mirvish dead at 92
Charles Enman, Ottawa Citizen
Published: Wednesday, July 11, 2007
TORONTO -- His gusto, his optimism, his creativity may all have contributed to the remarkably long and eventful life of Ed Mirvish.
But for Toronto's discount king, the secret was simple: "Keep breathing," he used to say. The remark was vintage Mirvish, the man who brought deep discounting to North America.
He was practical and grounded, but most of all, he was completely free of pretension, a claim that no one who ever walked past his gigantic, multi-floor store on the corner of Bloor and Bathurst streets could contest. The store famously was called "Honest Ed's." Corny? Of course, because, as Mirvish well knew, corny sells.
Honest Ed Mirvish outside his famous store at Bloor and
The very walls and floors were a monument to corn. With its huge electric sign -- the world's largest -- the store had, in eye-pulling power, no rival in Toronto's sprawling business district.
Windows displayed decades of newspaper clippings, testament to Mirvish's penchant for getting free publicity. Corny slogans were posted everywhere. "Don't faint at our low prices -- there's no place to lie down."
As a sales king, he was remarkable, but there was far more to Ed Mirvish than that. He sprouted the growth of two of Toronto's neighbourhoods: Mirvish Village, immediately south of the store, and Mirvish Walkway, a strip of King Street on which he ran two of Canada's most important theatres, the Royal Alex and the Princess Diana Theatre, sites of some of the most remarkable, and lucrative, theatrical runs in Toronto's history.
Ed Mirvish, child of poverty, in a true rags-to-riches story, had finished his career as one of Canada's leading patrons of the arts.
He even played de Midici in England, where he spent several years applying CPR to London's venerable Old Vic Theatre.
Over time, adjacent to his Toronto theatres, he established six restaurants, offering OK food and an atmosphere and decor that were, uh, unique: think opulent boudoir. He finally sold the restaurant properties when their value as real estate -- largely as a result of the boost Mirvish himself had given the area -- exceeded the revenues they could bring in.
Sadly, Mirvish is no more.
He died Wednesday in Toronto at the age of 92 -- just days away from his 93rd birthday on July 24.
Mirvish made quite an impression during his time, though he wouldn't want to bore you with the details.
"If you think you're so terrific, let someone else boast about it," he once said. "No one wants to hear it from you."
In his absence, a few of those details: In 1984, in honour of his restoration of the "Old Vic," the City of London named him a Freeman of the City.
In 1996, on his 82nd birthday, the City of Toronto implanted a star in his honour in the city's new "Walk of Fame." He was the first person so recognized.
On his 87th birthday, Ontario conferred on him its Medal of Distinction. The next year, Toronto declared his birthday "Ed Mirvish Day."
He was a member of the Order of Canada.
Queen Elizabeth made him a CBE -- Commander of the Order of the British Empire, though Mirvish used to say it meant "Creator of Bargains Everywhere".
He received, in addition, some 200 awards and honorary degrees.
"Not bad for a former 15-year-old dropout," Mirvish once said. "It makes me wonder if I shouldn't have left school sooner."
Toronto Mayor David Miller said: "Ed's passion for his city was second to none. For decades, Ed devoted his life to helping Torontonians and to making Toronto the great city it is."
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty paid tribute to Mirvish as "a dynamic entrepreneur, generous philanthropist and devoted family man." He used his success, the premier said, to help others, and "set an example for corporate giving that was ahead of its time."
Comedian Dave Broadfoot described Mirvish's death as "a tremendous loss -- as a businessman, as a man of the theatre, as a human being. Ed was one of those people who are just absolute gold, with their imagination and vision and generosity."
His first flirtation with fame came early. Born to Jewish parents on July 24, 1914, in Colonial Beach, Virginia, he was circumcised by one Rabbi Yoelson, who turned out to be the father of Al Jolson, who became one of the greatest popular singers of the 20th century.
Mirvish always described this decidedly indirect brush with greatness as "my chief claim to fame."
His father, David, was a not-very-successful merchant first in Washington D.C., and later in Toronto, where the family moved when Ed was nine.
He was far more interested in reading newspapers than in running a good business, and the family was always on the verge of poverty. A heavy smoker, he died when Ed was 15.
The young Ed Mirvish had to take over the store, and he immediately displayed touches of the flair that marked his later ventures in merchandising. His father had never put any product on his top shelves, but Ed put up empty boxes to give the impression of strong inventory.
Still, young Mirvish limped along in numerous enterprises; then, at 25, he married Anne Maklin, a beautiful girl from Hamilton.
Five months later, they opened a woman's clothing store called the Sport Bar, at the corner of Bathurst and Bloor. Financially, it was touch and go.
Paying their first month's rent left them only $322 to buy merchandise. It didn't stop Mirvish. The rent worked out to only $2 a day. He could buy a dress wholesale in Toronto's garment district for $6.95. If he retailed it for $12.95, he gained a full $6 profit -- putting him $4 ahead even if his sales never passed one dress a day.
But after a few years, Mirvish decided to sell small goods. His first stock of merchandise came from a burned out Woolworth's in Hamilton. Later, he began buying up stock from bankrupt stores, distressed merchandise, and end-of-line stock. Of course, he needed a larger space and began buying out the tenants on each side of the Sport Bar.
This was the beginning of what became Honest Ed's. He was never quite sure how he stumbled on the name.
"Few names could be more inane," he wrote in one of his volumes of autobiography. "But I figured, if you knocked yourself, you'd get attention. And it did. It hooked 'em."
Needing a face to go with the name, he settled on Dick MacDougal, known in the neighbourhood as Dirty Dick, a skinny, filthy, toothless drunk with cauliflower ears and a corkscrew nose. Perfect. Mirvish had a photograph taken, blew it up to huge dimensions, and posted it over the door with the caption: "Honest Ed welcomes you!"
Honest Ed's became North America's first discount house, though Mirvish was a tad leery of the honour.
When you say discount,' then you're saying that somewhere there's a fixed price. But in a free society, nobody fixes prices. So how can there be a price to discount from?"
Items were priced so low the store soon became a Mecca for bargain hunters. Mirvish also used to advertise in the Toronto newspapers, but he was getting lots of ink for his own antics. On Christmas Eve 1957, he stood outside a shelter for homeless men and gave out dollar bills, 325 of them, good for stories in the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail.
Seven months later, he held a Noah's Ark Sale in which he displayed dozens of animals in the store's basement.
People came to see his little zoo and stayed on to do a little shopping.
At the end of the three-day sale, he auctioned off the animals. One, an energetic sea lion named Daffy, escaped, only to be run over by a train some 100 kilometres out of Toronto.
In a marathon event of the early 1960s, he had people doing the twist for 48 straight hours. A 70-year-old woman named Dolly was among the finishers, and her picture made front pages across the country.
In its way, it was all show business, of course. But people were shocked when Mirvish made a formal entry into the entertainment arena, buying Toronto's ailing Royal Alexandria Theatre in February 1963.
When the deal was this good, why not? The theatre, built for $750,000 in 1907, sold for only $200,000.
After seven months of renovations, it was restored to a splendour not seen since the turn of the 20th century. No Toronto theatre attracted bigger stars than the Royal Alex did under the Mirvish tenure: Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Lauren Bacall, Kathryn Hepburn, Cab Calloway, Peter Ustinov.
Mirvish loved to tell anecdotes about his stars -- their charm, their humanity, and sometimes their arrogance.
Rex Harrison, for example, once insisted a champagne-filled refrigerator be set up in his dressing room. In his limousine, on the way to the airport after the run, he realized he hadn't tipped his driver. "There's a brand-new refrigerator in my dressing room worth a few hundred quid," he told him. "It's yours."
The driver was lugging the fridge out of the theatre when management stopped him.
The Royal Alex became especially known for its presentations of mega-musicals, including Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and Hair, wonderfully lucrative offerings that typically were 85 per cent sold out six weeks before opening night.
Actors found Mirvish a remarkably companionable boss.
"He was just a joy to work for," said Broadfoot, who frequently performed at the Royal Alexandria in the stage review Spring Thaw. "He was so human with everyone. When you were talking to him, he was looking right into your eyes and listening intently like you were saying the most important thing he'd ever heard."
In 1982, Mirvish rescued London's Old Vic theatre, then 174 years old and listing under a huge deficit. He paid roughly $1 million and put in $4 million in renovations to restore the theatre to the opulence it had in 1881.
The theatre was opened by the late Queen Mother. Only days earlier, he had been dining with Prince Charles.
Always mischievous, he couldn't resist leaning over and telling the prince: "Your granny's going to open our theatre this week."
Anne Mirvish kicked her vastly amused husband under the table. In their 16 years of proprietorship, the Mirvishes brought top talent to the Old Vic, including stellar artistic directors such as Sir Peter Hall and Peter O'Toole.
When he was nearing 80, Mirvish decided to build a huge new theatre near the Royal Alexander to house the Cameron Mackintosh production of Miss Saigon, which required a far larger stage than the Royal Alex could offer.
The Princess of Wales Theatre, opened in May 1993, cost $50 million to build. Miss Saigon, the most expensive production in Canadian history, required another $12 million to stage. The numbers made no sense until one considered the advance sales, which, at $30 million, were the largest in Canadian history.
The theatre has since hosted other box-office triumphs, including Beauty and the Beast, Chicago, and The Lion King.
Mirvish wrote two books about his life: How to Build an Empire on an Orange Crate (1993) and There's No Business Like Show Business (1997).
He used to make jokes about growing old. "At my age, I don't even buy green bananas," he would say.
But he and his wife aged extraordinarily well. He didn't believe much in formal exercise, but he kept his weight down and was a prize-winning graduate of the Arthur Murray School of Dance.
As the years passed, though he continued appearing nearly every day at the store, and eventually Mirvish turned more and more responsibility for his theatrical empire to his son, David, who became head of Mirvish Productions.
Each year, more than 60,000 people would turn out for the free food and entertainment at his annual birthday bash, which he started throwing in his mid 70s.
Mirvish's health had declined since a bout with double pneumonia three years ago, yet he made it to last year's birthday party. He arrived in a wheelchair where he was greeted by Toronto Police and introduced to his namesake, a police horse they named Honest Ed on his 90th birthday.
On the same occasion, David Mirvish said his father's legacy to Toronto was showing its people "what the city can give if you treat it well."
Singer and actor Michael Burgess had extraordinary success in the Mirvish staging of Les Miserables.
"He hadn't been well lately, but you just thought Ed would go on and on and on. And it's sad. But he loved many things and many people, he was incredibly generous -- really, one of the most generous people I have ever known -- and he had that special gift of recognizing the gifts that other people, particularly actors, could offer.
"So it's a sad loss, but everyone in Toronto will have wonderful memories of Ed."
Mirvish is survived by his wife, Anne, and his son, David.
- - - - -
A funeral service for Edwin Mirvish will take place at Beth Tzedec Synagogue located at 1700 Bathurst Street, south of Eglinton Avenue, on Friday, July 13 at 11 a.m.
A strictly private family Shiva will follow.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Ed Mirvish Educational Memorial Fund c/o The Benjamin Foundation located at 3429 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON, M6A 2C3, phone: 416-780-0324. The purpose of the fund is to support up and coming entrepreneurs. |
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发表于 2007-7-14 07:57:45
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