Shirley Herz, 87, prominent theatrical press agent
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Shirley operated from New York but never forgot her roots.
AS A YOUNGSTER, Shirley Herz was thinking about a career in medicine when one day she fell in love with the theater.
Growing up in Philadelphia, Shirley, who became a high-powered New York press agent, forgot about becoming a doctor when she saw, appropriately enough, the stage play "The Philadelphia Story," starring Katharine Hepburn.
She was captivated by Hepburn's magic. "She came out and made a curtain speech," Shirley said in a 2000 interview. "And it was such magic that I was transfixed and I thought, 'I have to be part of her world. I have to be in that world.' "
In her teen years, Shirley, who died Sunday of complications of a stroke at age 87, would hang out at stage doors of the local theaters and try to get the stars' autographs.
She attended the University of Pennsylvania for two years, but dropped out and decided New York City was the place to go to further her show-business visions.
She got a job selling watches at the Georg Jensen store in New York and, once again, fate intervened, this time in the person of an actress named Barbara O'Neil.
O'Neil was one of the personalities whom Shirley had asked for an autograph in Philadelphia. Coincidentally, O'Neil encountered Shirley in the jewelry store and remembered her.
"She saw me and said, 'What are you doing here?' " Shirley recalled in the 2000 interview. "I told her I was looking for a job in the theater."
Shirley returned home to Germantown and thought no more about it. However, the next day she got a call from O'Neil telling her to contact a person in the New York theater world who would help her get a job.
The rest is theatrical history. Shirley became a sought-after press agent, good at planting little write-ups about the shows she represented in newspapers. When TV and the Internet emerged with new ways of dispensing information, she adapted.
One of her earliest jobs was as a personal press representative to actress Rosalind Russell when she appeared on Broadway in "Wonderful Town" in 1953.
She worked for Samuel J. Friedman, a legendary New York press agent, and the lobby of the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on West 47th Street is named after her. She founded Shirley Herz Associates in 1971.
Shirley was so good at her work that in 2009 she was honored with a special Tony Award.
She publicized shows for nearly 65 years, including Broadway productions like "La Cage aux Folles," "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?" "Dancing at Lughnasa," the 1989 revival of "Gypsy," and the 2005 revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
She would go to great lengths to do her job, like taking actress June Havoc into the dark streets of New York in the early '60s and gluing posters of Havoc's show, "Marathon '33," on utility poles, phone booths, bus stops and storefronts.
It was out-and-out vandalism, but it worked.
Gossip columnist Liz Smith, with whom Shirley roomed for a time in New York, said she called her "Sam Spade, master detective, because she always knew where the bodies were buried."
Shirley did not forget her Philadelphia roots. Even during her busiest years, she found time to return to Germantown to visit her mother, Sybil A. Herz, who died in 1999. Her father was the late Isadore Herz.
She is survived by her husband of 65 years, Herbert Boley.