Veteran producer Seybold dies

Friday, May 10, 2002 | 11:14 a.m.

For the longest time, Las Vegas show producer/director Harry Seybold refused to get business cards.

He didn't need them because he knew practically everyone in show business. When he finally purchased cards, the single-sentence message he had printed on them said it all: "Harry Seybold: That's my name, showbiz is my game."

Seybold, who as a teenager managed the career of then-veteran crooner Rudy Vallee and later became revered in Las Vegas for his productions of charity shows for everyone from battered women to prison inmates, died Tuesday night at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. His age was not immediately available.

Seybold had been ailing for several years and died of heart and kidney failure, friends said.

Services are pending for the Las Vegas resident of 33 years.

Show business friends today remembered Seybold as a man of two distinct personalities: the benevolent soul who would give a person in need the shirt off his back and the fiery tyrant who demanded perfection from performers.

"He definitely was a taskmaster," said longtime Las Vegas producer and friend Bill Moore. "But while he could yell at you one minute, the next minute he would be kissing you on the cheek and saying what a wonderful job you did."

Joe Darro, a longtime local musician who worked with Seybold on a number of productions, including the mid-1990s television show "Las Vegas Live" shot at the old Debbie Reynolds hotel, echoed those sentiments.

"He could be relaxed, but once the show started, he'd get so intense," Darro said. "He was so organized he could do anything on a moment's notice, even book big-name performers."

Seybold in the 1980s was entertainment director at the old Dunes, where the Bellagio now stands. Among the many stars he booked was Reynolds. He later helped put together shows at Reynolds' resort, including a July 1996 engagement of Eddie Fisher, Reynolds' ex-husband, July 1996.

Each Memorial Day for several years, Seybold produced a star-studded show for inmates at the Southern Desert Correctional Center.

"It's a payback thing," Seybold said in a June 5, 2000, Sun story. "Because the man upstairs has always been good to me I wanted to do something. What could be better than doing something for prisoners? My God, they get nothing."

Seybold's big break in show business came when Vallee took a liking to the ambitious young man and made him his manager. Vallee took Seybold with him to Hollywood.