Jack Rollins, Woody Allen's longtime producer, dies at 100

Any fan of Woody Allen knows the name Jack Rollins: the words "A Jack Rollins & Charles H Joffe Production" have opened almost every one of his films since Bananas (1971).

The credit – which brought with it a generous share of the films' profits – was given in recognition of the fact that Rollins, who died on Thursday at the age of 100, had discovered and nurtured the initially performance-shy comedian. "Without Jack," said Allen, "I wouldn't have a career."

It was Rollins and his producing partner Charles Joffe who first encouraged Allen to try his hand at stand-up, rather than writing for other people. "Woody wanted merely for us to manage his affairs in a conventional fashion, to better his career as a TV writer," Rollins told The New York Times in 1985.

"But in talking to him, we felt for sure he displayed the talents of a director. He'd see things and say why something was handled right or wrong. He'd be dead serious when he read a sketch of his, but it hit us funny. He didn't know why we were laughing. He'd give a what's-so-funny look. Very removed he was. Quiet and shy. And the whole thing struck us funny."

Danny Rose, tireless manager of Broadway's worst acts in Allen's 1984 comedy Broadway Danny Rose, was supposedly based on Rollins.

Rollins, who was born in Brooklyn in 1915, the son of Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Russia, established himself as a talent manager in the early Fifties. His first client was the singer Harry Belafonte, whom he discovered in a club in New York's Greenwich Village, a place he would often return to on the hunt for new performers to represent.

When Belafonte's career started to take off, he abandoned Rollins. It was a devastating blow, and a worried friend warned Rollins about getting too emotionally attached to his clients. "No," said Rollins. "It's the only way. It may not be good, but it's the only way. I have to work with people who fulfill me emotionally."

After Belafonte's departure, Rollins signed up a promising young couple of improv comedians: Mike Nichols and Elaine May. "Our manager, Jack Rollins, just loved us," said Nichols in a 1996 interview with The New York Times. "He kept telling us we were the hottest team in show business. We'd say, 'Are you sure, Jack?' We just thought we were so weird."

From that point on Rollins would work largely with comedians. He brought on Lenny Bruce at the start of his career, and in the late Seventies he signed up an eccentric San Francisco street mime called Robin Williams, ushering him onto the TV show Mork & Mindy and setting him on the road to stardom.

Over the years he and Joffe managed Billy Crystal, Joan Rivers, Tony Bennett, Jim Carrey, Dick Cavett, Diane Keaton, David Letterman and Martin Short. "I have a talent," he once said, "for noticing other talent."