Producer and promoter Harold Leventhal was the star-maker who galvanized the U.S. folk revival of the early 1960s, most notably presenting a young Bob Dylan in his first major concert-hall performance. Born May 24, 1919 in Ellenville, New York, Leventhal was raised in New York City's Lower East Side. He began his music career in the late 1930s as a song promoter for composer Irving Berlin and became a fixture on Manhattan's nightclub circuit as he pitched new material to vocalists including Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee. During World War II, Leventhal served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and while stationed in India, he befriended Jawaharlal Nehru. Through Nehru, Leventhal received an audience with Mahatma Gandhi. The experience profoundly shaped Leventhal's sense of social outrage and throughout his career he represented artists at odds with the status quo. After the war, he returned to New York City and accepted a job with his brother's girdle manufacturing firm. He nevertheless moonlighted as a promoter for folkies including Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, and in 1951, he agreed to manage the Weavers. When Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist witch-hunts forced the Weavers to dissolve the following year, Leventhal remained their steadfast supporter, even after Congress revoked his passport. In 1955, he booked Carnegie Hall for a Weavers reunion show; he told each of the members the other three had already agreed to the plan in order to guarantee their cooperation. The performance remains a landmark event in the history of American folk music and it inspired the careers of dozen next-generation performers.

In addition to folk, Leventhal was an ardent supporter of world music. He produced the debut New York performances by the likes of Jacques Brel, Miriam Makeba, Nana Mouskouri and Ravi Shankar, and also embraced jazz by showcasing the Modern Jazz Quartet and others. But his most enduring contribution to American music remains Bob Dylan's April 12, 1963 appearance at New York's Town Hall, the singer/songwriter's first metropolitan concert performance. The list of acts under Leventhal's representation also included such giants as Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Harry Belafonte, Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, and Peter, Paul Mary. He was the executor of Woody Guthrie's estate and also hired the icon's son, Arlo, as an office boy. In 1969, Leventhal produced Arlo's film musical #Alice's Restaurant, and for over three decades oversaw the singer's annual Carnegie Hall holiday concert. Leventhal also produced the 1976 Woody Guthrie biopic #Bound for Glory as well as #Wasn't That a Time, which documents the Weavers' much-acclaimed 1980 reunion. He won a Grammy for his production work on the 1989 LP Folkways: A Vision Shared--A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, and that same year earned an Emmy for the television film #We Shall Overcome. In 2002 Leventhal received the Folk Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award and was the subject of his own all-star Carnegie Hall tribute in 2003, the basis of the documentary feature #Isn't This a Time!. He also was widely acknowledged as the inspiration for Irving Steinbloom, the fictional folk impresario whose death and subsequent memorial concert sparks Christopher Guest's acute folk satire #A Mighty Wind. Leventhal died October 4, 2005 at the age of 86. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi