Oliver Sutton, a dandy from this legendary sci-fi theater, has died

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Staff and friends of the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) gathered Monday night at the Tony Rembe Theatre, formerly known as Geary, to pay tribute to Oliver Sutton, the longtime chief of security, whose dapper presence at the door was as much a part of the theatrical experience as a poster or proscenium. .

People associated with the theater and its acting school remembered Sutton as a quintessential San Francisco character, a consistently well-dressed man who wore headscarves and top hats, and who remembered the names of virtually every ACT subscriber and longtime patron. What they didn’t remember exactly were Sutton’s start dates, though management threw him a 25th year service party in 2019 anyway.

Sutton, who was 71 or 72 at the time of his death last month, died of unspecified causes.

A Baltimore native who knew his family’s history when his ancestors migrated north from Georgia in the late 1800s, Sutton served in the US Navy during the Vietnam War and traveled as far as Sri Lanka. A published poet, powerlifter and father of three, he worked with James Brown early in his career, once meeting playwright August Wilson for lunch and describing himself as “a velvet-gloved steel fist”. He was rarely found without a flask in his pocket, willingly sharing whiskey with anxious actors.

On Monday, ACT Executive Director Jennifer Bilstein and others shared anecdotes about a long career as a theater buff who may have seen little theater. He saw himself as a conduit between the booze you drink at home while you’re getting ready and the curtain going up. One day, when Mayor London Breed was present, someone mentioned that the mayor had seen the performance, and Sutton got down to business, asking, “Really? Willie [Brown] was here?”

Because the Tony Rimbe Theater is next door to the Curran Theatre, Sutton’s sidewalk crowd control efforts sometimes included maintaining orderly call lines for both houses. Duty to ensure that no cars were parked on the white-painted curb during performances, he sometimes allowed disabled elderly theater-goers (as well as anyone who tipped him) to park there.

Like a European butler announcing the arrival of a Duchess, he would announce their arrival in his unmistakable bass profundo as “Our Special Guest”, signaling to the gatekeepers that he was a valuable patron in need of special care and attention.

In late 2021, ACT used Sutton’s return to door management as a symbol of the company-wide reopening after Covid. In a post hilariously titled “Oliver is back!” he said that he spent most of the pandemic cooking, writing lyrics and hoping to get back to work.

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