Jack W. Batman

The first love of Jack W. Batman’s life was the theater.

It may seem an improbable passion for a man born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1944. The oldest of two siblings, Batman’s father, Ralph Batman, worked for Standard Press Steel, and his mother, Kathryn Wallace Batman, was vice president and the manager of the Philadelphia Employees Credit Union.

But from the time he could walk, maybe even before, Batman’s mother, Kay, would take her son to see whatever was playing, from local high school shows to professional productions to movie musicals. A particular favorite memory was the operettas performed at Camden Catholic High School. By the time he reached Bishop McDevitt High School, Batman was performing on stage himself.

Drawn to Broadway, Jack moved to New York City in 1969, the same day the New York Mets won their first World Series. He landed a job in the mail room at the William Morris Agency and quickly rose through the ranks to become an agent. From there, he built a career in theater as a manager, casting director, actor, writer, and two-time Tony Award-winning producer.

Along the way, he met the other love of his life, his husband Sidney J. Burgoyne. They both attended La Salle College in Philadelphia and participated in the Masque there and La Salle Music Theatre— albeit ten years apart. They fully connected in January, 1976 over a game of Scrabble at a friend’s house and remained together for the next nearly 50 years. On August 13, 2013, they were legally wed at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau.

Burgoyne and Batman once shared their love story with The New York Daily News, where they spoke about how their lives in theater had intertwined. That included a production of Ragtime, which Sidney directed at the White Plains Performing Arts Center, where Jack was the Executive Producer. “I decided to give him the hardest show,” Batman said at the time, “because I trust him implicitly to do it well.”

Jack was “an exemplary person who valued excellence and friendship above all,” Sidney said. “He had a great, beautiful mind.”

At home, Jack was “a gourmet and a gourmand,” who cooked with elegance and simplicity. He said his secret was “chemistry in the kitchen." He was a loving co-caretaker to their brood of rescue animals, including 13 cats and 7 dogs over the course of decades. He also loved travel; in October, he and Sidney enjoyed an impromptu, whirlwind trip together to Paris and London.

A fixture of the Broadway community, Jack most recently produced the Tony Award-nominated productions of Good Night, and Good Luck and John Proctor Is the Villain, alongside his business partner and friend of more than two decades, Bruce Robert Harris. Jack also left his stamp on the theatre scene all over the world, from London’s West End to Peoria, Illinois, where he ran the Left Bank Dinner Playhouse in the 1970s.

Batman was still working on upcoming projects until a few days before he died in hospice care on August 1, 2025 at the Actors Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey. He was 81 years old.

Sidney said Jack accepted his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer early this year as he did all things: with singular grace. Jack said “all of my life, in business and in my personal life, if a door opened, I walked through. This is just one more door I’m walking through.”

In addition to his husband Sidney, Batman is survived by his cousins Sue Ellen Langhorne and Kathie Langhorne Campbell as well as his brothers-in-law, Paul J. Burgoyne and David A. Burgoyne, his sister-in-law, Catherine Ronan Burgoyne, his godson Jackson Walti, and many beloved nieces, nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews and, among countless good and dear friends, the indispensable Paula Cohen. He is predeceased by his parents, his brother, Ralph, and his godson, David A. Burgoyne, Jr.

Donations may be made in honor of Jack W. Batman to The Entertainment Community Fund and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

 The Entertainment Community Fund

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS