Norby Walters dead: Oscar party impresario, music agent and Hollywood poker game host “The Night of 100 Stars” was 91

Norby Walters, the former music agent who for years organized the annual Oscar party “Night of 100 Stars” and hosted an iconic low-stakes poker party for actors, died on December 12. He was 91 years old. His son, founder and former CEO of Walters Media Group Bold Films, Gary Michael Walters, confirmed the news but gave no details.

Walters, born Norbert Meyer, began booking jazz stars such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz at his father’s bar in 1952.

Walters and his brother Walter took over a diner from their father and called it “Norby & Walter’s Bel Air,” but the sign did not contain an ampersand — leading to the name Walters would use throughout his career. He later took over a failing nightclub next to the world-famous Copacabana, renaming it Norby Walters’s Supper Club and attracting a who’s who of bold names from New York City.

“What should I do?” Mr. Walters asked a New York Times reporter in 2016, “Do you want to be a bank robber?”

In 1968 Walters founded Norby Walters Associates (later General Talent International with partners Jerry Ade and Sal Michaels) and booked Top 40 acts in nightclubs, lounges and hotels across the country. Walters quickly realized he could make a lot more money from artists and over the next decade built up a huge roster of disco, funk, R&B, soul and rap artists. Famous clients have included Marvin Gaye, Patti LaBelle, Rick James, The Gap Band, Kool and the Gang, the Four Tops and briefly even Michael Jackson. Walters also represented many influential hip hop pioneers such as Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Sugar Hill Gang, Kurtis Blow, Public Enemy, NWA, Kool Moe Dee and LL Cool J. He also represented Chazz Palminteri.

In 1987, Walters retired to Los Angeles, where his life revolved around what he called “The Three Ps”: poker, parties and Palm Springs.

As for the former, Walters hosted an annual Oscar night gala he called “Night of 100 Stars” and was attended by all his friends, including Shirley Jones, Robert Forster, Patricia Neal, Richard Dreyfuss, Martin Landau, Lou Gossett Jr . and JK Simmons. Red Buttons, Eva Marie Saint, Jon Voight and Allison Janney as well as old Hollywood stars such as Cliff Robertson, Charles Bronson and many others.

Despite the event’s name, Walters told the Times it’s not about the glamorous attendees.

“It’s my party, that’s all,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the stars, it has nothing to do with the Oscars.”

Walters also hosted a well-attended weekly low-stakes poker game ($2) in his West Hollywood high-rise apartment.

Walters was married for seventy years to his childhood sweetheart Irene, who died last July at the age of 89. Walters is survived by three sons, Steven, Richard (music supervisor) and Gary Michael (film and television producer). He is buried next to his wife at Hillside Memorial.