Obituary: Fred Weintraub, Bordello pianist who discovered Woodstock and Bruce Lee

Fred Weintraub, the producer, who has died aged 88, had a long career in several branches of the entertainment world, ranging from houses of ill fame to the film industry, and he helped the spirit of the '60s to take root by promoting young performers at his club in New York and by producing the film of the historic rock concert at Woodstock.

In 1969 the bearded, pony-tailed Weintraub became a vice-president at Warner Bros, after a friend had bought the studio. Asked to justify his appointment despite his lack of experience, he said: "I've never made a bad movie."

On his first day, an acquaintance turned up and asked for $100000 (about R1.3-million) to fund a documentary about a concert he was organising that weekend in upstate New York. Weintraub's days as a club promoter had given him a nose for what young people wanted, and he convinced the studio to put up the money.

As reports came in over the next few days about the chaos at White Lake - the site of the concert was actually 70km from Woodstock, but by then the tickets had been printed - Weintraub became the butt of colleagues' jokes. These redoubled when it turned out he had not secured the musicians' signatures to release the soundtrack album.

Yet once the miles of footage had been edited (in part by a young Martin Scorsese), the three-hour documentary became a box-office sensation and won an Oscar.

He had little taste for Hollywood politics, however, and after speaking his mind too often moved into independent filmmaking.

Among the television projects that he helped to develop were The Dukes of Hazzard and Kung Fu, the martial arts series. Weintraub had intended Kung Fu as a vehicle for the then unknown Bruce Lee, whom he knew, but the broadcaster preferred David Carradine. Weintraub was determined to make Lee a star and produced Enter the Dragonin1973 which made Lee a household name.

Despite Lee's death shortly before the premiere, the film was a hit. Weintraub made several more martial arts films and produced Steve McQueen's last movie, Tom Horn (1980).

Later, he pioneered filmmaking on location in Eastern Europe. Its challenges included an emergency search for razors after he noticed in rushes that the 20 local girls hired to dance energetically did not conform to US expectations of grooming.

Frederick Robert Weintraub was born on April 27 1928 and grew up in the Bronx, where his parents ran a children's furniture and toy shop.

Every Christmas, he and his sister would be given presents from the store's stock, and every January their father would take them back once he had found a customer.

After studying at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School, Weintraub went to work for his father, setting up a chain of 50 shops.

In his late 20s he despaired of his way of life and walked out on his wife and two daughters. Within a few weeks was living in Paris with a black cabaret singer.

He had a spell in advertising before winding up as a piano player in a Havana bordello. It was when the island was under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and Weintraub was beaten up and deported for lending his boat to pro-Castro gunrunners. He settled in Greenwich Village, New York.

In 1961 he bought the lease on a café and renamed it "The Bitter End".

Although it did not serve alcohol, the club soon became popular, and influential as a launch pad for the folk-music movement.

For a time Weintraub also managed a struggling singer named Neil Diamond.

Weintraub was married four times, and is survived by his wife, Jackie, two sons and two daughters. -

1928-2017