Chris Sorensen

A Disney Veteran’s Curtain Call

As Broadway marketer Jack Eldon (’81) prepared for his retirement, he returned to the Disney production that helped launch his career

“As the first Broadway endeavor of Disney Theatrical Group, Beauty and the Beast was the perfect launch vehicle,” Eldon says. “It’s amazing to think that Beauty and the Beast is [still] the 11th longest-running Broadway musical in history at more than 5,400 performances.”

Success in its first touring run in 1995, however, was no guarantee. Enter Eldon (’81), who was hired by Disney to market Beauty and the Beast near the start of its national tour—the entertainment conglomerate’s first. Having just promoted the national tour of The Phantom of the Opera, Eldon had forged deep relationships with many North American venues. He promoted Beauty and the Beast to those theaters, approved and placed advertisements for the musical, and handled press relations for the tour. At the end of Beauty and the Beast’s first eight-year US tour, which brought in nearly $268 million for Disney, more than four million Americans had seen the Tony-nominated production.

When a revamped Beauty and the Beast returned to stages across America in 2025, Eldon—Disney Theatrical Productions’ vice president of domestic touring and regional engagements—again planned and marketed the tour. It’s the final act in a career that has helped Disney become a major theatrical force around the world. After nearly three decades with the company, Eldon retired at the end of January 2026.

“There are people who work in my industry who will be carried out of the building, and I didn’t want that,” Eldon says. “I wanted to finish my career at Disney by relaunching Beauty and the Beast for another generation. I’m so proud of it, and the audiences have embraced it. We deliver on every aspect.”

Dreams of the Stage

Before he found success in Disney Theatrical’s front office, Eldon sought a life on the stage himself.

“I always wanted to be a performer,” he says. “My treat every Sunday was reading the New York Times Sunday edition about what was going on in New York and in professional theater.”

He found an outlet in community and summer stock theater programs before auditioning for conservatory theater programs for college. Eldon chose CFA over New York University and Carnegie Mellon, calling it “a terrific experience for people who wanted to be in the arts.”

Eager to start his professional acting career, Eldon moved to New York City after graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and began working in regional and off-off-Broadway theaters. His big break never came. “I did some singing-waiter stuff, I performed on some cruise ships,” he says. “I got to see the world, and I got paid for it, and that was a lot of fun—but it wasn’t enough for me.”

One of Eldon’s survival jobs while acting was with a public relations firm. “I decided I wanted to make that transition from the performing world to the business world,” he says. “I enjoyed the creativity of it and the challenge of promoting products.”

A few years in, Eldon met someone who worked for Alan Wasser, the legendary Broadway general manager and promoter. Every six months for three years, he mailed the company a letter asking if they had any jobs. His persistence paid off when he received a call offering him a job promoting The Phantom of the Opera’s US tour.

“I’ve never had regrets, and it was never bittersweet,” Eldon says of the transition from performing to promoting. “My passion for the theater really supplanted my desire to be onstage.”

A Career at Disney

As a marketer and publicist for musicals and plays, Eldon’s star was rising. Enough so that in 1996 he caught the attention of Disney, which had launched its theatrical division with Beauty and the Beast on Broadway two years earlier. “I was at a press conference representing Phantom, and the Disney folks were there,” Eldon recalls. “Six months later, I was working on Beauty and the Beast.”

Susan Egan, as Belle, and Terrence Mann, as the Beast, in the original 1994 Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast. Joan Marcus

Eldon says his previous life as a New York–based actor, albeit short, was an asset. “I was working on shows where I knew the people who were either backstage or onstage,” he says. “I could talk to actors, because I knew what they were going through.”

Following the success of Beauty and the Beast, Disney Theatrical mounted a musical production that would cement its reputation as a major Broadway force for decades to come: The Lion King. Writer and director Julie Taymor pitched Disney Theatrical executives on her vision for adapting the beloved screenplay into a theatrical feast for the eyes and the ears, and Eldon planned and helped oversee the pre-Broadway run in Minneapolis, Minn. The production has since become the top-earning show in Broadway history. But ahead of its first national tour in 2002, Eldon says, Disney Theatrical never took for granted that American audiences would buy tickets to see a stage adaptation of such a well-known story. It became Eldon’s job to travel to cities across North America to educate media, civic leaders, and potential group buyers on Taymor’s vision.

A scene from a 2019 touring production of Disney’s The Lion King. Xinhua/Zhu Xiang/Alamy

The Lion King is “Disney Theatrical’s crown jewel,” as Eldon calls it, and he has touched every business aspect of touring and productions outside New York City. In 2025, BU’s Wheelock Family Theatre honored Eldon with its WHEEL Award—which recognizes individuals “who share the organization’s commitment to children and families and whose work embodies its belief that the arts can transform lives”—and the Broadway League, the industry’s trade group, presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Full-Circle Moment

Eldon’s process for promoting a touring show 30 years ago feels almost prehistoric today. For the 1990s touring shows, like Phantom and Beauty and the Beast, Eldon would gauge interest within a particular market by placing a full-page ad and coupon in the local newspaper. Readers who wanted to buy tickets would have to clip the coupon, fill it out, and mail it in with a check or money order.  “We would be waiting for the box offices to add up all those checks,” Eldon says. “You’d be waiting months and months to find out where you were with the prospect of selling a show. When you think about [the changes], it’s almost overwhelming.”

The internet has allowed Eldon and his team to target their marketing more precisely using social media and streaming service ads. “I’ve seen it all,” he says.

Before Eldon’s final curtain call in January 2026, he was able to see Beauty and the Beast—the show that launched his Disney career—reach droves of new theater fans on its new tour, which launched in 2025. The relaunched Beauty and the Beast features a revised script from writer Linda Woolverton; the show’s original choreographer, Matt West, who directed the 1993 Broadway production, is back to direct the touring show. Wrapping his career with the production is a storybook ending for the Broadway veteran. “I couldn’t have written it better myself,” he says.