Terry Allen Kramer

Terry Allen Kramer, the colorful Broadway producer who won five best-production Tony Awards in 16 years but was just as well known as the grande dame of Palm Beach, Fla., socialites, died on Thursday at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital in Manhattan. She was 85. Her death was confirmed by her New York office, which said Ms. Kramer had contracted pneumonia while visiting Lyford Cay in the Bahamas last month. Although she kept her awards in her Manhattan home, she was better known for her Florida residence. When La Follia, her Palm Beach estate, was put on the market last fall for $135 million, it was said to be the most expensive American property ever listed. La Follia is not far from the Trump family’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Terry Allen was born in Manhattan on June 20, 1933, the daughter of Charles Allen Jr., the founder of his family Wall Street investment firm, and Rita (Friedman) Allen. Terry’s brothers were raised to take over Allen & Company. Marriage and children were the future her father wanted for her, Ms. Kramer told The New York Times in 1984. She attended Vassar, and she married young, but by the time her children were in high school, she said, Mr. Allen agreed that a job might not be the worst idea. Ms. Kramer was 41 when she produced her first Broadway show, “Good News,” a 1974 revival of a 1927 musical, with a cast including Alice Faye and Stubby Kaye. In 1977, things went considerably more smoothly with “I Love My Wife,” a relatively low-budget comedy that ran two years and won two Tonys and six Drama Desk Awards. At 18, Terry Allen married James Philips, a Wall Street trader. In 1958, after their divorce, she married Irwin Hamilton Kramer, who became a partner in Allen & Company. He died in 1999. Nick Simunek, the British-born producer who died in 2014, is often mentioned as her third husband, but family members said they were never legally married. Ms. Kramer is survived by a daughter, Toni Goutal; a son, Nathaniel Kramer; a brother, Bruce Allen; eight grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Angela Kramer, died in 2002.