Max Eisen, a theatrical press agent who told Playbill in 2004 that he worked on more than 1,000 shows over a long career, died in his sleep in the early morning hours of Nov. 23, 2009, at his home in Manhattan, colleagues said. He was 90. While the number of shows he repped could not be confirmed, Mr. Eisen was one of the last of the old-school Broadway publicists, a man from an era when relationships between press agent and producer, and press agent and reporter were one-on-one and personal; a time where you you were expected to furnish powerful Broadway columnists like Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan with items for their columns.

He was the press rep for such Broadway shows as The Matchmaker, Li'l Abner, The Subject Was Roses, Raisin, The Effect of Gamma Rays..., Butterflies Are Free, Fifth of July, The Wiz and others. His final Broadway show was Gypsy Passion in 1992. He also represented a famous production of Long Day's Journey Into Night starring Robert Ryan, Stacy Keach and Geraldine Fitzgerald. In recent decades, he had handled smaller Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway shows. At one point, in the late '90s, he did press for a series of unusual plays presented in Show World, the former strip club on Eighth Avenue.

Late into his career, Mr. Eisen would still type out his press releases on a "battleship-gray electric typewriter" (according to the New York Times in 1997) and mail them.

Mr. Eisen loved to talk about the shows he had handled, even the flops. Of 1977's Some of My Best Friends, starring Ted Knight, he told the Times, "Everybody congratulated him, everybody shook his hand. But nobody bought a ticket." And of Heathen! A New Musical, he observed, "That opened on a Sunday night, closed the same night, and they left the set there."

He was press agent to famed producer David Merrick for a time, and for Goodspeed Opera House for many years. One of his most lasting accounts was with the Times Square hotel, The Milford Plaza.

Michael Price, executive director of Goodspeed Musicals, told Playbill.com that Mr. Eisen was vital in shepherding New York City critics to the Connecticut company. "We used to have a bus of critics come up," Price said, adding that "he brought Clive Barnes to us." It was a Barnes review of Very Good Eddie that helped moved that show from Goodspeed to Broadway. "When nobody else would touch us," Price said, the critics paid attention because Mr. Eisen was persuasive.

Mr. Eisen was not opposed to staging stunts to get attention. In 1964, he arranged a miniature Olympic competition, in which 30 men and women from seven Broadway shows ran the length of Shubert Alley — which runs a short block between 44th and 45th Streets. A crowd of 600, including eight photographers and a TV crew, watched as Diane West, a dancer from Folies Bergere, won three of the eight races. Mr. Eisen was press agent for five of the seven shows. A member of his staff commented, "This is the crowning achievement of lunacy."

He is survived by a daughter and a son. A service is planned for 1:30 PM Nov. 24 at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue at 30 W. 68th Street in Manhattan.