DOROTHY GALLYOT
September 7, 1918 -- March 23, 2016

Former San Francisco/Tiburon resident and respected Bay Area publicist, Dorothy Gallyot, died of congestive heart failure at The Redwoods in Mill Valley .  She was 97.

Ms. Gallyot's parents emigrated from a part of Poland often occupied by Russia.  The youngest of four children, she was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, grew up in New York City and graduated from Hunter College with a major in sociology.

Dorothy learned the importance of publicity while organizing military camp shows during World War II.  After the war she opened a celebrity agency for arts and entertainment clients.

When Maria Callas decided to cancel a performance near show time, a troupe of enterprising American singers jumped at the opportunity so the show could go on.  Apparently, a young Robert Merrill, one of her favorite clients, was among the group.  The performers brought the house down while Dorothy’s account of the evening splashed across the headlines.  It turned the opera world on its head.

By the 1950s she was a well established Bay Area publicist and press agent.  Ms. Gallyot was the written voice for San Francisco establishments from Goman’s Gay ‘90s nightclub on Broadway, to the City’s finest restaurants -- whether Oreste's on lower Jones Street, the Taj of India, or Nob Hill’s Romanoff’s and L’Etoile.

In the mid 1960s Dorothy’s press releases were commonly published state wide.  She was regularly relied upon for input by the Examiner and Chronicle columnists Herb Caen, Jack Rosenbaum and Dick Nolan. The papers' entertainment and music critics, John L. Wasserman, Ralph Gleason, Alfred Frankenstein and Dean Wallace, all found her to be a great source of information for their write ups.

Ms. Gallyot’s accounts included everything from The Flying Tigers and Cathay Pacific Airlines to the California Music Foundation, Civic Light Opera and performers at the Hungry I.  The performers were a veritable and endless who’s who of emerging artists:  Vladimir Ashkenazy, Marilyn Horne, Woody Allen, and Dick Cavett, Dick Gregory, to headliners including Sophie Tucker, Nina Simone, Mel Torme, Dave Brubeck, Rod McKuen, Professor Irwin Corey, Boots Randolph, Floyd Cramer, Marian Anderson, Grace Bumbry, Joan Sutherland, Arthur Rubenstein, Lenny Bruce and Bill Cosby.

Among the many causes she believed in, and fought and worked for during the ‘60s, was Soviet Jewry and Another Mother for Peace.  The latter is where she met 83-year old photographer, Imogen Cunningham, which resulted in major feature stories in numerous publications.

Perhaps Ms. Gallyot’s coup de grace came in 1965 when she was hired by G. H. Freyermuth to write the press releases for the de Young's new Avery Brundage Collection (now Asian Art Museum) which garnered international attention. At a time when female journalists were discouraged, dismissed and frequently excluded from well-deserved bylines, she was among the courageous women who fought for gender equality and picketed in front of the San Francisco Press Club for equal treatment.

After retiring she moved to Tiburon, married Larry Murphy, taught aquathenics in Strawberry, continued writing, became a confirmed vegetarian, and supported animal-friendly causes. Dorothy is survived by her Inverness son, Raul Gallyot, and his wife Ann Gessert, daughter-in-law, Diane Walder, widow of Dorothy's late son Richard Gallyot, and granddaughter and grandson Julia and Nicolas Gallyot of San Francisco.

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Additional Account Examples: CALMAC, The Lamplighters, Pacific Ballet, the Casa Madrid, modern dance co-founder Charles Wiedmann, Bach to Mozart, the City of Hope, Subscription Television (the pre-cursor to cable television which was voted down by voters), mental health and improved juvenile care.

Photo by Richard Gallyot