A part of the blockbuster production team Richard Frankel Productions, Viertel has backed such Broadway hits as Hairspray and Angels in America. He's also the older brother of Jujamcyn creative director Jack Viertel.

Viertel comes from a family well-versed in the theater biz—his grandfather built theaters like the Mark Hellinger and dabbled in show production, his father was a playwright, and his brother is Jack Viertel, the artistic director of Rocco Landesman's Jujamcyn Theaters. The Viertel family also knows a thing or two about real estate. Tom's great-grandfather founded a real estate management company in Westchester and subsequent generations of Viertels worked there full or part-time, including Tom himself—he specialized in co-op conversions and is the CFO of the Presidential Realty Corporation.

In 1985, after seeing Penn & Teller perform in LA, Viertel got together with his third cousin Steven Baruch and cobbled together $175,000 to produce the magicians' Broadway run, teaming up with Richard Frankel, who owned the show's rights. The trio soon absorbed Marc Routh into their partnership, and they've since co-produced a long list of commercially viable (and occasionally critically hailed) shows. RFP has had a hand in a slew of successes over the years, including Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune, The Producers with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, Marc Shaiman's Hairspray, and the revivals of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and Company, picking up countless Tonys and Drama Desk Awards along the way. [Image via Getty]