Quiet Director, Loyal Companion: The Life and Family of Jack Emrek

Basic Information

I write this like a scene in a mid-century movie—soft spotlight, a cigarette-smoke haze that resolves into the silhouette of a man who preferred being behind the cues rather than under them. That man, in the ledger of stagehands and steady companions, is Jack Emrek — a name that arrives to us through playbills, theater databases, and the warm footnotes of his more famous wife, Sue Ane Langdon. I’m telling his story as both a reader of records and a small-town gossip columnist at heart: with relish, restraint and a love for the backstage riff.

A theatrical life — numbers and notes

Jack’s life reads like a program: a number of stage credits, appearances in revivals, and later work tied to television and film direction. Records place him in productions such as Brigadoon and Annie Get Your Gun (revivals/City Center productions) and credit him with television work including appearances or roles on shows in the 1950s–1960s era landscape (for instance, listings show involvement in early TV drama/anthology series and episodic work). If you map a career by dates, the bulk of his listed activity clusters in the mid-20th century — the golden-revival era of American stage and the early, grainy years of television.

You can almost feel the era in the dates: wartime births, postwar theater booms, the 1950s television rush — and a marriage that began in 1959, right before the sixties unfurled like a long, dramatic curtain.

The partnership with Sue Ane Langdon

If a life in show business is a duet, Jack’s most enduring number was with Sue Ane Langdon. They married on April 4, 1959, and for decades were fixtures in each other’s public biographies. I like to imagine their relationship as a Hitchcock-style collaboration — she the bright, camera-ready presence; he the steady hand offstage, sometimes noted as her manager or director, sometimes as her confidante. Those who catalog lives in the entertainment world often list Jack primarily in relation to Sue Ane — but a relation can also be a partnership, and partnerships are work: scheduling, contracts, travel, and the little domestic economies of two people juggling careers and collections (they were known to have an interest in antiques and a distinct eye for decorative taste).

Family, lineage, and the gaps that historians love

Genealogical fragments name parents as Emrek (or Emric) Frank Hanusek and Elizabeth (Kuroll) Hanusek — archival breadcrumbs rather than a full narrative. There’s a curious irony here: a man named Emrek (or spelled differently in different registries) who lived a life of public moments, yet whose family tree contains blank branches that resist a neat label. I find that oddly cinematic — like a supporting character with an unexplained accent.

Notably, there’s no reliable public record of children for Jack and Sue Ane. In the age of celebrity genealogies, that absence is as loud as a trumpet. It’s worth saying plainly: public biographies and obituaries that name the couple do not consistently list offspring, and major film/theatre databases focus on careers rather than domestic minutiae.

On reputation, net worth, and the gossip mill

If you come to this piece hunting for scandal, you’ll leave with little more than the patter of hometown press and the occasional lifestyle profile. There are photographs — travel shots, publicity stills, archive images that show the two of them in places like Egypt or in domestic settings — and there are feature notes about their collections, their home, their aesthetic. No credible sources I surveyed offered a net-worth figure for Jack Emrek separate from marital property or Sue Ane’s public profile. In the currency of gossip, then, Jack is not a scandal star but a character actor in the quieter drama of marriage and work.

A timeline to keep things tidy

I tell these dates like cue points in a scene: they don’t tell the whole story, but they set the stage.

The archival afterlife — photographs and public memory

The most vivid surviving artifacts are images: studio shots, travel photos, publicity stills with Sue Ane, and press snapshots that place them inside a mid-century Hollywood orbit. In a way, that’s how many people live on — as pictures in a database, as names in index cards, as the whispered context beneath a better-known star’s biography. Jack Emrek exists, then, both as an individual with a modest creative resume and as the husband who shared a public life with an actress of note.

FAQ

Who was Jack Emrek?

Jack Emrek was a mid-century stage performer and television/film director who is most publicly known as the spouse of actress Sue Ane Langdon; his records appear under several name variants.

When was he born and when did he die?

He is recorded as being born in 1920 (exact day varies across records) and died on April 27, 2010, in Calabasas, California.

Who was his spouse?

He married actress Sue Ane Langdon on April 4, 1959, and they were publicly listed as partners until his death.

Did Jack Emrek have children?

Public biographical records and obituaries do not reliably list any children for Jack Emrek.

What was his career?

His career spanned stage revivals (including work on productions like Brigadoon and Annie Get Your Gun revivals) and television/film roles and credits that have him described as a director and manager in entertainment circles.

What is his net worth?

There is no credible or verifiable public estimate of Jack Emrek’s net worth in the available records.

Are there scandals or gossip about him?

No reputable reports of scandals were found; public mentions are largely biographical, nostalgic, or tied to his marriage and lifestyle.

Where can I see images of Jack Emrek?

Photographs and archival stills appear in historical photo collections and entertainment image archives, often in tandem with Sue Ane Langdon.