Splitting Hairs Michael Butler talks polo, producing and politics By Gwen Rizzo
Michael Butler at Oak Brook in 1988.
38 POLO P L A Y E R S E D I T I O N
To the general public Michael Butler may be best known for bringing the rock musical “Hair” to Broadway. To the polo community, he is known as the tall, slender and colorful character who played a solid game of polo and managed his family’s Oak Brook Polo Club, located in a suburb of Chicago. While he says polo had the biggest influence in his life, politics and celebrity were woven through it. When producing Hair, the press dubbed him the hippie millionaire. He has been linked to celebrities Candice Bergen, Nati Abascal, Audrey Hepburn and Rock Hudson, among many others. He counts presidents, princes and maharajahs as personal friends. And as a political activist, Abbie Hoffman apparently once threatened to “get” Butler’s polo ponies if he didn’t support his cause. Though horses and polo were a large part of Michael Butler’s life, the third-generation polo player got off to a rough start with riding. At 7 years old, Butler was riding his pony outside of the barn when they accidentally stepped on a rotten basement door, which they fell through. “The wood was rotten and there were a lot of nails there, so I got blood poisoning,” he recalled. “First, the doctors wanted to cut off my arm. The family, fortunately, had enough influence in Hinsdale, Illinois, to tell them no, they couldn’t do it.” Instead, tubes were inserted into his right arm, which had to be stationary for three months. “As a result … they said, now you’ve got to move your arm. So, they gave me a bucket full of window weights …” recalls Butler. “That is one of the first real memories I have of crying to my father … that I couldn’t take it anymore … It hurt so much.” That trauma didn’t stop him from riding horses. Much of his childhood was spent on the back of a horse. With plenty of room to roam, Butler and his
