Princely Odds

On his calmest days, Hal Prince is the kind of man who can log a mile or two just pacing his office. Last week, as he waited for this week's opening of his newest Broadway musical, A Little Night Music, he was almost ill with tension and suspense. "As the years go on, it gets worse," confessed Prince, so tired that his voice cracked. "The fact that I did a show last year doesn't get me over the naked fright about this one. My bones ache, I have a desperate desire to lie in bed, and I can't locate energy."

A likely story. Actually, Prince has been locating energy all his life. At 45, he is the most creative man in the American musical theater today, with ten Tony awards for musicals he has either produced or directed--or both. In the past several years he has produced not only the longest-running show in Broadway's history, Fiddler on the Roof, but also two of the most innovative ones, Company and Follies. To hear him complain about possible failure--never a very distant possibility on Broadway --is a little like listening to Jean Paul Getty moan about rising meat prices.

Prince's previous show, Follies, was a critical success but a financial disaster, losing $700,000. But his record is still little short of spectacular. Over the years his shows have made a profit of $16,820,750. "I believe that good luck is tied to the power of positive thinking," he says. "I'm convinced that I will get to be as old as Churchill and still be stimulated by life."

Prince, a native of Manhattan, was a matinee addict; one of his earliest theatrical memories is of being mesmerized by Orson Welles playing in Julius Caesar at the Mercury Theater. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in English in 1948, he so impressed Director George Abbott with his enthusiasm that he was hired as a "call boy," the factotum who tells actors when they are to go onstage. Then, as now, Prince was prone to nervousness, and first night out he lost his voice. After two years off for Army service, he was rehired in 1953 as an assistant stage manager of Abbott's hit Wonderful Town, and began dreaming about producing a show of his own.

The opportunity came when Robert Griffith, the stage manager of Wonderful Town and Prince's longtime mentor, spotted a novel called 7 1/2-c-. Within a week, the pair had bought theatrical rights. A stockbroker's son but less than rich, Prince spent six months giving living-room auditions for potential backers; 15 chorus girls from Wonderful Town put up their pin money. The upshot was something called The Pajama Game. Within 14 weeks all the investors had got their original money back --the first of many payments that would eventually amount to a 774% profit.

In the next few years, the partners (Griffith died in 1961) went on to produce or co-produce Damn Yankees (total profit: $1,262,500), New Girl in Town ($144,500), West Side Story ($2,120,000) and Fiorello ($528,000), along with a couple of flops. Prince became known as a man who could see a musical in virtually anything. In 1958 he was put onstage himself in fictional form as Ted Snow, the boy-wonder producer in the musical Say, Darling. "I'm trying to acquire the rights to a new book that I think will make a great musical," went one of his lines. "It's an eyewitness account of Sir Edmund Hillary's dash to the South Pole."

After the losses of Follies, however, investors were wary, and even Prince had difficulty in raising money for A Little Night Music, an anachronistic, waltz-based show in an age of blaring rock, a civilized comedy of manners in an age of free-form extravaganzas. "They thought either that I was on a downward curve," says Prince, "or that I was into some kind of avantgarde, esoteric theater-- and that Night Music would be my undoing."

Ironically, Night Music is Prince's cheeriest musical in years. Based on the 1957 Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it is meant to be all champagne and Mozart, laughter and elegance. "We decided that the songs should bubble and that they should be dry, unsentimental and unsoulful," says Stephen Sondheim, the composer-lyricist who has collaborated with Prince on four shows.

During the Boston rehearsals, however, the comedy was lost as the actors worked into their roles. Prince, who relishes the job of director even more than that of producer, set out once again to find the laughs. Sitting in the ninth row of the venerable Colonial Theater, a microphone in front of him, he adjusted everything from acting styles to hair cuts. He was as quick to praise as to criticize. "God, it's so beautiful!" he exclaimed when he first saw the set and costumes together. "I could die."

During the tryouts, the Boston critics were almost unanimously enthusiastic. Yet more work was required. Two songs were dropped and a new one was written. A supporting actress was replaced, which affected the cast like a death in the family. When the company arrived in New York for ten days of previews, Prince had to face up to the problem of Glynis Johns; the whole play revolves around the loose-living actress she portrays. On some nights Actress Johns, who at 49 is playing her first musical role, had just the proper air of vintage champagne; on others she fizzled, with slow timing and no real relationship to the other actors. One morning last week she collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.

Abubble. For 24 hours there was gloom enough to sink a Bergman tragedy, let alone a comedy. Prince talked with Actress Tammy Grimes about taking over the Johns part-- a switch that would have meant a one-week delay of the opening, at a cost of $50,000. "This business is all about taking chances," Prince croaked hoarsely, "but you have to be careful of the odds." But by midweek, Johns was once again abubble. Was Prince headed for a hit, all the more gratifying because of the obstacles? Or were the New York previews portents of disaster? That remained for audiences to decide.

Usually on the day after an opening, Prince has an appointment set up to talk about a new project-- a trick he learned from George Abbott, "so that no matter what happens, you feel you are still working." His habit is to get one night's sleep and plunge back to work, either as a producer in his bright, psychedelic office in Rockefeller Center or as a director in a spartan white study at the top of his Manhattan town house. After the draining experience of Night Music, however, he plans to sit and read for a while, and will eventually wind up, no doubt, at the remote mountaintop house he and his wife Judy have in Majorca. "I am going to try to break the pattern," he says. "My God, I've been at this for 20 years."

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