Prince, Harold Smith (Hal) 
Born: January 30, 1928 in New York City, New York
Vocations: Theatrical Producer, Director, Writer, Assistant stage manager, Artist Director, Stage Manager, Performer
Geographic Connection to Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

Keywords: George Abbott; Leonard Bernstein; Cabaret; Saul Chaplin; Contradictions; Dora Mavor Moore Award Outstanding Direction; Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Musical; Fred Ebb; Evita; Fiddler on the Roof; John Kander; Kennedy Center Honors Lifetime Achievement Award; Arthur Laurents; A Little Night Music; National Institute for Music Theater; OBIE Award Distinguished Direction; Outer Critics Circle Award Director of a Musical; The Pajama Game; The Phantom of the Opera; Plays and Players London Theatre Critics Award Best Director; Blanche Prince; Charles Prince; Daisy Prince; Judy Prince; Milton A. Prince; Jerome Robbins; Show Boat; Something for Everyone; Stephen Sondheim; Tony Award, Special Award; Tony Award, Lifetime Achievement; University of Pennsylvania; Pulitzer Prize; Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber; West Side Story

Abstract: Harold Prince was born January 30, 1928. Prince attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated with a B.A. He began producing plays in New York, with the production of The Pajama Game. He married Judy Chaplin and had two children. He then went on to produce Damn Yankees and West Side Story which both won Tony Awards. Prince won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiorello! Prince is record holder for most Tony Awards won. He directed his own plays with a series of unsuccessful productions. He almost gave up producing before the hit, Cabaret. Prince also directed operas. In the past few years Prince has directed shows Off Broadway.

Harold Smith Prince was born January 30, 1928 in New York City. Prince was born into a privileged upper-middle, lower-rich class German-Jewish family and was an only child. He was exposed to many of the greatest productions and actors of the time, including Orson Welles’s Julius Caesar and Burgess Meredith’s Winterset. When he was six and seven his grandmother would take him to her box at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1944 he graduated from the Franklin School, a private preparatory school, which was also his grandfather’s alma mater. As a child from age eight to nine, Prince worshiped theater and producers. He knew the history of every famous actor. He obsessed over the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, going through the stacks, reading reviews of plays, reading the plays themselves, and looking at theater designs by Norman Bel Geddes and Stewart Craig. Harold Prince went on to attend the University of Pennsylvania and graduated with a B.A. in 1948. At college he was a member of the Penn Players. Along with his work in the theater, he also founded and managed the campus radio station and wrote, acted, and directed weekly play adaptations. He enrolled in a liberal arts program with a concentration on English, psychology, philosophy, and history.

After graduating he wrote plays and sent them to New York producers. After sending one script to ABC-TV, he was referred to the television production office of George Abbott in New York City. He began his association with his mentor, author-director George Abbott, starting off working as his office boy. In 1950 Prince was inducted into the army and stationed in Stuttgart, Germany for two years as an anti-aircraft artillery gunner. There he spent many evenings visiting a nightclub called Maxim’s, which would later become the muse for his hit musical Cabaret. Prince was discharged in October 1952.

He immediately returned to work with Abbott and Griffith on several more hit musicals and began to learn the craft of directing from Abbott. He began his Broadway producing career with a bang when Pajama Game in 1954 at age 26. The Pajama Game won the Best Musical Tony Award. This was an honor six other following collaborations with George Abbott would also receive, including: Damn Yankees in 1955, the Pulitzer-winning Fiorello! in 1959 and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1962. Prince became much more prominent after 1957 due to two major factors: his collaboration with composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim and his ability to create his own directorial style free from the influences of George Abbott. Prince worked with Griffith, producing West Side Story, which was the first collaboration with lyricist Stephen Sondheim. In 1957, Prince served as associate producer of the first film credit, The Pajama Game, soon followed by the film adaptation of Damn Yankees.

Prince also cultivated relationships with playwrights and songwriters. For example, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick produced the scores for a number of Prince produced shows. Not all of the plays were successful throughout the years; some were outright flops, for example, Tenderloin in 1960.  Others were moderately successful, like She Loves Me in 1963.  One was a true blockbuster, Fiddler on the Roof in 1964, which held the title as the longest-running show in Broadway history. In 1964, Prince assumed leadership of the League of New York Theatres from producer Herman Shumlin. He also worked closely with John Kander, directing that composer’s first musical A Family Affair in 1962.

Prince would go on to collaborate with Sondheim on many more breakthrough productions: Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), and Merrily We Roll Along (1981). In the 1980s Prince had a string of box-office and critical failures, including the musicals A Doll’s Life (1982), Grind (1985), and Roza (1986). His career rebounded following a series of successful collaborations with British composer/lyricist Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. Their productions of Evita (1978) and The Phantom of the Opera (1986) were international successes. In the following years, Prince directed operas, dramas, and musicals, yet none were as successful as his staging of Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992) and Showboat (1997). He has directed 11 operas and was a 1994 Kennedy Center Honoree. In the past few years Prince has directed shows Off Broadway. He is still very much involved in discovering and encouraging new talent and putting on such relatively risky productions as Three, a trio of one-act musicals which is playing at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia. Prince has been an advocate for regional theater for a long time and is always thinking up new ideas.

Works:
Plays:

• The Pajama Game, Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 1954.
• Damn Yankees, 46th St. Theater, 1955.
• West Side Story, Winter Garden Theater, 1957.
• Fiorello! Broadhurst Theatre, 1959.
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Alvin Theatre, 1962.
• Fiddler on the Roof, Imperial Theatre, 1964.
• Cabaret, Broadhurst Theatre, 1966.
• Follies, Winter Garden Theater 1971.
• A Little Night Music, Shuburt Theatre,1973.
• Evita, Prince Edward Theatre, 1979.
• The Phantom of the Opera, Majestic Theater, 1988.
• Show Boat, Ziegfeld Theatre, 1994.

Sources:

• Becker, Jules. “The price’ is quite right.” Jewish Advocate.Boston:(4 Aug. 2006): 22.
• Coven, Brenda. David Merrick and Hal Prince: an Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland. 1993.
• Hirsch, Foster. Harold Prince and the American musical theatre.”  Rev. and expanded Ed. New York: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2005.
• Hoot, Frederick Bowersox. Harold Prince: Producer-Director of Broadway’s Best Musicals of the 1970s.New York: Proscenium Publishers Inc., 1989.
• Ilson, Carol. Harold Prince: From Pajama Game to Phantom of the Opera. New York: UMI Research Press, 1989.
• Najjar, Michael. “Hal Prince.” St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture. Detroit: St. James Press, 2000. 114-115.
• “Profile: Musical director Hal Prince” All Things Considered. NPR: 17 Nov. 2000.