On December 16, 2019, a memorial service was held for Harold Prince. In its aftermath I recall my first story about him, for Inside magazine in 1996. He talked with me about parts of his life that he omitted from his own two books of memoirs.
While throngs of Philadelphians headed out of town for the Memorial Day weekend in 1996, a group of celebrated creative people came into Philly for an extended weekend of work. They were led by director Harold Prince, age 68, and they were staging a new musical play about the most notorious anti-Semitic incident in American history, which, coincidentally, took place on a Memorial Day — the Confederate Memorial Day — in 1913.
Parade is a dramatic telling of the story of Leo Frank, who was falsely accused of murdering a teenage girl and lynched by a Georgia mob. [It opened at Lincoln Center in New York City in December 1998.]
Prince rehearsed the piece in Philadelphia and gave two performances before a small number of invited guests. This is his preferred way of work. He likes to control his environment and to be in total command of every aspect of a production. Because of his stature, he’s able to get the conditions he wants: he’s won more Tony Awards than any other person and he’s received the Kennedy Center Award for lifetime achievement.
Those who worked with him say he’s a great editor of material, and he responds, “I’m not good at writing and I don’t ever want to write plays. I interpret.” He will stop a scene to suggest a new action or a new line. Working on Parade he followed his familiar pattern, getting to the rehearsal early, before anyone else. Personally arranging the chairs where the cast members will sit. Giving detailed directions about physical moves. Telling the actors exactly how their lines should be read.
Prince picked Philadelphia for the 1996 tryout largely because the city was the starting-point for his career.
He told this writer, “It was when I was a student at Penn between 1944 and 1948 that I decided to make the theater my life.” He remembers concentrating more on the theatrical scene than on his studies (though he did graduate in January, 1948, before his 21st birthday.) His curriculum was liberal arts, including literature, psychology and history — “still my favorite subject.” His extra-curricular classrooms were the Erlanger, Shubert, Forrest, Locust Street and Walnut Street theaters, the five biggest houses in Philly. In those days almost every Broadway-bound play and musical played Philadelphia first, where the creators would rewrite each night, before moving into a New York theater.
At intermissions, the youthful Prince eavesdropped on conversations in the lobby. He told me about listening to composer Julie Styne and lyricist Sammy Cahn talking about how to fix High Button Shoes during its 1947 tryout. And he still has the image in his mind of the producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein in the lobby of the Shubert talking about changes they wanted to make in Annie Get Your Gun.
On one occasion Prince passed the big glass window of the Horn & Hardart restaurant at Broad and Chestnut Streets and saw the legendary Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn dining inside. So he went in and got a table next to theirs so he could hear their conversation.
He’d hang out at stage doors to see performers. When he met Jose Ferrer, the star of Cyrano said: “Walk me back to my hotel and tell me about yourself.” From the Forrest Theater to the Sylvania Hotel at 13th & Locust, Prince told Ferrer how he wanted to be a director. What did Ferrer say to him? Did he offer advice, or help? “He just said, ‘Here’s my hotel. See ya, kid,'” relates Prince.
He also met George Abbott, the famed director who frequently came to Philly to work on shows, and who later married a young woman from Temple University. Prince pestered Abbott into giving him a job after he graduated Penn and served two years in the peacetime U.S. Army in Germany. Prince worked as an assistant stage manager and then became a co-producer of a show that Abbott was directing, The Pajama Game.
How did Prince get his compulsion? He credits his family and his Jewish background. He proudly speaks of how his family of German Jews came to the United States in the 1830’s. “Some of my relatives were among the first Jews to settle in Texas, before it became a state. Others settled in New York, and my great great grandfather was the first cantor of Temple Emanuel in New York City.
“The Jewish tradition is to be intellectually curious, to seek knowledge, to be involved in the arts. This is my heritage and I knew no other way to live. When I was a boy, everyone I knew went to Saturday theater matinees with their parents, and by the time I was eleven or twelve I started going by myself. “My grandmother had a subscription to the old Metropolitan Opera House at 39th and Broadway, and she took me with her on alternate Tuesday nights. So I also loved opera from my youth. It wasn’t anything strange or alien.
“The first opera that I saw was Rigoletto (with Lawrence Tibbett and Lily Pons) and the first play I saw was Orson Welles’ production of Julius Caesar for the Mercury Theater Company. This was about 1936 or ‘37, just after his Voodoo Macbeth and before his War of the Worlds. Then I saw Kitty Carlisle — way before she married Moss Hart — in White Horse Inn. And the 1937 revival of Porgy and Bess, revised by Gershwin, just two years after the premiere flopped. I loved it!”
While he was in high school, Prince began running to New York’s theater district as often as possible. “I’d go to a ticket agency named LeBlang’s at the corner of 42d and Broadway that specialized in the sale of reduced price tickets — sort of an early version of today’s TKTS,” he said. “There was a man standing there on an A-ladder, changing the prices on their sign. As you got closer to curtain time, the prices fell rapidly. I’d wait until the last minute and then I’d only have to pay 55 cents to get a ticket that was marked $4.40 (which was the top tab in those days.)
“I was really a dedicated theater-goer. That’s something we could use more of today. You have to be dedicated to stand there for so many hours, and then have to run several blocks to get to the show, knowing that you’re going to miss the first few minutes because the curtain was already going up when they reduced the ticket price. That’s making a commitment.”
Prince regrets the change in music in recent years. “Popular music used to be Broadway music, like ‘Some Enchanted Evening.’ But it ceased to be. The last hugely popular song was ‘Send in the Clowns’ from A Little Night Music (1973), and that’s a long time ago. We tried to find different subjects to deal with, and more serious material, and that ended happy-go-lucky songs. But it also ended big songs that told a romantic story.”
Prince later said, “I’m totally mindful that nobody will ever have the life I’ve had in the theatre. That’s past —- And that’s damn sad.”
On the right, Prince as a young producer: 
Stephen Sondheim is one of Prince’s oldest friends. They’ve been close since both were teenagers. When Prince got married in 1962, Sondheim was his best man. Picking the groom up to take him to the ceremony, Sondheim saw that Prince was carrying a stack of papers. “He asked me what it was,” says Prince, “and I told him it was a script that I thought I’d read on my honeymoon. Steve said, ‘You give me that right now. I’ll give it back to you after your honeymoon.'”
Prince married Judy Chaplin, the daughter of composer/arranger Saul Chaplin, who shared composition credits on “Bei Mir Bist du Schoen” and “The Anniversary Song” from The Jolson Story. They have a son Charley (a conductor) and a daughter Daisy (a singer and director.) Each of them, and their spouses, have produced grandchildren for Judy and Hal. Prince tells me that his wife’s family was friendly with many people in show business. Through them, he met Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Leonard Bernstein.
His main responsibility when he worked for George Abbott was setting up backers’ auditions and asking for investments, assembling the creative and performing teams and making all the business arrangements. “Being a producer is supposed to be a prestigious position,” he says, “but it isn’t. I was doing double duty as assistant stage manager, in the wings during every performance. I didn’t get to see my show from out front until six months later.”
The success of The Pajama Game led to his production of Damn Yankees with many of the same creative people. The song writers were Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. “Their background was in pop songs; they wrote ‘Rags to Riches,’ a Tony Bennett hit, and Frank Loesser recommended them,” remembers Prince. “It turned out that they had an enormous sense of what worked in the theater. They wrote good music and lyrics, not necessarily great, but they knew how to write well for the characters. (‘Hey There’ and ‘Whatever Lola Wants.’) Ross is the one who played the piano for us. He always looked fragile. One day he told me he was going into the hospital for an operation and he said “It scares me.’ He didn’t come out of the hospital.”
After that came West Side Story, which he produced, working with his friends Bernstein and Sondheim. This show brought him his first big financial success.
“Many people are spoken of as geniuses,” says Prince, “but Bernstein really was one. He had so many great talents. Critics say that he spread himself too thin, but I disagree. When you’re so good as a pianist, conductor, writer, teacher and composer of classical and show music, why shouldn’t you do everything? If you can do it all, why not?”
During the original run of West Side Story, in 1959, Prince became friends with Patricia Birch, who later became a top director. She says, “I was just a member of the Jets gang — a character named Anybody — and Hal was the producer, but he talked with us and gave us personal advice. He’s a mensch.”
Some things were better in the 1940’s, in Prince’s opinion. For instance, “a hierarchical passion for theater.” He remembers: “The intellectual aristocracy was involved in the theater, unlike today, and there was a social blending. To give you an example, when I worked for George Abbott he invited me to his estate on Long Island and I’d meet his other weekend guests, who might be Adlai Stevenson and Madame Chiang Kai Shek. And we’d all talk about the theater.”
“We’d get 175 investors to put in $1000 or $2000 each. No one could get hurt because the investment was so modest. If worst came to worst, you lost $2000 and had a marvelous experience. But when shows cost $5 million or more, that’s obscene. The terrible escalation of costs and prices has narrowed the audience. Theater audiences are no longer the people you see lining up at the Whitney and the Met, people who really care about the arts.”
As producer or director, Prince won more Tony Awards than any other person in history. As a producer, he was honored for shows such as West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof. As director, he’s won for staging Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Cabaret, Phantom of the Opera, Kiss of the Spider Woman and Show Boat.
It’s notable that Prince has been the director for the biggest hits of Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber, who are perceived as rivals. The advocates of each are intolerant of the other’s abilities. I asked Prince how he rates them. “It’s ridiculous,” he says. “In the 1930’s there was Gershwin, Kern, Rodgers, Porter, Berlin and more, and they were all friends. Now, alas, people argue about these two guys. They’re both talented, and what I notice most is that they share a powerful sense of theatricality.”
“Sondheim will always be my friend. He’s smart as hell. So inquisitive. But after the failure of Merrily We Roll Along in 1979 we felt we needed a vacation. We haven’t worked together since. Maybe we never will. But we haven’t closed the door.”
Parade was conceived when Alfred Uhry’s drama about his Southern Jewish grandmother, Driving Miss Daisy, was a hit. Prince asked Uhry to write a musical about Sammy Davis Jr. Instead, the playwright suggested the Leo Frank case as a subject. Uhry told Prince that he knew that story well because Leo Frank was employed by the Atlanta pencil factory owned by Uhry’s great-uncle, Sig Montag.
Prince “practically jumped out of his chair,” says Uhry, and agreed to do the play. Hal believes the public needs to learn about the Frank case, and the virulent anti-Semitism of that time. He criticizes shows that attempt only to amuse. “The best kind of show makes an important statement, to be received by those who want to get a message, plus entertainment,” says Prince. He was also eager to direct a show about Jewish history. “I’m proud of my Jewish heritage,” says Prince.
Uhry and Prince are both morning people. Uhry often writes new dialogue at 7 a.m. and faxes it to Prince who already is up and working at that hour. Rehearsals for Parade run from 10 til 6 every day, and Prince is quick to relax after six. He frequently invites staff members to join him for a drink or for dinner.
The composer is Jason Robert Brown, 25 years old in 1996, whose revue, Songs For Our Time, was directed by Prince’s daughter Daisy. Daisy introduced Brown to her dad, who was impressed by Brown’s rich, emotional musical style.
Prince says that Parade is “a powerful and moving show. When people express doubts about its dark subject, I tell them, ‘Look, they thought I was crazy when I made musicals about the Weimar Republic, and about a barber who slit people’s throats. And they became Cabaret and Sweeney Todd.’”
The concept of Cabaret came from his own life. “When I was in the army near Stuttgart in 1951 I went to a nightclub that had a dwarf emcee with hair parted in the middle and lacquered down with brilliantine, who wore heavy false eyelashes. Joel Grey caught the self-delusion, fear and sadness of this mediocre emcee. He’d lost the war [the First World War] and his self-respect. With National Socialism he finds his strength, and he becomes a Nazi.”
”Cabaret of course was set in the 1920s in Germany, but it was a parable about the 1950s and 60s in America, with the murder of Medgar Evers and the murder of the young men in Mississippi, Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. On the first day of rehearsal I showed the cast a centerfold from Life magazine with a group of Aryan blondes in their teens, stripped to the waist, wearing religious medals, snarling at the camera. I asked the cast to identify the time and place of the picture. It seemed like Munich in 1923. In fact it was students in Chicago fighting the integration of a school in 1966.”
Prince is proud of She Loves Me, which was his first solo directing job, in 1963. “It’s a modest show, an ironic, unsentimental love story. No one came to the footlights. It was soft-sell, long on sentiment, charm, nostalgia.” Julie Andrews wanted to play the lead but she was committed to the movie The Americanization of Emily, asked Prince to delay his production, and he wouldn’t. In retrospect, he feels that Andrews would have made She Loves Me a box office hit. Barbara Cook, as excellent as she was, did not propel the show into profitability. Prince proposed directing Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, right after they co-starred in Mary Poppins, in a movie version of She Loves Me — but it never got made.
“Follies, to my mind, dealt with the loss of innocence in the United States, using the Ziegfield Follies as a metaphor. The title suggested the Ziegfield Follies but, also, in the British sense, foolishness; and in the French folie, which means madness. A pretty girl is no longer like a melody. A theater is being torn down, and on its stage is a reunion party. To the celebrants, that theater represents the dreams of youth that’ve been lost.”
One innovation in Follies was adding four sepulchral figures of the leading characters as they had existed thirty years earlier. They wander as memories across the stage, confronting the present with the past. The climax has lavish production numbers in which the stars confront the lies that drove them to the brink of madness.
“I had an idea for a film version of Follies in 1973. It would be about the last days of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and we would start with a gala party on the sound stage at MGM. Bette Davis would sing ‘I’m Still Here’ and Joan Crawford would sing ‘Broadway Baby.’”
Hello, Dolly! and She Loves Me were written around the same time as each other. Gower Champion was interested in She Loves Me and Hal Prince was asked to consider Dolly, and it’s a good thing that those plans turned upside down. Because Champion’s direction of the wistful Hungarian story would have been too blatant, and Prince was too logical a person to embody Dolly.
“I try to give the actors motivation, to get them to identify. I told the Sweeney cast that it’s about the inroads the Industrial Revolution made on the human spirit. And it’s about living in a world without sun, with polluted air and polluted people. It’s not just about revenge. Sweeney is a victim of a depersonalized system, the collective slavery of sweatshops and assembly lines. That’s why we have a factory whistle shriek every time Sweeney cuts someone’s throat.”
“In Evita, the Perons were the Macbeths of their time. The metaphor is the media and how it can distort our vision. I intentionally made it hard for audiences to decide about her. Against your will, you want her to be glamorous. You admire her single-mindedness. You might do the same things if you were in her shoes. It’s a cautionary story.”
Prince received the honor of not one, but two theaters named for him in Philadelphia, the city where he went to college. But it embarrassed him. He told me that he didn’t want his friends to think that they were obligated to donate to these companies just because they used his name. And this reminds me of a personal incident.
At the opening reception in the lobby of the Prince Theater on Philly’s Chestnut Street, my wife walked towards him and said, “Hal, I always wondered how you get your eyeglasses to stay perched on the top of your head!” He reacted as if he’d never previously analyzed it, even though it was his familiar custom (see photo at top of this page.) “I just push them up, and they stay. I guess I have a special crease in my skull.”