Harold Prince
Harold Smith Prince, commonly known as Hal Prince, was an Theater in [the United States|American theatre] director and producer known for his work in musical theatre.
One of the foremost figures in 20th-century theatre, Prince became associated throughout his career with many of the most noteworthy musicals in Broadway history, including West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Sweeney Todd, and Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical)|Phantom of the Opera], the Broadway shows|longest-running show in Broadway history]. Many of his productions broke new ground for musical theater, expanding the possibilities of the form by incorporating more serious and political subjects, such as Nazism, the difficulties of marriage, and the forcible opening of 19th-century Japan.
Over the span of his career, he garnered a record 21 Tony Awards, including eight for Direction, eight for producing the year's Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three Special Awards.
Early life
Prince was born to an affluent family in Manhattan, the son of Blanche and Harold Smith. His family was of German Jewish descent. He was adopted by his stepfather, Milton A. Prince, a stockbroker. Following his graduation from the Franklin School, later called the Dwight School, in New York, he entered the University of Pennsylvania, where he followed a liberal arts curriculum and graduated in three years at age 19. He later served two years with the United States Army in post–World War II Germany.Career
Prince began work in the theatre as an assistant stage manager to theatrical producer and director George Abbott. Along with Abbott, he co-produced The Pajama Game, which won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Musical. He received Tony Awards for 1956's Damn Yankees, 1960's Fiorello! and 1963's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Tony nominations for 1958's West Side Story and New Girl in Town. He went on to direct and produce his own productions in 1962 beginning with the unsuccessful A Family Affair followed by his first critically successful musical, She Loves Me.He received a Tony Award for producing Fiddler on the Roof and almost gave up musical theatre before his Tony winning success directing and producing with Kander and Ebb's Cabaret in 1966, followed by Kander and Ebb's Zorba. 1970 marked the start of his greatest creative collaboration, with composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim. They had previously worked on West Side Story and their association spawned a long string of landmark productions, including Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Side by Side by Sondheim, and Sweeney Todd. Following Merrily We Roll Along, which ran for 16 performances, they parted ways until Bounce in 2003.
He received a Tony nomination for directing On the Twentieth Century and won twice for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals Evita and The Phantom of the Opera. Between them, Prince was offered the job of directing Cats by Lloyd Webber but turned it down and directed A Doll's Life with lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The musical continued the story of Nora Helmer past what Henrik Ibsen had written in A Doll's House. It ran for five performances; The New York Times wrote, "It was overproduced and overpopulated to the extent that the tiny resolute figure of Nora became lost in the combined mechanics of Broadway and the Industrial Revolution." Broadway wags dubbed the show either "A Doll's Death" or, due to the omnipresent portal out of which Nora slammed in the prologue, "A Door's Life."
Prince's other commercially unsuccessful musicals included Grind, which closed after 71 performances, and Roza. However, his production of The Phantom of the Opera eventually became the longest-running show in Broadway history. Prince ultimately stopped producing because he "became more interested in directing". Kiss of the Spider Woman, which he directed in 1993, received the Tony Award for Best Musical. In 1994, Prince became a Kennedy Center Honoree. He received a 1995 Tony Award for directing Showboat, and was nominated again for 1999's Parade.
In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. In 2006, Prince was awarded a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. In 2007, he directed his last original musical on Broadway, LoveMusik, and on May 20 of that year, he gave the commencement address at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He was presented with the American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award by awards council member and author Toni Morrison at a 2007 ceremony in Washington, D.C. In 2008 Prince was the keynote speaker at Elon University's Convocation for Honors celebration.
Prince co-directed, with Susan Stroman, the 2010 musical Paradise Found. The musical features the music of Johann Strauss II as adapted by Jonathan Tunick with lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh. The book was written by Richard Nelson, based on Joseph Roth's novel The Tale of the 1002nd Night. The musical premiered at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London on May 19, 2010 and closed on June 26, and starred Mandy Patinkin.
A retrospective of Prince's work titled Prince of Broadway was co-directed by Prince and Susan Stroman and presented by Umeda Arts Theater in Tokyo, Japan in October 2015. The book was written by David Thompson with additional material and orchestrations by Jason Robert Brown. Prince was slated to direct The Band's Visit in 2016 but withdrew due to scheduling conflicts. Prince of Broadway opened in August 2017 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in New York with a cast featuring Chuck Cooper, Janet Dacal, Bryonha Marie Parham, Emily Skinner, Brandon Uranowitz, Kaley Ann Voorhees, Michael Xavier, Tony Yazbeck, and Karen Ziemba.
In addition to musicals, Prince also directed operas including Josef Tal's Ashmedai, Carlisle Floyd's Willie Stark, Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and a revival of Bernstein's Candide. In 1983 Prince staged Turandot for the Vienna State Opera.
Legacy
Prince was the inspiration for John Lithgow's character in Bob Fosse's film All That Jazz. He was also assumed to be the basis of a character in Richard Bissell's novel Say, Darling, which chronicled Bissell's own experience turning his novel 7½ Cents into The Pajama Game.According to Masterworks Broadway, "besides his achievements as a producer and director, Prince is also known for bringing innovation to the theatrical arts. In collaboration with Stephen Sondheim, he was a pioneer in the development of the 'concept musical,' taking its departure from an idea or theme rather than from a traditional story. Their first project of this kind, Company, was a solid success and paved the way for other innovative musicals."
According to The New York Times, "He was known, too, for his collaborations with a murderer's row of creative talents, among them the choreographers Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Michael Bennett and Susan Stroman; the designers Boris Aronson, Eugene Lee, Patricia Zipprodt and Florence Klotz; and the composers Leonard Bernstein, John Kander, Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber."
The Harold Prince Theatre at the Annenberg Center of the University of Pennsylvania is named in his honor.
A documentary titled Harold Prince: The Director's Life was directed by Lonny Price and broadcast on PBS Great Performances in November 2018.
In 2019, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts presented an extensive exhibit honoring the life and work of Harold Prince. Prince served as a trustee for the library and on the National Council of the Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts. At the behest of Lotte Lenya, whom he cast in Cabaret, Prince also served on the Board of Trustees of The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and as a judge of their Lotte Lenya Competition.
Andrew Lloyd Webber said: "There isn't anybody working on musical theater on either side of the Atlantic who doesn't owe an enormous debt to this extraordinary man....Hal was very minimalist with his sets. People think of Phantom as this great big spectacle. That's an illusion. Hal always looked at the show as this big black box in which the stage craft enabled you to believe there was this impressive scenery all around you."
Jason Robert Brown said: "More than anything else, when I think about Hal, I think about his belief in theater. He believed in what it could do....He thought a lot about the world and the political systems and emotional support systems in it. He was very much a political artist."