The King of Broadway: Hal Prince

 Cabaret, Company, Phantom of the Opera,

Evita, The Pajama Game, Sweeney Todd...

Hal Prince produced or directed (and sometimes both)

the major Broadway musicals of the 

1950s and on. 

He worked with George Abbott, Stephen Sondheim,

Fosse, Bennett, Bernstein, Robbins,

Kander and Ebb, and, it would seem, every Broadway star

worth their tap shoes.

 At one point in the 1960s,

Hal had 3 shows running on Broadway at the same time:

Fiorello!, Tenderloin, and 

Above with Liza (Flora The Red Menace)

and below with the company of Company.

 Hal was born Harold Smith, Jr.

in Manhattan in 1928.

His parents divorced and his mother remarried a stockbroker,

 Milton Prince.

Private schools, UPenn, playwriting, acting in college productions,

and finally a stint in George Abbott's office.

He began stage managing with Abbott's productions of  

Touch and Go! and Wonderful Town. 

 With Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin

in Evita,

and below with the cast of Merrily We Roll Along,

the debacle which caused a rift in the Prince/Sondheim

"continuum" for several years.

 Other flops for Hal included

It's A Bird...It's A Plane...It's Superman,

Pacific Overtures, and Grind.

Off-Broadway endeavors included Diamonds (a baseball musical!),

The Petrified Prince, and Hollywood Arms

(a Carol Burnett auto-biographical play).

 With Sweeney Todd star, Angela Lansbury.

Amongst his storied successes,

The Phantom of the Opera,

the longest running musical in Broadway history.

Below, with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Stephen Sondheim once said, 

“If there’s a burning plane, I want Hal to be the pilot. 

He’s just great faced with difficulties, and he’s a terrific leader. 

I watched him after ‘Pacific Overtures’ had been massacred by critics. 

And he had to address the cast, give them courage, 

even though he was hurting just as much.

I thought, This is a captain!”

 1928 - 2019