(3 of 10)
Bluhdorn then decided on a strategically wise maneuver. He used his profits to buy into a more secure and promising business: auto replacement parts. In a Balkanized industry that has thousands of small suppliers, he figured that the best goal was to knit together a nationwide network of manufacturing plants, warehouses and distributors. First he bought and merged a small-parts manufacturer and a parts distributor, then gradually parlayed profits and loans to add more companies.
Today, Bluhdorn's $182 million-a-year Gulf & Western makes and sells auto parts throughout the U.S., controls 57 subsidiary companies, and has branched into the manufacture of jet-engine parts, guitars, and survival equipment for spacemen. Through his own outside investments, Bluhdorn also controls the East's 197-store Bohack supermarket chain, and is the third largest shareholder in Ward Foods, Inc.
Businessman-Showman
Harold Smith Prince, 37, has struck his bonanza in one of the roughest, toughest, least tractable businesses: the Broadway theater. A combination businessman-showman, he has produced or co-produced ten hit musicals— including Damn Yankees, West Side Story, Fiorello! and Fiddler On The Roof —that have earned $5,300,000 and brought him a personal worth of just over $1,000,000. Hal Prince has precisely the right balance of creativity, charm and salesmanship that makes a successful producer. "It's a terrible shame if you're born the brightest guy in your class," he says. "If you're not, then you learn to hustle—and that's good."
The son of a middle-income stockbroker, Prince entered the theater at 20 as an odd-job boy for Director George Abbott, got a lot of tips and contacts from him. When he was 25, Prince and another Abbott aide, the late Robert Griffith, bought an option on a book called 7½¢, hired writers and composers, then went out to raise cash in backers' auditions staged in the living rooms of friends. While four chorus girls warbled songs, Prince recited the story line and passed around a fifth of Scotch, a bag of potato chips and a ballpoint pen for prospective angels. From 164 investors, he raised $250,000 for the show—The Pajama Game. It is still playing on the road, so far has earned $1,850,000. Prince has never since had to worry about backers.
Prince's principle of success is that he has brought sensible business management and cost accounting to an erratic field in which producers too often think that budgets are for breaking. He knows what every item in every scene costs—"including how much I'll need to simulate icicles." When casting his shows, he scouts for little-known talent because "stars tend to take the cream off the top of the profits." Broadway musicals commonly cost $500,000 to produce, but none of Prince's shows has topped $400,000.
Land Speculator