On his calmest days, Hal Prince is the kind of man who can log a mile or two just pacing his office. Last week, as he waited for this week's opening of his newest Broadway musical, A Little Night Music, he was almost ill with tension and suspense. "As the years go on, it gets worse," confessed Prince, so tired that his voice cracked. "The fact that I did a show last year doesn't get me over the naked fright about this one. My bones ache, I have a desperate desire to lie in bed, and I can't locate energy."
A likely story. Actually, Prince has been locating energy all his life. At 45, he is the most creative man in the American musical theater today, with ten Tony awards for musicals he has either produced or directed—or both. In the past several years he has produced not only the longest-running show in Broadway's history, Fiddler on the Roof, but also two of the most innovative ones, Company and Follies. To hear him complain about possible failure—never a very distant possibility on Broadway —is a little like listening to Jean Paul Getty moan about rising meat prices.
Prince's previous show, Follies, was a critical success but a financial disaster, losing $700,000. But his record is still little short of spectacular. Over the years his shows have made a profit of $16,820,750. "I believe that good luck is tied to the power of positive thinking," he says. "I'm convinced that I will get to be as old as Churchill and still be stimulated by life."
Prince, a native of Manhattan, was a matinee addict; one of his earliest theatrical memories is of being mesmerized by Orson Welles playing in Julius Caesar at the Mercury Theater. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in English in 1948, he so impressed Director George Abbott with his enthusiasm that he was hired as a "call boy," the factotum who tells actors when they are to go onstage. Then, as now, Prince was prone to nervousness, and first night out he lost his voice. After two years off for Army service, he was rehired in 1953 as an assistant stage manager of Abbott's hit Wonderful Town, and began dreaming about producing a show of his own.
The opportunity came when Robert Griffith, the stage manager of Wonderful Town and Prince's longtime mentor, spotted a novel called 7½¢. Within a week, the pair had bought theatrical rights. A stockbroker's son but less than rich, Prince spent six months giving living-room auditions for potential backers; 15 chorus girls from Wonderful Town put up their pin money. The upshot was something called The Pajama Game. Within 14 weeks all the investors had got their original money back —the first of many payments that would eventually amount to a 774% profit.