Harold Prince – Life and Career

As an actor in musical theatre, I believe that it is important to recognize the mark that

Harold Prince has left on our world. With 21 Tony Awards to his name, it cannot be denied

that he has showcased what it is to be a sublime director and producer, and therefore

influenced and shaped the musical theatre form to be as it is today. After realising the

extent as to which he has directed and produced shows on an international level, my

comprehension of the past 60-70 years of musical theatre has now deepened.

Upon being set the presentation project, Matthew Rankcom, Carine Gilbert, Lizzie

Nance, Nick Gartland and I decided to work as a group. We all agreed that we have a similar

work ethic and time management skills, so therefore established that the collaboration

between us all would be effortless. The first step was to choose one out of the five subjects

(Brecht, Stanislavski, Shakespeare, Sondheim and Prince) on which to do our presentation.

For us, Prince was an obvious choice as we all agreed that we were most interested in the

work that he had created, which went hand in hand with his influence on musical theatre.

On a personal level, I must admit that I was unaware of the entire range of work that Prince

has done and how many Tony Awards he has to his name; I did not realise that he was the

force behind many of the musicals that I know and love today. Therefore, the choice to

study Prince was unanimous, and we all set about researching his biography and life for the

first stage of our project.

More commonly known as ‘Hal’ to those close to him, Harold Prince was born on

January 1928 in New York City into a financially comfortable, Jewish family. Despite this, his

parents divorced when he was young and Prince was brought up by his mother and

stepfather, often taking him to see shows on Broadway. These were mostly plays, as Prince
says ‘I caught up with a few musicals but they always struck me as kinda silly’

(onlineinquirer, 2012, Hal Prince Interview); this would have a profound effect on the kind

of musical that he would go on to direct/produce in the future. He maintained his interest in

theatre throughout his teenage years, and enrolled to study Liberal Arts at Penn State

University with the intention of becoming a playwright. Graduating in 1948, he then made

connections with the important Broadway director and playwright George Abbott,

becoming Assistant Stage Manager for a couple of his shows. From 1950-1952, Prince was

conscripted into the US army, but was met with work immediately after as Assistant Stage

Manager for Abbott’s ‘Wonderful Town’, which was a success. During the run, Prince and

Stage Manager Robert Griffith began collaborating on a project; this later became ‘The

Pyjama Game’ (1955), which put Prince’s first ‘Best Musical’ Tony Award underneath his

belt.

From then on, the springboard to Prince’s career had been launched and was now in

motion. After collaborating again with Griffith, Adler and Ross, Prince met Sondheim and

Bernstein to start work on West Side Story (1957), followed by Bock and Harnick’s ‘Fiorello!’

in 1959. All of these collaborations so far had been with Prince as producer, although he

yearned to direct. After Griffith died of cardiac arrest in 1961, Prince then grasped the

opportunity to direct, although his shows such as ‘She Loves Me’ (1963) were not entirely

well received. However, he still continued to act as producer on several successful shows,

such as Sondheim’s A Funny Thing That Happened On The Way To The Forum (1964), Bock

and Harnick’s Fiddler on the Roof (1964). Cabaret, with music and lyrics by Kander and Ebb,

marked Prince’s first major directorial success, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical and

Best Director.
 The 1970s marked a period of a strong collaboration with Stephen Sondheim, with

Prince becoming the pre-eminent director of the first ‘concept musical’, Company (1970). A

deconstruction of married life with a non-linear narrative, the show was based around the

main ideas and themes rather than a story and a plot, which coined the term ‘concept

musical’. This notion therefore deepened and moved the form of musical theatre forwards.

This was followed by Follies in 1971; although it was a success for Prince and Sondheim, it

proved a financial flop at the box office. His other collaborations with Sondheim included

the barbaric ‘Sweeney Todd’ in 1979, and the infamous flop ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ which

marked the end of their collaboration period in 1981.

Prince’s other notable collaboration was with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with Evita

(1978) and Phantom of the Opera (1986). With Lloyd Webber being a British composer and

productions first being mounted in London, Prince was therefore making a direct influence

on the British musical theatre form, by impacting British work with his directorial visions.

Prince’s other work includes revivals of classics such as Show Boat (1993) and Candide

(1993) and working with newer writers such as Jason Robert Brown on Parade (1998). The

versatility between genres of musicals that Prince has produced and directed conveys his

artistic ability, and his vast amount of awards validates his success.

It was essential that this extensive research was carried out in order for each

individual in our group to have a thorough understanding of Prince, so as to create a film

that was comprehensible to an audience. After we had had this time away to research, we

all agreed to meet up so we could decide the content of our film, and in what way to do it.

Because our group consists of 5 people, we agreed that it was fair to each other to do it in 5

main sections, so we would all have an equal workload. These sections would be his
biography, his collaboration period with Sondheim, the flop that ended his collaboration

with Sondheim (Merrily We Roll Along), his collaborations with Lloyd Webber, and his

overall directing style. Matthew volunteered to film and edit the videos due to a lot of

previous experience in that field, so that task was granted to him. I volunteered to take the

Merrily We Roll Along section, which was of course intended to be a shorter section, in

order to come up with an idea for the end of the film. This was to have a short musical

montage at the end in order to list all the works that Prince has done, and would also

include the awards he has won; I thought that this would have to be shown because to have

21 Tony Awards with such an extensive list of work is an important attribute of Prince.

Then, we each went away individually to prepare our short script for our particular

section, and have a think about the style in which we wanted to film it. Because my section

is about Merrily We Roll Along, I thought that it was only fit to film the video normally, but

then to reverse it during the editing process (with subtitles of course!) so that it followed

the backwards-told narrative of the story. I thought it was interesting to include the subject

of Merrily We Roll Along in the film, because although it was originally a flop that ended the

collaboration between Prince and Sondheim – in Prince’s words ‘Steve and I got sick of each

other after having worked together for so long’ (Hirsch, 1989, p.71), it has since been

successfully revived, albeit by other directors. Once Matthew filmed my section, I then

organised to see everyone at various times so we could film our musical montage for the

end of the film, all taking turns with filming each other. I compiled a list of all the shows

Prince had worked on, and picked out certain short phrases from songs for everyone to sing

so it could be a quick and easy process, and would fit within the time limitations of our

video. Once everything was filmed, it was left to Matthew to put together and edit the film.
 In putting together this short film, the extent of Prince’s influence is evident. His

collaboration with influential creatives such as Sondheim, Lloyd Webber and many more has

led to a long line of musicals that were enormously successful, as many are still running

today. I feel that Prince therefore was massively influential to his contemporaries,

particularly those whom he worked with on more than one occasion, because of the desire

to keep creating new shows with new ideas. The success of these musicals has no doubt

influenced the younger generations of aspiring actors and performers, including myself, who

watch and listen to his musicals, seeing them as pinnacles of would be careers in musical

theatre.

Bibliography

Harold Prince, Producer and Director (2017) Available at:

http://www.achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/ (Accessed: 29 May 2017)

Onlineinquirer (2012) Hal Prince Interview. Available at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJXOWoB3ljo (Accessed: 16 April 2017)

Hirsch, Foster (1989) Harold Prince and the American Musical Theater. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press