Background
Prince was born in New York City on January 30, 1928. He was adopted in childhood by Milton A. Prince, a stockbroker, and Blanche Stern.
((Applause Books). In this fast-moving, candid, conversati...)
(Applause Books). In this fast-moving, candid, conversational, and entertaining memoir, Harold Prince, the most honored director/producer in the history of the American theater looks back over his seventy-year (and counting!) career. In 1974, Prince released his first book, Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre . Although Contradictions has since attained cult status among producers, directors, and actors alike, Prince, in hindsight, believes he wasn't ready to publish such a tome at that point in his career (in fact, doing so was an act of "insane arrogance"). Although he doesn't regret that effort, he is at last prepared to conclude it, to "see where I was right in my assessments and where I was wrong." In Sense of Occasion , Prince returns to this seminal text, invigorating it with fresh insights cultivated through four decades of additional practice. Sense of Occasion gives an insider's recollection of the making of such landmark musicals as West Side Story , Fiddler on the Roof , Cabaret , Company , Follies , Sweeney Todd , Evita , and Phantom of the Opera , with Prince's perceptive comments about his mentor George Abbott and his many celebrated collaborators, including Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, John Kander, Boris Aronson, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Angela Lansbury, Zero Mostel, Carol Burnett, and Joel Grey. As well as detailing his titanic successes that changed the form and content of the American musical theater, Prince evenhandedly reflects on the shows that didn't work, most memorably and painfully Merrily We Roll Along . Throughout, he offers insights into the way business is conducted on Broadway, drawing sharp contrasts between past and present. This thoughtful, complete account of one of the most legendary and long-lived careers in theater history, written by the man who lived it, is an essential work of personal and professional recollection.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1495013022/?tag=2022091-20
Prince was born in New York City on January 30, 1928. He was adopted in childhood by Milton A. Prince, a stockbroker, and Blanche Stern.
Following his graduation from the Dwight School in New York, he entered the University of Pennsylvania at age 19, where he followed a liberal arts curriculum and graduated three years later. He later served two years with the United States Army in post-World War II Germany.
Prince was an active participant in the school's drama club, the Penn Players, and after graduation in 1948 he took a job as aide to the legendary director-playwright George Abbott. Prince's apprenticeship was interrupted in 1950 when he was drafted into the U. S. Army, but he returned to the Abbott office in 1952 as assistant stage manager for the musical comedy Wonderful Town, which opened in February 1953. The next year Prince joined with Robert Griffith and Frederick Brisson to produce The Pajama Game, a jubilant musical based on the seemingly somber theme of labor-management strife at a Midwest pajama factory. The creative team behind The Pajama Game--songwriters Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, writer-director George Abbott, and choreographer Bob Fosse--were also backed by Prince's production group for their next effort, Damn Yankees (1955), an entertaining musical take on the Faust legend. New Girl in Town, the moderately successful Prince-Griffith-Brisson musical adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie, opened in 1957. It was followed later that year by West Side Story, a Prince-Griffith production that has been hailed as one of the classic works of the American musical theater for its bold use of balletic dances (by Jerome Robbins) and a jazz-laced score (by Leonard Bernstein) to present a contemporary version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Fiorello! (1959), the Prince-Griffith musical based on the career of New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, played on Broadway for more than two years. After Griffith's death in 1961 Prince began producing shows on his own, generating a succession of top-quality musicals that included Take Her, She's Mine (1961), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). Meanwhile, he began to direct shows, starting with the intimate musical A Family Affair (1962), which Prince's extensive script doctoring failed to rescue, and continuing with a production of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker. The charming She Loves Me (1963) was the first show both produced and directed by Prince, who also donned two hats for the darkly entertaining Cabaret (1966), set in 1930's Germany, and the more conventional Zorba (1968). Company (1970) was the first of several adventurous--although not always successful--Stephen Sondheim shows that were directed (and in most cases produced) by Prince. Other fruits of their collaboration were the sumptuous Follies (1971; co-directed by Michael Bennett); A Little Night Music (1973), based on the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night; Pacific Overtures (1976), set in Japan; Sweeney Todd (1979), a Victorian revenge melodrama centering on a mad barber; and Merrily We Roll Along (1981), a failure based on an equally unsuccessful 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. During this period Prince staged a triumphant revival of the 1956 Leonard Bernstein musical Candide (1974) and he also mounted both the London (1978) and New York (1979) productions of Evita, a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics by Timothy Rice. The sweeping opulence of Prince's staging of Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (London 1986; New York 1988) helped assure the production's phenomenal success. In 1993 Prince directed the Broadway production of Kiss of the Spider Woman, a sensitive exploration of totalitarianism and homophobia. His lavishly staged and partially rescripted revival of the classic Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II musical Show Boat in 1994 brought him his record 20th Tony Award.
He has garnered twenty-one Tony Awards, more than any other individual, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year's Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three special awards.
((Applause Books). In this fast-moving, candid, conversati...)
Quotations: "All you need as a young person is one person who you respect to say: 'You can do this. Do it!"
Prince married Judy Chaplin on October 26, 1962. They are parents of Daisy Prince, a director, and Charles Prince, a conductor. Actor Alexander Chaplin, best known as "James Hobert" on Spin City, is Prince's son-in-law.
She was daughter of Saul Chaplin.
