Background
Leland Hayward was born on September 13, 1902 in Nebraska City, Nebraska, United States. He was the only son of Colonel William Hayward, a prosperous attorney, and Sarah Ireland Tappin.
(Souvenir Book from production by Leland Hayward of Irving...)
Souvenir Book from production by Leland Hayward of Irving Belin's "Call Me Madam," with Elaine Stritch, Kent Smith, David Daniels, Galina Talva, Pat Harrington, E.A. Krumschmidt, Alexander Clark, Ralph Chambers, Jay Velie, music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, directed by George Abbott, dances and musical numbers staged by Jerome Robbins, scenery and costumes by Raoul Pene Du Bois, musical director Phil Ingalls.
https://www.amazon.com/Madam-Souvenir-Elaine-Stritch-Smith/dp/B008IW1C1I?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B008IW1C1I
Leland Hayward was born on September 13, 1902 in Nebraska City, Nebraska, United States. He was the only son of Colonel William Hayward, a prosperous attorney, and Sarah Ireland Tappin.
Hayward was educated at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, and attended Princeton University in 1920 before leaving for academic reasons in his freshman year.
Hayward got his start in show business by traveling the country as a press agent for United Artists, a job he was fired from when he began publishing free-lance articles about actors and actresses who were not affiliated with UA. He continued to broaden his contacts as a talent scout, general contract man, and press agent for other companies in New York and Hollywood.
In 1927, fascinated by the release of the first talking picture, he sold a manuscript of struggling writer and friend Ben Hecht's to MGM, and used his commission to pay his travel expenses to a meeting with John W. Rumsey, president of the American Play Company, an established literary agency in Manhattan. Hayward went to work for Rumsey, taking only half the commission, and lobbied for the establishment of a motion-picture department. In 1929 Hayward was able to purchase a 33 percent interest in APC.
In 1932 his partnership with the company was dissolved, and Hayward established his own agency at 654 Madison Avenue in New York, positioning himself, at the age of thirty, to represent an impressive list of writers and performers that would eventually include Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edna Ferber, Howard Lindsay, Russell Crouse, Myrna Loy, Charles MacArthur, James Stewart, Burgess Meredith, Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins, Greta Garbo, Charles Laughton, Judy Garland, Dorothy McGuire, and Gregory Peck. One of his clients, Henry Fonda, had once been married to Hayward's second wife, Margaret Sullavan, but that never detracted from the cordial friendship the two men shared.
Hayward's first professional success stemmed from his reading of John Hersey's A Bell for Adano. He was convinced the book would make a great play, but could interest no Broadway producer in the venture. His client and friend, the playwright Paul Osborn, agreed to dramatize the work if Hayward would personally produce it. He did so, and the play made its debut at the Cort Theater on December 6, 1944, running for 296 performances.
In addition to his main activities, during World War II he operated Allied pilot training bases, including Thunderbird field in Arizona. In 1946 he organized and was chairman of Southwest Airways, Inc. , later rechristened Pacific Airlines.
His producer's eye was famously discerning and yet oddly catholic; he refused to confine himself to the formulaic or to any one genre, instead championing excellence in whatever guise he encountered it. His theatrical productions included Mister Roberts (1948); South Pacific (1949); Gypsy (1959); and other works.
His classic films included the cinematic version of Mister Roberts (1955), The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), and The Old Man and the Sea (1958). Hayward's forays into television were largely CBS "spectaculars" such as The Fabulous Fifties (1960) and The Gershwin Years (1961), though a series and subsequent special he developed for NBC, That Was the Week That Was (1964), became a classic update of the traditional variety show.
As a result of his frenetic life-style, Hayward was plagued with stress-related ailments, including alarming bouts of internal bleeding. In his late sixties, he suffered two strokes. He died at his home in suburban Yorktown Heights, New York.
Leland Hayward was a Hollywood and Broadway extraordinary successful producer. His 1949 production of South Pacific was a great success. He produced both the 1948 play Mister Roberts and the 1955 film version. Other noteworthy film productions included The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), and The Old Man and the Sea (1958). He was also a co-producer of the 1959 show Gypsy. His biggest success was The Sound of Music that opened the same year. Between 1944 and 1971 his productions won two Pulitzer Prizes (State of the Union and South Pacific), thirty Tonys, thirteen Donaldson Awards, fourteen "bests" in Variety's annual critics' poll, and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award.
(Souvenir Book from production by Leland Hayward of Irving...)
Hayward's appetite for business was legendary. By habit, he juggled several telephone calls at once, without losing the thread of any conversation.
In addition to Hayward's distinguished contributions to the performing arts, Hayward had a lifelong interest in aviation, piloting his own plane from coast to coast on business trips.
An expert photographer, Hayward captured sensitive images of nature and empathetic poses of his famous friends. Many of these remain in the archives of the Theater Collection of the New York Public Library, which honored him with a retrospective exhibition that opened on September18, 1974.
Hayward enjoyed the company of attractive and intelligent women, marrying five times. He was married to Inez Gibbs twice (1921-1922 and 1930-1934).
In 1936 he married the actress Margaret Sullavan; they had three children, Brooke, Bridget, and William. Bridget and William suffered intensely from emotional distress exacerbated by their parents' estrangement; both were committed for psychiatric treatment during their growing-up years. Bridget died, probably as a result of an epileptic attack, in 1960, but her two surviving siblings went on to distinguish themselves professionally, William as coproducer of Easy Rider (1969) and other films, and Brooke as the author of Haywire (1977), a memoir of her family that included markedly honest reminiscences about their tribulations as well as their gifts.
Hayward's third wife was Nancy "Slim" Hawks, who earlier had been married to the director Howard Hawks; that marriage lasted from 1949 to 1960.
In 1960 Hayward married Pamela Digby Churchill.
She was an American actress of stage and film.
She was an English-born American political activist for the Democratic Party, diplomat, and socialite.
She was an American New York socialite and fashion icon during the 1950s and 1960s, exemplifying the American jet set.
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