Atmosphere outside The Shubert Theatre in 1975. (Photo by Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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The history of Broadway will be heading to the big screen.
After receiving an Academy Award nomination for his high-profile documentary about the life of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, director Oren Jacoby chose to focus his camera on the bright lights of Broadway. Depicting the resurgence and evolution of the Great White Way and the Times Square neighborhood over the past fifty years, his new film, On Broadway, will premiere in Manhattan at the IFC Center on November 11.
“It starts during the 1970’s with the depression in New York City, and looks at the innovations of theater owners and producers in the ways that they approached developing shows and picking the shows that they produced,” explained Jacoby. Broadway was struggling to survive, and “it was the lowest point,” he said.
“In 1972, when Bernie Jacobs and I became responsible for the Shubert theaters, only 11 of our houses were lit,” recalled Gerald Schoenfeld, the late chairman of the Shubert Organization, which owned 15 Broadway theaters at the time. “We found ourselves going rapidly downhill,” he stated, recognizing that “[w]e had to create a new climate for the theater, we had to make it attractive for producers to produce plays, for investors to want to invest, … and we had to create new audiences.”
In an effort to fill its empty theaters, the Broadway landlord became a Broadway producer, and started to invest in shows.
“We invest in a show because we think it may be a hit, of course, but also because we may have a theater we want to fill,” explained Schoenfield. “By investing, we’re encouraging the producers to bring the show to us.” But, “even if we don’t think we have a hit show on our hands, we might invest because we need to fill a theater temporarily as we need to fill a theater temporarily as we wait for a show we really want to arrive,” he wrote, emphasizing that “it’s never wise to leave the house dark.”
The Shubert Organization invested in the coming-of-age musical Pippin, which filled the Imperial Theatre for over four years. It also booked popular shows like Equus and Grease for its theaters.
One of the other shows that the Shubert Organization helped along, A Chorus Line, transferred from the not-for-profit Public Theater to Broadway in 1975. The unusual musical became a sensational success, attracting millions of people to Broadway.
“Before A Chorus Line, there was no money,” and, “[a]fter A Chorus Line, there was nothing but money,” remarked Phillip J. Smith, who replaced Schoenfeld at the Shubert Organization.
But, “while the success of A Chorus Line gave the Shubert Organization, which had not had a big hit in a long time, some capital, and the show became a magnet for the neighborhood, the neighborhood was still in horrible shape,” commented Jacoby. “Manhattan above Pennsylvania Station from Sixth Avenue to the Hudson River was a no man’s land,” he recalled. “There was no new development or investment, because people were scared of the crime, the sex, and the drugs,” Jacoby said.
For example, in 1984, there were 2,300 crimes committed on 42nd Street between Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue. About 20 percent of the crimes were serious felonies, such as murder and rape.
“Going to the theater meant putting your life at risk,” Schoenfeld stated. “Things were so desperate that we moved the start of evening performances from eight thirty p.m. to seven thirty p.m. so that theatergoers could leave the neighborhood an hour earlier,” and, “[w]hen the shows ended, patrons fled, and the district became a wasteland, except for people looking for sex, paying for sex, or exhibiting sex,” he described.
In order to “make people want to come to the neighborhood” to watch A Chorus Line and the new string of big-budget musicals from London like Cats and Les Misérables, Jacoby recalled that the Broadway community collaborated with local government officials to make the area safer for theatergoers. It convinced Mayor John Lindsay, a longtime theatergoer, to assemble a task force to deal with the crime in Times Square, and set up a Midtown Community Court to handle “quality of life” crimes like panhandling.
“Our belief was that if we could concentrate a highly visible police present in the area, it would be a comfort to those who wanted to go to the theater,” explained Carl Weisbrod, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Midtown Enforcement. Felonies committed on the stretch of 42nd Street between Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue declined, prompting one city official to comment that “crime has reached such a low level on that block that we don’t keep statistics anymore.”
In addition, after several ambitious real estate projects never got off the ground, the government offered significant tax breaks to attract large companies to Times Square.
“[P]eople look at 42nd Street and say, ‘All because of Disney,’ and that’s not really the case,” admitted Peter Schneider, the former Chairman of Walt Disney Studios. “There were so many people who were important before us,” he said.
The entertainment firm Viacom signed a lease at 1515 Broadway in 1990, and the publishing firm Bertelsmann AG purchased 1540 Broadway from Citicorp in 1992. In 1992, Morgan Stanley bought 1585 Broadway, and, in 1993, Disney signed a memorandum of understanding to renovate the New Amsterdam Theatre. The deal involved the state giving Disney a $21 million loan at a 3 percent interest rate.
“The results show the power of supply-side tax cuts: more than $2.5 billion in private-sector investment has poured into Times Square since 1995,” commented William J. Stern, the former chairman of New York State’s Urban Development Corporation.
With the growth of investment in Times Square, Broadway continued to grow, and the final part of the film explores “how we got Broadway to where it is now with Hamilton and Harry Potter,” Jacoby described. It examines how Broadway is a home to “long-running successful musicals, but still finds a way for plays and small and intimate projects to survive through non-profit theaters,” he said.
Connecting the dots between A Chorus Line and Hamilton, which both premiered at the Public Theater, Jacoby explained that “the arc of the whole story is the role of non-profit theaters in helping to stimulate the changes of Broadway.”
Instead of putting on expensive out-of-town tryouts, Broadway producers now often choose to mount their shows at not-for-profit theaters using cheaper union contracts. The producers cover most of the shows’ budgets, giving the theaters a share of the future profits, and enabling the theaters to present bigger shows than they could otherwise afford.
“The two parts of the ecosystem feed each other in different ways and can really fill in each other’s gaps in way that benefit both,” explained Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, who teamed up with the not-for-profit Lincoln Center Theater to produce the revival of the musical Falsettos in 2016.
Between 1999 and 2008, about 61 percent of the nominations for the top prizes at the Tony Awards went to shows that were presented or that had been previously presented at not-for-profit theater companies. Shows like Dear Evan Hansen, Fun Home, and Once all came from not-for-profit theaters.
“Broadway wouldn’t look like it does right now without the non-profit,” commented Greg Reiner, the director of theater and musical theater at the National Endowment for the Arts.
But, non-profit theaters might also look different without all of royalty payments from their collaborations with Broadway producers.
The Public Theater has earned at least $6.2 million from its involvement in Hamilton, and its reputation as a springboard for Broadway shows has helped its fundraising efforts. Between 2017 and 2018, its contributions and grants increased almost one-third to $35 million.
Featuring interviews with leading Broadway producers, directors, actors, and other veterans in the industry, such as the head waiter at the popular Broadway restaurant Sardi’s, On Broadway hopes to tell a story that is more thrilling that anything on stage. “It will surprise people,” Jacoby said.