Hayward, Leland, 1902-1971

Theatrical, motion picture, television producer and agent, Leland Hayward was born in Nebraska City, Nebraska on September 13, 1902.

His father, Colonel William Hayward, was a well-known lawyer who would eventually become his son's personal attorney. His parents divorced several years later, both remarrying. Hayward studied at Princeton University, but dropped out after his first year. Following a brief career as a journalist in New York, his interests led him to show business. After working as a press agent and then trying to launch a career as a film producer in the mid 1920s, Hayward found his way to the business side of the industry, working as an agent seeking properties for potential stage or film production. After working at an agency, Hayward set out on his own. Hayward went on to close tremendously lucrative deals for an impressive stable of clients, including Cary Grant, James Stewart, Clark Gable, Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn and many more. By the early 1940s, Hayward had become renowned as one of the first agents to obtain the best deals for clients by shopping their services to various studios when they came to the end of their contracts. He had not forgotten his creative side, however, and began to plan his debut as a theatrical producer. After considering several properties, Hayward settled on A Bell for Adano, a serious play about an American soldier in wartime Italy. He signed his former client Fredric March to star, and in late 1944, the play opened to excellent reviews and good business. State of the Union, his second production, staged the following year, was another critical and commercial hit, and his new career was well underway. He produced Mister Roberts in 1948. The show was a hit on a new level for Hayward, becoming one of the most successful non-musical plays in the history of Broadway. The first of several collaborations with former client Henry Fonda and writer-director Joshua Logan, Mister Roberts gave Hayward the credibility and the resources to take his career wherever he chose. Hayward followed that tremendous success with Anne of the Thousand Days, a well-received drama starring Rex Harrison, but then set a new challenge for himself with South Pacific. It perfectly represented a Leland Hayward production, in that it used first class talent and production values to dramatize a serious theme. More dramas followed, some more successful than others, and then Hayward tried a different type of show. Call Me Madam was an Irving Berlin musical starring Ethel Merman, and it was far lighter in theme and tone than any previous Hayward production. A number of less well-received dramas followed, until Point of No Return, starring Fonda. The Prescott Proposals, a drama about international diplomats, was not especially successful, and Hayward was disappointed, as he had thought very highly of the play. After its failure, he devoted himself to other media for the next several years. He produced the Ford 50th Anniversary Show, a television extravaganza which used education and entertainment to relive the first half of the twentieth century. Wish You Were Here, Hayward's next production, was a lightweight musical that impressed critics less, but ran for well over a year. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Hayward was much in demand for large-scale television specials in this vein. He produced such specials as The Fabulous Fifties (1960), The Gershwin Years (1961), The Good Years (1962) and Opening Night (1963). He also produced dramatic specials, including Saturday's Children and Tonight in Samarkand (both 1962). In the mid-1950s, Hayward moved to Hollywood and concentrated his energies on motion pictures. He settled his attentions on the three properties that would define his Hollywood years: Mister Roberts (1955), The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) and The Old Man and the Sea (1958). After the completion of The Old Man and the Sea, Hayward returned to New York and his first theatrical venture in more than four years. Who Was That Lady I Saw You With? was Hayward's first farce, and it was relatively successful. After Ballets: USA, a collaboration with close friend Jerome Robbins, Hayward embarked on a tremendously successful 1959. He co-produced Gypsy with David Merrick, yielding critical raves and huge sales, and then produced The Sound of Music with Richard Halliday, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Although critics were less than delighted, the show was the greatest financial success of Hayward's career and became one of the most successful Broadway musicals of all time. 1959 also saw Goodbye Charlie, a gender confusion comedy starring Lauren Bacall, but it was not a success. Hayward returned to Broadway in 1962 with A Shot in the Dark, starring William Shatner and Julie Harris. Later the same year, Hayward presented his last musical ever, Mr. President starring Robert Ryan and Nanette Fabray. Hayward's parallel lives as a producer and businessman merged at this time in an idea that would later prove visionary. Hayward devoted much time and resources in the early 1960s to developing a pay television system. In his plan, subscribers with an unscrambling device could pay on a program-by-program basis for those special presentations in which they were interested. Proposed programming would include first-run films, live Broadway shows and opera performances, educational classes and documentaries. The project got as far as a test run in Hartford, Connecticut, but went no further at that time. In 1963, he produced the television special That Was The Week That Was, which was an adaptation of a British television series. The series used songs, sketches and a news format to satirize current events. The special was a success and ran for two seasons on NBC. After Mr. President, Hayward's theatrical career faltered. He had numerous plays in various stages of development, including a long-planned musical version of Gone With the Wind, but most never came to fruition. The Mother Lover, a dark, absurdist comedy, did get to Broadway and lasted exactly one performance. Fortunately, Hayward had one last success in his career. The Trial of the Catonsville Nine was a modernist play based on the actual transcripts of the trial of a group of anti-war activists. He died during its run, on March 18, 1971.

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