In 1988 HAIR celebrated its twentieth anniversary in the United Nations General Assembly Hall with a cast of 200, in a benefit for kids with AIDS. Among other highlights of that event, Melba Moore sang “Easy To Be Hard”, Bea Arthur sang “Black Boys” and Nell Carter sang “White Boys”. The master of ceremonies was Barbara Walters. Go figure.
HAIR's world debut was in New York City in October 1967, off-Broadway. Jerry and I wrote HAIR for the uptown big theatre audiences. It was designed to invade Broadway territory, but we couldn't get a tumble from any of the Broadway producers. “Not our cup of tea,” they would say. We retreated from our firm intention in response to Joseph Papp's offer of a 6-week run for HAIR as the opening attraction at his new theater. The old Astor Library, gutted and under fresh construction, became The New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater, and Papp chose HAIR to be the premiere presentation in his experimental space, the Anspacher Theater. (Papp had produced free Shakespeare in Central Park for years, but was now branching out and wanted to join the excitement of the avant garde theater movement.) Quite a wonderful opportunity, we thought; if we couldn't get it on-Broadway, at least we could get it jump-started downtown in the Joseph Papp spotlight of a new New York theater, in the East Village at that, where the play itself was set. As directed by Gerald Freedman and choreographer Anna Sokolow, the “Public” proved to be a perfect “out-of-town tryout”.
After 6 weeks, Joseph Papp was done with it. He really didn't envision the future for it that Jerry and I did. He had to get on with his successive productions, each one to run 6 weeks. Jerry and I were determined and knew that somehow, some way, someone was going to come along to do it. Move it, that is, to the George M. Cohan Great White Way. And along came the Butler. Yes, the Butler would do it. Michael Butler, that is. He had seen the Papp show and liked it so much that, although he had never been a producer of theatricals before, he inquired about acquiring the rights from us so that he could move that production to the Cheetah Discotheque in midtown Manhattan. We liked the idea... hey, we were getting closer to Broadway... so we gave him the rights to produce HAIR at Cheetah. When that engagement (encumbered by an unorthodox curtain time of 7:30 and a demand to play the show without intermission so the disco dancing could begin at 10 PM) finally lumbered to a close, Jerry, Galt and I had some big plans. Based on what we saw on the Public Theater stage, Jerry and I had rewritten the text, and, with Galt, had added 13 new songs, expanding the score from 20 to 33 numbers. At first Butler wanted to move the production from the Cheetah, as is, to a Broadway theater. But he soon found out how determined Jerry and I were. We wanted a new director whom we had chosen, Tom O'Horgan. We wanted casting to be done all over again. We wanted new designers, and, most assuredly, we wanted the rewritten, restructured, expanded script of HAIR to be done. Mr. Butler, a first-time producer, walked away from our proposal, probably figuring it would be too expensive for one thing. Nevertheless, we stuck to our guns, started peddling the new script to uptown producers again, and a week later the Michael called us to say he was agreeable to the new re-conceptualization.
HAIR was one of the first show to move from off- to on-Broadway. And, yes, we can truly say: The Butler did it! Put his money where his heart was.
