ABSTRACT
The private individuals who finance a Broadway show are essential to its success. By May 1957, the new production team of Bobby Griffith and Hal Prince was in place, and they set about rising the necessary funding from 'angels'. Roger L. Stevens was a remarkable Broadway figure: a property developer by profession and someone who relished the big gesture – none bigger than in 1951, when he led a syndicate to buy the Empire State Building. The Roger Stevens papers also reveal what the running costs were for the show. Very unusually for a musical, almost nothing changed between the start of trvouts in Washington and the move to Broadway six weeks later, so the show that critics saw in all three cities was more or less the same. The music critic of the Times found something positive to say about the score, and to give credit for the introduction of innovations that are 'uncommon' in a Broadway show.
