The Little Prince (1982)

In 1958, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe brought their Broadway success to the big screen with Gigi, a musical adaptation of the 1944 novella. The movie musical starring Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier scored at the box office— bringing in over four times its budget—and then went on to sweep the Oscars the following year, winning all nine of its nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. That record held for decades... until the third Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King, won all eleven of its nominations in 2004. Not a bad run for a Parisian love story with a charming score and some very questionable age dynamics.

After the success of Gigi, Lerner and Loewe would return to their Broadway roots in 1960 with yet another hit musical, Camelot, and it was then that Frederick Loewe announced his retirement. However, in the early 1970s, when asked to do a stage version of the Gigi film, Lerner and Loewe did come back together to adapt their score for the stage and added four new songs and a ballet to this adaptation. It opened on Broadway in November 1973, but only ran for a disappointing 103 performances.

A year later, it was the 1974 movie musical of The Little Prince that officially brought Loewe out of retirement. But as we discussed in the previous episode, this time the box office would not be as successful as it was for Gigi. While it did win the Golden Globe for Best Original Score, The Little Prince didn’t win any Academy Awards, despite being nominated for two. On top of that, neither Lerner nor Loewe were happy with the final edit of the film.

Still, the film’s producer Joseph Tandet, who also owned the rights to the Little Prince story, thought a Broadway version would fair much better than the film. However, Paramount owned the Lerner and Loewe score, and so he would have to persuade them to rewrite a new score. While Lerner was interested, the real hurdle was going to be convincing Loewe to come back for a second time. So Tandet went out to Palm Springs to visit him in hopes that he could talk him into composing a stage version. Instead, what he got was a transatlantic telephone tirade when Loewe called up Lerner in London to berate him for letting Tandet even bring up the idea.

VO - “I will not consent to my score being used in a Broadway production. Dear boy, I will not have my music mangled on Broadway. It will be mangled, no matter what you say. No, and that’s final. If you persist, I will sue!”

And that was as close as Lerner and Loewe ever got to making a Broadway comeback. But that didn’t mean Tandet was done with his idea, especially since another composer who had worked with Lerner, had been pestering Tandet for years about writing a score for The Little Prince. Well, John Barry finally got his chance to write a Broadway musical. In fact, there would be a lot of Broadway debuts with this production, from the composer and lyricist to the actors as well, including a young boy by the name of Anthony Rapp. Years before starring in Rent or Star Trek: Discovery, Rapp was a child actor living in Illinois.

Rapp - (18:30) “I was very familiar with the Little Prince because I'd done a production of a play adaptation of it when I was, like, eight. It was a really special experience, because it was a theater in which deaf and hearing actors work together. It was a community in theater, but the director who was hearing, she worked with somebody to help her adapt it. And so that there were some actors who were deaf and signed their role. And then there was a speaking actor, sort of like what Deaf West has done in their productions. And I, as the Little Prince, spoke my lines and signed while I was in the show. So that was, so I was, and I'd read the book. And so, I mean, it was it was very much a part of my spirit and my soul. Like, it was something that I was very, that had meaning and resonance for me.”

And you know, maybe they should’ve brought that Deaf West style Little Prince to Broadway. Because the 1982 stage version that ended up trying to make its way to Broadway became even more troublesome and even less successful than the 1974 movie version we talked about before. And once again, you’ll see how the simple story of a little boy who flies among the stars, has a hard time landing on screen or on the stage.

Welcome to Season Two of Closing Night, a theater history podcast that dives into the stories of Broadway's famous and forgotten shows that closed too soon. I'm Patrick Oliver Jones, an actor and producer based in New York City, and this season I'll be your guide as we uncover the mysteries of productions that never even made it to opening night. This is the second of two episodes about The Little Prince, where you'll hear firsthand from those involved, revealing just how unpredictable—and unforgiving—the path to Broadway can be.

SETTING SIGHTS ON BROADWAY

If there’s one thing you can say about lawyer and producer A. Joseph Tandet, it’s that he was persistent and seemingly unfazed by failure. It took him several years and a lot of back-and-forth just to secure the film and stage rights to The Little Prince. That same tenacity served him well as he began assembling a new team to adapt the story for the stage. With Lerner and Loewe out of the picture, he turned to his friend and colleague Stone “Bud” Widney to help find a new creative team.

Widney had previously been a part of seven Broadway shows—serving as stage manager, production supervisor, and even director. In fact, his first four productions were all Alan Jay Lerner musicals. He first suggested Mel Shapiro, the Tony-nominated director of Two Gentlemen of Verona. Shapiro then recommended Derek Walcott, a poet and playwright who had won off-Broadway awards in 1971 for Dream on Monkey Mountain. And finally, Tandet called up Academy Award winner John Barry, who felt the 1974 film score hadn’t done the story justice and was eager to try his own musical take on it.

So the four men met, and it was agreed that Walcott would write some scenes and lyrics for Barry to set to music. But according to Tandet in his memoir The Lawyer and the Little Prince, the scenes were “unsuitable, cumbersome, and practically indecipherable.” On top of that, Walcott and Barry didn’t get along— personally or professionally. So Carol Hall was brought in next. She had written the music and lyrics to The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in 1978. But after just 30 minutes with Barry, she walked out by saying, “I’ll never work with that male chauvinist pig.”

Tandet’s next idea was Hugh Wheeler, the celebrated playwright behind A Little Night Music, Candide, and Sweeney Todd. But this time Tandet went about things a little differently, leaving a copy of The Little Prince with Wheeler’s doorman. About a week later, Wheeler called—skeptical that there was a play to be made of it. There just wasn’t a clear through line. Still, he agreed to meet with Tandet and Barry, who brought along lyricist Don Black. And with that, a writing team was finally in place by 1980.

And this was no ordinary group of collaborators. All three men came from England, each with an impressive resume. At that point in his career, Wheeler had been nominated for ten Broadway awards and had won every single one. Barry and Black already had a history together too, with collaborations on the Oscar-winning “Born Free,” several James Bond themes, and the West End musical Billy, which had launched the stage career of Michael Crawford. So the two of them had an easy working relationship and understood each other’s process as they sat down to write their first Broadway musical.

Don Black - “Writing lyrics for John Barry, it’s not as simple as just making the words fit. John is very much aware of the mood of the song. And, although the lyrics have to follow the contours and curves of his melody, he's very much aware of the mood, the same as he searches for a mood for a movie. He wants the words not just to fit, but to cover that same landscape as he has covered.”

John Barry - “When I sit down and write, I can start at maybe 7 in the morning, and then I’ll look at my watch at 11:30. I mean, I’m, like, exhausted—as if I physically went through something. You know? So it’s... it’s the doing of something with passion.”

RAISING MONEY

But of course, talent and passion isn’t enough—you still need money to put on a show. So Tandet’s next challenge was funding the production. And once again, he did things a little differently. He went to a friend of his, Ray Dirks, who ran a small brokerage firm, and suggested something bold: raise the money through an initial public offering. Basically, an initial public offering—or IPO—is when a private company sells shares to the public for the first time, turning it into a publicly traded company. It’s a way to raise money, pay off debts, and establish a trading market for those shares.

Dirks was able to pull it off by selling 750,000 shares at $2 each—and just a few months later, a check for $1.5 million went to Tandet. It marked the very first time a Broadway show had ever been funded in this way. And while the finances were being handled, Tandet and Shapiro were also in constant contact, hashing out the other elements of the show, now titled The Little Prince and the Aviator.

But a new issue cropped up: the staging rights Tandet held for *The Little Prince* were set to expire in 1981. With a first draft of the script finally complete, he flew to Paris to meet with the family of author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and managed to secure a one-year extension. In his memoir, Tandet admitted he wasn’t entirely sold on the script:

“Upon arrival in Paris I had finished reading the script. I had mixed feelings about it... I thought it was somewhat awkward, but it could obviously be rewritten. Mel voiced the same opinion.”

You see, Wheeler’s adaptation brought Saint-Exupéry into the storyline, jumping back and forth between his childhood memories and the Little Prince’s planetary adventures. It was a bold choice, but still just a first draft. There was time to figure it out.

THE CREATIVE TEAM EVOLVES

But in the meantime, they would need a set designer to bring Wheeler’s story and Shapiro’s vision to the stage. So Shapiro suggested an up-and-coming designer whom he had worked with and had a show running at the Public Theatre at the time. The musical was called

Haggadah and was based on an old Hebrew folktale, with a set made up mostly of giant puppets. Tandet was fascinated by that design and made the final decision to hire Julie Taymor for her first Broadway show. Ans when it came to choreographer, they went with longtime veteran of the stage Dania Krupska, who was in the original cast of Oklahoma! and worked on many shows with Agnes DeMille.

But then suddenly in the summer of 1981, Shapiro decided to leave the production and take an offer for another show starring Donald O’Connor. His parting advice was: “I suggest you get rid of all the Noël Coward shit in the script.” And with that he was off to Canada to rehearse the Broadway-bound Say Hello to Harvey (which on a side note never made it out of Toronto, where it closed in September 1981 and never made its way to Broadway). Meanwhile back in New York, a director by the name of Robert Kalfin was brought in to replace Shapiro. He was Artistic Director of the Chelsea Theater Center and had directed three Broadway productions.

Unfortunately, though, early on in the process Kalfin wasn’t getting along with Taymor and demanded that she be fired or he would quit. Well, at the time, Tandet needed to keep his director more than he needed a set designer. So he went to Taymor and explained the situation, and she understood and left graciously so Kalfin could stay on in the show. A decision that Tandet would ultimately end up regretting.

FINDING THEIR CAST

With Julie Taymor out and Robert Kalfin now firmly in place, the production could finally stop putting out fires—at least for the moment—and focus on something a little more exciting: putting together the cast. Michael York was brought in to play Toni the Aviator, which was now loosely based on the book’s author Antione de St. Exupéry. York was best known for his film and TV work but had quite the stage resume in Britain and had also done two Broadway plays, but never a musical. Tandet described him as “absolutely charming with a slight voice, but enormous motivation and a big name.” Then there was Ellen Greene, who the entire creative team agreed would bring a slightly kookie take to the role of Suzanne the Little Rose, and this would be her Broadway debut. But just like the movie, casting the Little Prince took the most time and effort with about 500 boys auditioning for the part. Ultimately, they decided on 10- year-old Jonathan Ward, who had already been on Broadway earlier that year in MacBeth and before that in a revival of Peter Pan. And for the role of the Fennac (or Fox) as well as the Little Prince understudy, they chose a 9-year-old boy brought in from Illinois named Anthony Rapp.

Rapp - “I believe I was first seen in Chicago where I grew up outside Chicago, so I think they had a they did, like, a nationwide search kinda thing. And then I had at least one callback. I think it was only one session in New York, and that was the first time I ever went to New York. My mom and I, it was her first time being in New York. And, you know, so the audition process was pretty, it was, as far as I remember, enjoyable. Like, I feel like I was well treated. There was nothing about it that was scary or weird or dangerous, you know, feeling or anything like that.”

It was a promising start for young Anthony Rapp—and really, for the show itself. But as rehearsals drew closer, the reality of getting a new musical up and running on Broadway was starting to hit. More on that... right after the break.

TROUBLES BREWING

By the fall of 1981, The Little Prince and the Aviator still didn’t have a theater yet to open in and money was getting tight as well. In an effort to save money, it had been decided to bring the show directly to Broadway after rehearsals, with no out-of-town tryouts. Previews would start on December 31st, and opening night would be in January 1982. And remember those shares that investors had originally paid $2 a pop for? Well, they had dwindled down to a value of 50¢ at one point, but were back up to $1.50 each by the time rehearsals began in late November, which for actors like Rapp can often be the most enjoyable part of the process.

Rapp - “Whatever reason, I always, as a kid, from the first moment I ever did any kind of rehearsal in show at my summer camp theater that I where I made my debut as an actor, I just always loved being in that process. So whatever the process was like, however it was going, I was happy to be there.”

By this point Ward had turned 11 years old and Rapp was now 10, but shortly after rehearsals began there was a major shake up in casting.

Rapp - “I don't remember, you know, so long ago, I was very young, I don't remember the exact amount of time that passed, but not too long into it, they actually changed things where they made the actor who had originally been cast as the Little Prince, my understudy. They made an adult actor, the fennec, and I became the little prince. And I can you know, all these years later as an adult, I can only imagine how devastating that must have been to the original actor who was cast...It must have been very, very hard for him, but, I mean, it was incredibly exciting for me to get that, to get that. I was plenty happy to be playing with Fennec. It was a really fun role also. But, yeah, it was, so that was that was the original rollercoaster. Like, that was a nice upswing on the ride.”

And shortly thereafter, The Little Prince and the Aviator had another nice upswing come its way. A new musical by Stephen Sondheim was playing at the Alvin Theatre, but it wasn’t doing very well after a lengthy preview process. And so when Merrily We Roll Along closed after only 16 performances, Tandet jumped at the chance to sign a contract with the Nederlanders and finally secure a theater for his musical. All the while Rapp was preparing and rehearsing his new role.

Rapp - “Michael York was lovely to me. As a 10 year old child, he could not have been more lovely, and Ellen Greene. I recently moved, and I found a note that he'd written me, that was just lovely, really supported. You know, so and I'm certain that he, it was a crazy thing for him. You know, he and it was his first—I believe it was—his musical theater debut or at least Broadway musical theater debut. I mean, I know he was in the film of Cabaret, but he didn't really sing in it. So he wasn't really a singer. So so it was a big risk for him too, and he and his name was above the title and all that stuff. And, so I'm sure he had a lot riding on it.”

It was also becoming a big risk for Tandet as well, who was growing more and more frustrated with his director. In his memoir, he had this to say about Robert Kalfin:

“The idiot Kalfin...he was a total incompetent. He didn't know how to handle the actors, and he was very behind schedule. In short, he didn't know what he was doing.”

And so just two weeks into the rehearsal process in early December 1981, Kalfin was fired and Jerry Adler was brought in to replace him. Now, Adler had extensive Broadway credits dating back to 1949, mostly as a stage manager or production supervisor. But he had directed six other Broadway productions, including a My Fair Lady revival in 1976. But to a kid like Anthony Rapp, none of this really phased him.

Rapp - “I mean, I was just having fun. Like I said, I like it, yeah. Now it's under like I say, oh, yeah. The director is fired? Yeah. That's trouble. There was a lot of, material got changed a lot, but I I recognize that's just the case of almost any show that's in development. So that's not necessarily a sign of trouble.”

Adler actually took charge right away and even reorganized the story so that it now made more sense. All in all he was a breath of fresh air to the production and the rehearsal process.

Rapp - “You know, I can look back again as an adult and see, oh, yeah, there are things that were chaotic and weird, but for me, it was just like, I was just rolling with it. I was just happy to be there, having a really good time learning all these songs. I got to fly in it, like, flying by Foy, you know, the guys that did Peter Pan. That was really fun. I mean, there, all of those things, I just have, I have really happy memories of it.”

And there was a lot to be happy about. I mean for a kid these rehearsals were like a playground with so many great characters in every scene for the Little Prince to meet and interact with.

Rapp - “We had people in like, the guy playing the snake was in a interesting snake costume where his arms were becoming like the cobra head above his above his head. So we had to, like he had he had this very skin tight outfit, and he had to, like, move like a snake and keep his arms up. And we had a lot of things going on. There was dancing. There was a big plane because it was the aviator, you know, had his all that stuff.”

And speaking of dancing, a week or two before tech rehearsals were to begin, Dania Krupska was let go and Billy Wilson took over as the choreographer. Wilson was a performer in the original Bells Are Ringing and had since gone on to become a Tony-nominated choreographer who worked on the all-Black cast revival of Guys and Dolls in 1976 as well as other musicals like Eubie and Bubbling Brown Sugar. It was just one more sign that things behind the scenes weren’t exactly running smoothly. And while the adults in the company may have recognized the warning signs, the younger cast members were mostly shielded from it.

Rapp - “Ellen Greene, David Purdham who played Fennec. I mean, all of the adults were just so wonderful to me. I'm sure that they were going through a really stressful one because, you know, they they could see the writing on the wall I'm sure, in a way that little kid me couldn’t.”

HEADING INTO PREVIEWS

Now, remember that Tandet decided to not have any out-of-town tryouts? So not only was the show getting short-changed in the development process but also all these financial and creative woes were happening right there in New York for the press and insiders to hear about. And many were wondering if the show could actually open on time. Because it wasn’t just the creative elements that had to be put together, but also the many technical aspects as well. That's why tech rehearsals are just as important as the acting rehearsals. But once again, that process was cut short.

Rapp - “We certainly didn't do weeks of tech rehearsals the way they do now. I think sometimes some shows do, like, four to six weeks of tech rehearsal sometimes. I think maybe we did a week, maybe. I mean, and we had some technical things going. We had, like, flying. We had things on tracks, which then was still pretty—there weren't that many shows that were doing automated tracks, you know, coming on or off stage. We had a, the planet that the Little Prince was on was on a cherry picker—like you would see at a construction site. So that was part of our set.”

The final dress rehearsal was to happen on December 30th, with previews to start the next night. However, that final dress started at 5pm and didn’t finish till midnight. Obviously, they weren’t ready. Michael York pulled Tandet aside and said that the show wasn’t ready and previews had to be postponed. When Tandet was hesitant, York pleaded and said he would pay for all the tickets that were sold so no money would be lost. So the first preview was set for January 1, 1982 and the show was at least presentable for that initial audience.

However, Tandet now had an issue with the Nederlanders, who said he owed them an additional $50,000 in rent for the Alvin Theatre. Well, the previews weren’t well attended and rumors were circulating, especially in the press, that the show was in trouble. There was a little glimmer of hope when Tandet discovered that there was still $50,000 left in the Little Prince bank account, so he got his certified check and headed to the Nederlander office—where Tandet was now told that wasn’t enough and it had to be $90,000 or else the show would be closed.

A little backstory to this: In addition to being theater owners, the Nederlanders were also producers and had a revival of Little Johnny Jones that was touring the country, starring Donny Osmond. It had opened in Washington, DC to favorable reviews and they wanted that show to come to New York and play in one of their houses. So apparently the Nederlanders wanted The Little Prince out and Little Johnny Jones in. And unfortunately, the Little Prince wasn’t making a strong case to stay.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

According to the New York Times, business continued to be poor for the musical throughout previews, and Tandet was having trouble meeting expenses by mid- January. He had already put up $160,000 of his own money and was scrambling to raise another $150,000 just to stay afloat.

That desperation came to a head when things got... well, a little confusing. Stick with me here...Previews eventually stopped, and on what was supposed to be the opening night of January 20th, word got out that the musical had actually closed. But then, a few hours later, the story changed—again. Now the show wasn't closed, just postponed, and previews would resume again that night and the official opening was being pushed to January 24th instead.

Except technically, the show was still closed—because Tandet had already posted the required closing notice backstage the week before, and had not taken it down. And according to Actors’ Equity rules, as long as that notice stayed up, he wasn’t required to pay salaries. So the cast and crew were left in limbo, as well as any potential audience.

Meanwhile, Tandet spent most of that time trying to find more funding. And by early evening, he’d managed to secure “an influx of money—enough to keep the show going through the end of the week.” (Are you following all this? I mean in all my reading of various sources, even I had a hard time piecing it all together.) Anyway, all this mad rush in the end was simply too little too late, and The Little Prince and the Aviator had ended its run on January 17, 1982 after 20 previews and never officially opened on Broadway.

Rapp - “I remember being very sad. Like, as a 10 year old, like, that was a big sad moment. Totally unexpected. And again, not that I wasn't sad because I wasn't gonna be, like, opening a Broadway show. It was sad because the experience was it was like, oh, and it wouldn't happen like that. So we didn't even get to have the pleasure of, like, even having an opening night.”

Fortunately for Rapp, just a couple weeks after The Little Prince and the Aviator closed, he was cast as a replacement in the revival tour of King and I that starred Yul Brynner.

But not everyone was so lucky, because just a few weeks after that, Little Johnny Jones did make its way to the Alvin Theatre. And in a twist of theater karma, it opened on March 21, 1982... and closed that very same night. After one performance and 29 previews. That same month, over in Hollywood, John Barry’s film score for The Legend of the Lone Ranger won him a Razzie Award for Worst Musical Score. Talk about adding salt to a wound.

But what about Joseph Tandet? Well, he wasn’t done yet. Frustrated with how the whole thing went down, Tandet sued the Nederlander Organization, claiming they sabotaged his production. And after a three-week trial, a string of appeals, and a whole lot of legal back-and-forth, the State Supreme Court finally upheld a jury’s decision: the Nederlanders had to pay more than $1 million in damages to Tandet’s company, Little Prince Productions, representing about two-thirds of his initial investment.

The judge ruled in October 1986 that the Nederlanders couldn’t just post a closing notice before the producers had done so themselves, effectively shutting down a struggling show in favor of one of their own. Nor should they have raised the required advance on rent from $50,000 to $90,000 during previews. The Nederlanders claimed Little Johnny Jones had nothing to do with it and insisted Tandet’s team was in breach of contract. But the jury didn’t buy it—and sided with The Little Prince. And so an argument could be made that Tandet ended up making more money from the show closing than if it had kept running.

So no, The Little Prince and the Aviator didn’t get the fairytale ending its creators hoped for. There were no glowing reviews, no cast album, no national tour. Just a lot of behind-the-scenes drama and an audience that never really showed up. But in the end, Tandet did get a small measure of justice. It was a rare victory in a show filled with so many missteps, missed opportunities, and mangled possibilities.

And one interesting moment in my conversation with Anthony Rapp was when I asked him his thoughts on what could’ve helped this production, what could’ve brought the Little Prince’s fantasy and child-like wonder to the stage:

Rapp - “You know, and then every once in a while, you are able to, if you have somebody, you know, like, maybe Julie—somebody in the in the realm of the Julie Taymors—who can come up with these wonderfully inventive ways to make these fantastical images on stage that you can feel the magic of it and that it, that you know, in its best—the best moments of Lion King—they really, you really feel like you're seeing something truly otherworldly, I think. But it's still at the same time, there’s moments of Lion King where you're still, oh, I'm still watching an actor in a puppet thing. It just gets, there's times where it just gets a little, like, you know, it kinda bumps up against itself a little bit.”

Now, I’m not saying—nor is Anthony Rapp, I think—that Julie Taymor would’ve saved The Little Prince and the Aviator. There were many other factors and people that led to its demise, but it certainly would’ve been a much different production to say the least. And maybe that’s the final irony of this whole ordeal: a musical about a little boy who travels from planet to planet looking for meaning, connection, and love... ended up as one more lost star in the Broadway sky—flickering out too soon, but not entirely forgotten.

For a full list of all resources and materials used in making this episode, you’ll find a link to that in the show notes. Closing Night is a production of WINMI Media with yours truly as writer and executive producer. Dan Delgado is editor and co-producer, not only for this podcast but also for his own movie podcast called The Industry. Much appreciation goes to Anthony Rapp for sharing his experiences about The Little Prince and the Aviator and to the voice talents of our very own Dan Delgado. Join us next time as another show makes it way to closing night.

Rapp - “It’s an interesting thing that because adaptations have been attempted multiple times over the years, and it seems like no one has really gotten it right. But, you know, it's like some, some pieces of work, their, their best version really is on page maybe. You know, it's just everything has its place and setting and some adaptations can kind of heighten things and illuminate things and make them special in their own right. And some things it just loses. I think because it's, you know, it's very, it's very much an allegorical parable kind of story. And I think that there's something about the, the, the delicacy of those types of tales that maybe just lend themselves a little bit better to a kind of, you know, that, that inner voice poetry experience you have of reading words and imagining it in your head. And when you when whenever anything's on stage or on screen, it becomes literal in a way that maybe just it's harder to maintain that whole mysterious experience of what it what the imagination can do on its own. I don't know. It that's just a theory.”