[When I caught WABC’s 22 October
2023 broadcast of Broadway Backstage
Fall Preview, I was delighted to see the brief feature on the printing of Playbill,
which happens in a plant in Woodside, Queens.
It gave me the idea of composing a short history of the program magazine
for Rick On Theater, the result of which you see below.
[The reporter on the segment, Charlie Williams, called Playbill “the quintessential magazine of theater and Broadway.” That’s a little hyperbolic, I suppose, but it’s not wrong. Danny DeVito, one of several actors in the broadcast introducing plays they’re in this season on Broadway—he was in I Need That, which ran 2 November-30 December 2023 at the American Airlines Theatre—said when asked about the first time he saw his name in a Playbill, “Playbill was always . . . that thing you saved.”
[Actor Michael Urie, who was in the revival of Spamalot at the St. James Theatre that opened on 16 November 2023 (Urie left the cast on 21 January 2024), the co-host of the show with Eyewitness News reporter Michelle Charlesworth, remarked, “This is one of the theater world’s most prized souvenirs.”
[Because of sentiments like those, I’m posting the history of Playbill on ROT. I hope you enjoy the read.]
If you’ve ever been to a Broadway show, you were handed a Playbill as you took your seat. Since 1884, the independently edited and printed Playbill’s been the program magazine for Broadway theater, and later Off-Broadway, New York City venues like the Metropolitan Opera House and other Lincoln Center venues, and Carnegie Hall, as well as major theaters in Boston; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Chicago; Houston; Miami, and a number of other cities. But how did this come to be?
First, let’s step back about a hundred years before what we in the United States know as a Playbill was printed. First, ‘playbill’ is a generic noun that’s a synonym for ‘program’ (or, if you’re in the United Kingdom or many of its former colonies, ‘programme’—a French word the Brits borrowed, meaning pretty much the same as the American and British words).
Programs were used in Europe for many kinds of entertainment events as early as the 18th century, such as musical performances, fêtes, athletic events, and so on. For this post, I’ll stick mostly to theatrical presentations for my examination.
The earliest programs, also called handbills, were short, handwritten, one-page leaflets which merely listed the performers. They were handed out to patrons as they entered one of the many theaters that began popping up in almost every town across England at the time.
When inexpensive printing became available, theaters started distributing these handbills widely around the marketplace and drinking establishments to entice potential audiences. One-sheet playbills flooded the streets, spotlighting the names of top performers who drew large crowds.
These playbills told audiences what to expect of the offered performance, such as, perhaps, alterations to a well-known play—say a new ending to Romeo and Juliet in which the lovers survive to say good-bye to one another.
In the 18th-century predecessor to music hall, the British take on vaudeville, theater managers offered a mixed bill of entertainments. The program would list the evening’s bill, say a dramatic play followed by lighter fare such as a tightrope walker, a strongman, or slapstick pantomime, and the order in which they’d be presented.
Across the sea in the U.S., a change was brewing as the 19th century began. The programs were made into little pamphlets with several pages so that advertisements could be sold. Not only did the ads pay for the programs themselves, but they brought in a little extra income to the theater.
This development proved very popular all around. First, of course, the theater benefitted from the additional revenue—theater is a financially precarious enterprise even at the best of times—and the patrons got more interesting tidbits on the show beside the names of the actors, the writer(s), and the creative staff: the director could put in a statement and so could a living dramatist. Drawings, and later photographs, could be included.
Theater is arguably the most ephemeral of arts. Once the performance is over, there’s nothing left but the memory. This new, expanded program was a free souvenir of the event—to be taken home and consumed at leisure and even retained as a keepsake or a memory aid.
(I have hundreds filed away, going back to 1974—and a few from even earlier than that. I’m not a theatrical packrat; they’re for reference. I use them all the time as a source of information on plays I saw decades ago when something I’m writing, mostly for Rick On Theater, comes up. I only wish I’d started keeping my programs long ago when I was seeing some of today’s Golden Oldies! I wrote about that time in “A Broadway Baby,” posted on ROT, 22 September 2010.)
The program booklets before the advent of the New York Theatre Program Corporation, which eventually became Playbill—I’m coming to that—were paid for by the theater or, in the case of a touring show, the producing company. Small theaters, music halls, and provincial or country playhouses where there were touring companies or variety acts continued to use the single-sheet handbills.
Incidentally, there was another phenomenon that developed at this juncture. Patrons in Britain pay for programs—it’s up to £2.50 in London ($3.15) and as much as €5 in Dublin ($5.40)—whereas, in the U.S., we still get them gratis.
From the early 1880s to the beginning of the World War I (1914 in Europe), the larger theaters in London’s West End saw the commercial possibilities in the elaborate theater programs. The theater managers produced expensive programs full of illustrations and photos of the major actors and scenes from the play to sell to the patrons as souvenirs.
In 1916, the British government instituted an entertainment tax on theater tickets. The sale of theater programs not only produced income for the impresarios’ pockets, but covered the tax cost as well, so the theater managers didn’t have to raise ticket prices. The U.S. theater industry never had this burden.
Back in the States, even the advertisers were happy with the new development: it was a way to make direct and virtually one-on-one contact with potential customers. Mass-circulation newspapers were unknown in the mid- and late 19th century, and theater at the time was the only truly popular entertainment—sort of the TV of its day. The theater program was one of the few types of printed matter that was widely—and freely—distributed.
The enterprise was a huge success. Paid advertising, principally for local business, in theater programs underwent a quick and speedy surge and forever changed the theater program. It also eventually led to the establishment of the company that became Playbill.
An enterprising young man who had arrived in New York City from Ohio as a teenager without money, prospects, or contacts saw that this development was a real business opportunity. In 1884, Frank Vance Strauss (1863-1939), who later changed his last name to Storrs during World War I because Strauss was German, approached the managers and owners of the larger New York playhouses and offered them a magazine-style theater program at no cost. Strauss made his money from the program from the advertisers.
Though the name didn’t appear for decades, this was the beginning of Playbill.
Every theater that signed up for the magazine got pages with the cast list and brief information about the performance—such as setting and time of the action, act and scene breakdowns, and musical numbers—plus a cover in color. The rest of the program booklet was the same for every theater with short articles on the New York theater scene, stage personalities, and other features—plus the ads.
The program magazine didn’t have its own title at this point; the cover bore the name of the theater at the top. In 1911, Strauss named his company the Strauss Magazine Theatre Program and in 1920, his company took the name New York Theatre Program Corporation. In 1934, the magazine became The Playbill and then simply Playbill in 1957.
The title font varied from issue to issue until it was standardized in ’57, and the current, distinct typeface appeared in about 1974, with the familiar yellow background having become standard the previous year. Yellow was selected for the background to the logo because it was the cheapest color available.
Since 2000, variations occur to mark special occasions, such as a green banner replacing the yellow one in October 2008 for the fifth anniversary of Wicked (and again in 2018 for the 10th), or the rainbow banner in June for LGBTQ Pride Month, which debuted in 2014.
The contents of the original magazine changed weekly, which was also how often new plays commonly opened at each theater back then. (The content of today’s Playbills, aside from the production details, changes monthly.)
When Playbill launched a subscription edition in 1982, the contents of the magazine delivered to subscribers’ homes was identical to the copies distributed at the theaters as far as the features and articles were concerned, but the production information was replaced with listings of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows and news from touring shows and the theater scene around the country and abroad.
Over the years, there have been various different regular features and columns in the magazine, such as “At This Theatre,” a column with historical information on the theater housing the production, “Ask Playbill,” which answers questions about theater from readers and playgoers, and a “Theatre Quiz.”
Most major New York theaters used Strauss’s program, but not all. The Shubert Company (predecessor to the present-day Shubert Organization), the enterprise of the formidable “Shubert Brothers”—as Lee (1871-1953), Samuel S. (1878-1905), and Jacob J. Shubert (1879?-1963) were universally known collectively—for instance, insisted for many years on publishing its own programs.
In 1891, Strauss merged his company with his main competitor and, by 1905, had standardized the appearance of the program so that the layout, including the advertising space, was uniform.
After World War I ended in 1918, Strauss sold his company to his nephew, Richard M. Huber (ca. 1881-1965). Strauss had made a great fortune from his enterprise, becoming a true entrepreneur and a leading member of New York City’s social elite.
His New York Times obituary (as Frank V. Storrs, 9 March 1939) described him as “prominent in the field of theatrical advertising and active for many years in banking and at one time was the owner of a theatre chain.” The Times added that “he had many financial interests outside the theatrical and advertising fields” and “also owned property in the midtown theatrical section of Manhattan.”
From 1918 onward, the company started printing playbills for all of Broadway and by 1924, Huber’s New York Theatre Program Corporation was printing 16,000,000 programs for over 60 theaters. Thus began Playbill’s virtual monopoly on supplying theater program printing for New York City’s commercial theaters.
Although Frank Vance Strauss may have conceived the notion of the playbill magazine, Richard Huber gets the credit for starting the New York Theater Program Corporation. The seeds of today’s Playbill were planted under Huber’s ownership. The eventual iconic look and content of the magazine began to take shape under Huber.
Under Huber’s leadership, the magazine gained the name The Playbill and short articles on fashion, automobiles, books, as well as interviews and even jokes were added to the program’s offerings. The cover art was also standardized in the 1920s, featuring images representing the theater, which stayed the same from show to show.
Early in the 1930s, the artwork on the Playbill covers began to be show-specific, though the title of the production didn’t appear anywhere on the cover. That first started to happen later in the decade. By the mid-1940s, the show’s title began to appear above a production photo and the Playbill logo.
The artwork on the Playbill covers were black-and-white production photos until the late 1960s, when individualized cover art appeared, often drawings or graphic art—though they, too, were black and white. Aside from the colored banner framing the Playbill logo, color wasn’t used for the cover art until after the turn of the 21st century.
In 1956, after 70 years as a Strauss family enterprise, Huber sold the magazine publisher to producer and real estate magnate Roger L. Stevens (1910-98), who in 1961 became the founding chairman (until 1988) of what became the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and then in 1965, the first chairman (through 1969) of what became the National Endowment for the Arts.
Stevens changed the magazine’s name to just Playbill the year after he bought the company and no longer let a representation of the productions serve as the dominate image on the cover. Instead, the cover design was nonspecific with the theater’s name and the play’s title inside the program. The cover design for each theater didn’t change.
Protests from theatergoers caused Stevens to change his decision and Playbill’s colorful band across the top of the cover contained the show's information printed beneath the Playbill logo. Eventually, the colored strip was standardized into the yellow band of today’s Playbill.
Gilman Kraft (1926-99), a publisher, bought the company in 1960 and hired Arthur T. Birsh (1933?-2021), a master printer, as the manager of the magazine’s printing plant; Kraft then sold it to the conglomerate Metromedia in 1968.
Birsh worked his way up to president of the company under Kraft, but when Metromedia acquired Playbill, the media conglomerate liked the way Birsh handled the company’s business and kept him on as second-in-command at the corporate level.
When Metromedia and Playbill parted ways in 1973, Birsh left the media conglomerate and became Playbill’s sole owner. Playbill’s current chief operations officer and vice president since 2016 is Alex Birsh (b. 1989), the third generation of his family to operate the program publisher; he’s the grandson of Arthur Birsh. (Alex Birsh’s father, Phil Birsh, [b. 1958] is the current CEO and president, having succeeded his father in 1993.)
On the Eyewitness News broadcast on WABC on 22 October 2023, Playbill COO/V.P. Alex Birsh declared, "We truly are quite simply the brand of Broadway." That’s arguably so in a certain sense, but there have been competitors and niche alternatives to Playbill.
Playbill almost exclusively concentrated on Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters, while Stagebill, founded in 1927, focused on concerts, opera, and dance. By the late 1990s, Playbill was highly profitable while Stagebill wasn’t, so, to increase revenue, Stagebill entered Playbill’s territory. The Public Theater and Disney contracted with Stagebill for their shows.
Disney’s issue was control of advertising content. Playbill relies on advertising revenue that’s entirely under its authority, but Disney’s policy prohibits the promotion of liquor and tobacco products on its property. (Disney owns the New Amsterdam Theatre, where its Lion King was playing.)
In response, Playbill produced Showbill, a sister publication started around 1999 that conformed to Disney’s advertising restrictions. With an alternative available, Disney switched from Stagebill to Showbill for The Lion King (1997-present). Similar situations occurred at other Broadway theaters and productions.
Playbill also responded to Stagebill’s challenge by producing publications for classic arts houses, particularly venues that were once Stagebill clients, such as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York Philharmonic.
For these venues, Playbill broke from its typical format and began publishing completely customized programs like Stagebill. Because of this action and Stagebill’s continuing financial problems, it foundered and Playbill bought up the Stagebill trademark in 2002. Thus ended the competition for Playbill’s hegemony.
In 1994, Playbill launched Playbill Online (https://playbill.com/) and has increased its digital offerings steadily, along with entries into other media, as the new century unfolded. My interest here has been on the ink-and-paper publication, so I won’t detail this development. Wikipedia has a run-down of Playbill’s expansion beyond hard-copy outlets, and I suggest interested ROTters check that out at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playbill#Other_media.
[Many people, including me, speak of Playbill as the concrete reminder of the evanescent theater experience once the curtain drops and the playgoer leaves the playhouse. I admitted above that I have been keeping my programs, including those that aren’t Playbills, for the past 50 years, and that I wish that I’d kept them from earlier times.
[The fact is that I did keep my theater programs from my childhood playgoing—I just didn’t keep them permanently. I brought them home, read them, looked at the pictures, and then sometimes used them for something. Here’s a case in point:
[The first Broadway show I saw on Broadway (as opposed to pre-Broadway in Washington, D.C., or on the National Tour) was Fiorello!; the second one I saw was My Fair Lady. That would make it 1959, ’60, or ’61—7th or 8th grade.
[In those years, my Washington middle school had a music class as a regular part of the curriculum and all the students kept a folder for our music sheets. It was an ordinary manilla folder, and we were supposed to decorate it, presumably with something related to music.
[The year I saw MFL, I cut up the Playbill and used the still photos from the show to decorate my music folder! The Playbill’s cover photo, which was Liza (Julie Andrews, of course) sitting on the steps of Covent Garden, holding a bunch of flowers ("Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?"), was the center pic of my folder’s cover, with the other shots from the Playbill scattered around “randomly.” I can still visualize it!
[Now, here’s something I’d never put together before 2021: the chronology of this seminal experience:
[Since I would have made my folder at the start of the school year, and Fiorello! opened at the end of November 1959—early in my 7th-grade year—I probably saw it that Christmas vacation. (I’d have turned 13 during that holiday.) We must have gone back to New York City sometime later that school year, maybe spring break. (Both sets of my grandparents lived in NYC.)
[I suspect my family saw MFL then, since if we’d waited until Christmas of 8th grade, I would have used something else to make my music folder; I must have already had the Playbill when school started for 8th grade. So I must have seen MFL whenever spring break was in 1960 and held onto the Playbill.
[That also means I saw Andrews in TV’s Cinderella before I saw her on stage. I already knew who she was because of all the hype about her appearance in MFL (which had opened on 15 March 1956), but Cinderella was on TV in March 1957 (see “Cinderella: Impossible Things Are Happening (CBS-TV, 31 March 1957),” posted on ROT on 25 April 2013).]
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