First, 1962-63, the season that provoked the conversation. Again, I'm using Best Plays for my info. Before Guernsey took over in 1964-65, the Best Plays format for listing a season's Broadway productions and which were hits and which were flops (as determined by Variety) was a bit different but easier to utilize for the purposes of this conversation. (At least this is true during the brief time that Henry Hewes was the editor.) This is what I find:
As of the end of the season, there were eight hits, one of which was a one-man show: Ages of Man. Two of the hits involved John Gielgud: Ages of Man and The School for Scandal. Yet a third of the eight was a British import limited engagement: The Hollow Crown.
Twelve were listed as Status Not Yet Determined. Of those, my guess is that only one, Enter Laughing, paid off. I don't have the following year's volume to be sure that none of the others paid off, but if any did, it probably would have been because of a film sale for a film that was never made.
Thirty-three were listed as failures. In addition, six closed out of town and surely were financial failures. That was something I did not think to look for in 1964-65. If I had, it would have added four shows to the total number of commercial productions and thereby reduced the percentage that recouped.
Twelve are listed under Miscellaneous. This is a bit confusing as five of them seem to have been for-profit ventures, but I will leave them out of the calculation.
Including the shows that closed out of town, but excluding those under Miscellaneous, gives us (if my math is correct) nine hits out of 59 shows — 15.25 percent. Of course, if I'm wrong and one of the other shows whose status was undetermined at the end of the season did manage to recoup, that would up the percentage slightly.
I'm losing a bit of patience to make sure I'm getting this right (and sometimes it's tough to be sure about what was nonprofit back then), but a quick look at 1968-69 leads me to this estimate that I don't swear is correct: nine hits out of 51 commercial productions, including four that closed before opening on Broadway (either out of town or during Broadway previews). Again, under 20 percent.
It seems to me that this is probably what we would find for most 1960s seasons: 15-20 percent recouped.
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