| Where exactly is it "on the record that Prince kept Fiddler running at a weekly loss in 1972 to achieve record-breaking status"? Fiddler became the longest running show on Broadway on July 21, 1971, surpassing Hello, Dolly's 2,844 performances. Fiddler managed to run for nearly another year and when it closed on July 2, 1972, it had played 3,242 performances. It still held the record in 1974 when Prince wrote as follows in his memoir, Contradictions: "I don't think a show will run longer than Fiddler's 3242 performance on Broadway. It was like a rent-controlled apartment that you leased eight years ago. The economics were based on contracts drawn eight years earlier. Though our minimums adjusted with each new contract, our royalties remained what they were in 1964. We were able to break even on a weekly gross of $47,000. If Fiddler were to open today [1974], it would take $75,000 to operate each week and that would curtail the run by more than three years." |
