Premium seats back in 1968?

[Princeton78]

Posted: 4/2/07 at 7:58am

Why did I think "The Producers" or maybe "Ragtime" started this trend?

I was reading one of my all time favorite theatre reads, Lorrie Davis' "Letting Down My Hair-2 Years with the Love Rock Tribe from Dawning to Downing of Aquarius" and came across this paragraph....

"By July 8th, all evening performance tickets to Hair went up to $11 a seat....With the new ticket price, weekly income potential was now approximately $60,000 to $68,000
Michael Butler also had a "scalper-elimination" plan of selling choice orchestra tickets at $50 a seat to big corporations on a subscription basis. As long as he was in show buisiness, he stated in the papers, he wanted to do everything he could to "be helpful." The plan was eventually dropped because there weren't enough takers."

Interesting....just wanted to share....

[sweeedboy]

Posted: 4/2/07 at 11:04am

I LOVE that book!

[Gypsy9]

Posted: 4/3/07 at 1:09pm

I was not aware of any specific premium seating available in the 1960's. Ticket agencies were everywhere in the Broadway area--they bought up the best seats and then sold them to theatregoers for a relatively small service charge. They don't seem to be around much anymore,if at all. THE PRODUCERS was the first show selling premium seats at outrageous mark-ups. Now they seem to be available for all Broadway shows, making a mockery of first come, first served for the optimum seats.Thank GOD for the discounts available for most shows, such as Broadwaybox.com, although they are generally not the best seats.

Updated On: 4/3/07 at 01:09 PM

[Princeton78]

Posted: 4/3/07 at 2:19pm

But my point is that Ms. Davis says in her book that there were in fact, some prime Orchestra seats for HAIR available to corporations for $50, which at the time was a huge amount of money. Sounds like premium seating to me.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 4/3/07 at 4:20pm

"Michael Butler also had a "scalper-elimination" plan of selling choice orchestra tickets at $50 a seat to big corporations on a subscription basis."

Nobody wanted front row seats because the end of Act 1 was so dark you couldn't see any T&A. Besides, in 1969 Oh! Calcutta! had opened and you could see all the T&A you wanted.