Tough Talk With ‘the Shuberts’

The phrase used to mean three brothers--Sam, Lee and Jake--who scrapped their way from Syracuse, N.Y., at the turn of the century to become Broadway’s dominant landlords. Today ‘the Shuberts’ refers to Bernard Jacobs, 70, and Gerald Schoenfeld, 61, two lawyers who took control of the theatrical empire 14 years ago this month--just before the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles opened. They remain Broadway’s dominant landlords and most powerful advocates. They were interviewed on separate trips to Los Angeles.

Q: How big is the Shubert Organization?

GERALDSCHOENFELD: It’s a business in excess of $200 million a year. It operates in six cities. It has 23 theaters. And non-theatrical real estate. It’s a dominant force in the theater, I guess because of its sheer size.

Q: I’ve never understood how a nonprofit foundation, the Shubert Foundation, could operate a profit-making organization, the Shubert Organization.

BERNARDJACOBS: It doesn’t. The nonprofit foundation owns the stock of the profit-making enterprise, which operates under all the rules and regulations that every other corporation for profit works under.

Q: What kind of profit did the Shubert Organization make last year?

G.S.: Well, we don’t give out the figures. I can say that last year was our record year.

Q: Is the Los Angeles Shubert your most important theater outside of New York?

G.S.: Yes, in several respects, not all of which are positive. It’s the market where shows can run for the longest period of time; it’s one of our largest theaters. It’s also our most expensive theater to maintain and run.

Q: How much money did it make last year?

G.S.: The Shubert, with a major hit show, is capable of generating a profit of close to $2 million a year. However, as the show runs down, the income will become diluted.

Q: I can assume “Cats” had a pretty good year?

G.S.: “Cats” had a spectacular year.

Q: The Shubert was a long time finding success.

G.S.: Took four years--until “A Chorus Line” in 1976. Before that, producers were content to bring a show here for 10 weeks, 12 weeks, 16 weeks. With “A Chorus Line,” we demonstrated that there is indeed a market here which will support long-range shows.

Q: Let’s get into some complaints that one hears about the Shubert. One is: Can’t see; can’t hear; from the balcony those “Cats” look like mice. Is the Shubert, with nearly 1,850 seats, too big?

G.S.: I would point out that it’s smaller than the Ahmanson (about 2,100 seats), the Pantages (2,700) or the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (3,200).

B.J.: I’m not thrilled with everything about the Shubert. In an ideal world, I would prefer to have a house with 200 fewer seats. But I don’t believe that the economics of Los Angeles permit that luxury. You have to charge a little less here than in New York. And the show costs more to put on. The only way that you can make up for the difference is the fact that you have more seats.

Q: Why do you have to charge less in Los Angeles than in New York? B.J.: It isn’t just that you want to be competitive. When you’ve got a hit show, you’re going to get any price you want. But you want to create a feeling that you’re giving the public the most value you can afford to give them for their money. Listen, we get attacked enough in New York for the prices we charge.

Q: And why does the show cost more to do here?

B.J.: In New York you can think of amortizing your costs on a hit show over a period of five or six years. In Los Angeles, with most shows, you have to recoup your costs within a period of months. In addition you have the cost of the take-in, the take-out, the promotion, the advertising, the fact that you have to pay most of the company per diems as well as a salary. So it’s very hard.

Q: Still, you do all right with theaters of 1,000 to 1,300 seats or so on Broadway. Why can’t you buy or build a theater of that size out here?

B.J.: We’ve been looking for that kind of theater ever since we got involved with this town.

G.S.: Somebody would have to build the kind of theater we’re talking about. And he would want to get a reasonable return on his investment.

Now, to build a proscenium stage theater of 1,050 to 1,150 seats costs somewhere in the range of $10 million to $12 million. If you take 10% debt service, on an investment of $10 million, you’re going to need $1 million just to pay the debt service. To bring in that return in a market outside New York is difficult.

Take the Huntington Hartford Theater, now the James Doolittle Theatre. Lovely theater. Limited size (1,013 seats). It can only accommodate a certain kind of dramatic show. The average duration of a show there is four to six weeks, and I’m being generous with the six weeks. Now, if you divide that into 52, you come out with nine shows.

Are there nine dramatic shows presented in New York during the course of the year that are able to mount a second company? No. There are not nine dramatic shows in the course of a year that can pay back their investment in New York, let alone stand the cost of touring.

So, you ask yourself--if you own the Doolittle--can I originate product here? Well, new product is not going to run the risk of opening here and perhaps overspending itself and dying here. We’ve seen that happen many times with musicals at the Music Center.

So we’ll do revivals. But you have to cast them. Are you going to be able to cast a show here--we’re talking about Los Angeles--with people who will be content to play here for four to six weeks and then move on? You see the difficulties.

Q: Back to the L.A. Shubert. Are you proud of the shows you’ve done there ?

G.S.: I wasn’t for the first few years. But I don’t believe we’ve had a single attraction here since “A Chorus Line” that’s represented a quality less than you had in New York. For “Dreamgirls,” Michael Bennett redid an entire number at a cost of about $400,000, and it was a better show.

Q: You’ve brought us some excellent musicals . But when are you going to bring us some plays?

B.J.: We know from our experience that we really cannot present plays in the Shubert. The theater’s too big.

Nor do we want to present watered-down productions of plays in other theaters. We don’t believe that you can present the kind of plays that represent the quality we have on Broadway in any of the existing Los Angeles houses. The economics of a 1,000-seat house are very difficult for touring plays.

Q: Why would they have to be touring plays? Why not do duplicate productions just for Los Angeles, as you have with musicals?

B.J.: I don’t know if there is an audience outside of New York that is deep enough to support the kind of long run that you need in order to produce the kind of quality that we would want to have attached to our name. There is an audience for these shows for three or four weeks. But if you’re only going to do them for three or four weeks, you’re going to be cutting them back from the quality they had in New York. And I’m not crazy about doing that.

Q: I disagree, of course, that there isn’t an audience for serious theater outside New York.

B.J.: Don’t, don’t misinterpret me! What I’m saying is, you have to find an audience in sufficient depth. You also have the problem that stars--who give a production its quality--are not willing to tour all over the country. They’ll come to Los Angeles, but you can’t do a play just for Los Angeles. You know, the history of plays on the road outside of New York has become disastrous.

Q: Perhaps the regional theaters , such as the Mark Taper Forum at the Music Center, have preempted the serious audience. B.J.: No, they haven’t preempted that audience. I’m not denigrating or demeaning the regional theaters. I think it’s wonderful what they do. They’re a wonderful farm system for the Broadway theater--if you want to call it that. But they’re not presenting shows of the quality of “Amadeus” in New York.

They can’t afford to. I’m mentioning money, but money represents quality. You can’t compare “The Gin Game” at Louisville with the production that was ultimately done by Mike Nichols at the Golden. You can compare them, but not satisfactorily.

G.S.: But it’s fortuitous that America has this network of theaters. I think they are ideal places for serious American theater to be presented on tour, as part of a route, either starting out in New York, or starting within the network and ending up in New York.

First of all, this would enable America to see serious theater. Quality serious theater. Secondly, it would reduce the risks to the producers of those shows by giving them a built-in audience in each theater. Thirdly, it would reduce the budgetary constraints of the nonprofit theaters by allowing them to save the cost of originating a production.

Q: Meanwhile, what’s the Shuberts’ relationship with the resident theaters?

B.J.: We have a wonderful relationship with them. I perceive that whenever they have anything they believe to be of Broadway quality, they come to us first. And sometimes they’re disappointed because our reaction is not as enthusiastic as theirs.

You know, one of the toughest things in this business is to say no. On the other hand, if you say no all the time, you’ll be right most of the time.

Q: Somebody called me with this complaint: You call up the theater for “Cats” tickets and they say there are none available. Then you go to a ticket agency and there are plenty available--for a lot more money.

B.J.: There will always be diggers and scalpers, but we monitor our box offices as closely as they can be monitored. We fired the whole box office last year at the Winter Garden because we found some hanky-panky going on. Everybody at the Shubert knows that we don’t accept any of that nonsense.

Q: Another complaint about the local Shubert: too many understudies in these long-running musicals. You go in and the program is full of little flyers announcing substitutions.

B.J.: Our understudies are every bit as qualified as our so-called prime performers. Also, you take an ensemble company like “Cats.” One person is out; another actor replaces that person; somebody else replaces that actor--only one person is out, but it looks like five people are out.

Q: A big complaint about Broadway theater is the high price of tickets.

G.S.: The perception--and it’s created by the media--is that we have one price: the highest price. In fact, the average price for a Broadway show these days is $28.99. Not $45.

Now it’s true that our prices have risen, as our costs have. But have they risen disproportionately to the prices at the resident theaters? No. Have they risen disproportionately to the prices of opera and dance? No. Have they risen disproportionately to the prices of movies and sports? No. Is the customer today better able to afford the cost of the ticket than he was 10, 20 or 30 years ago? Yes; there are more affluent people.

Q: Aren’t you saying , then , that the theater has become an amusement of the affluent?

G.S.: No, it is not a playground for the affluent! Twenty percent of our gross is sold at the discount ticket booth, where people can buy tickets for 50 cents on the dollar. We have that discount ticket booth in New York, Chicago, Boston and Washington.

Q: Is there a move to have one in L.A.?

G.S.: Not that I know of. But we would support it.

Q: You’ve mentioned the media. I gather you’ve got a gripe of your own there.

G.S.: It is very important that the media convey to the public a positive impression of theater. When they write that Broadway has its worst season or whatever, it turns off the audience. It is also, in my mind, a very unsophisticated response to our figures.

Q: How do you two divide up responsibility in running the Shubert empire ?

G.S.: My primary responsibilities are the financial considerations of the company, the real estate considerations, subscription, marketing, government relations and the improvement of the urban environment surrounding our theaters, particularly in New York.

B.J.: My primary area is the booking of shows, the supervising of the productions, the determination of what shows we invest in, what shows are presented. But nothing important happens that the both of us aren’t involved in. We’re completely fungible.

Q: Fungible?

B.J.: That’s a word from economics, when they talk about the abilities of component elements of the business world to be exchangeable.

Q: Some questions were raised this spring about your salaries--something like $500,000 each, I think.

G.S.: The attorney general of New York recently conducted a routine inquiry, as part of his general visitation powers over foundations, and no improprieties of any kind were found.

Q: I gather that each of you thinks he earns his money.

G.S.: I would say that the jobs that we do are unique in America. The job that we have done has been, I think, of benefit to the Shubert Organization and--I don’t like to sound immodest--to the theater at large. Ours is a seven-day-a-week, pretty much 365-day-a-year preoccupation.

B.J.: I’ve been offered on more than one occasion significantly more by other entertainment enterprises. But I love the theater and I wouldn’t think of doing anything else.

Q: What’s next for the local Shubert?

G.S.: “Cats” will be there indefinitely. After that, I can’t say. There’s a definite paucity of major musicals.

B.J.: “Cats” was the last one.

Q: What about “La Cage aux Folles”?

B.J.: I tend to forget about the shows that aren’t in our theaters.

Q: Let me put some words into your mouth. The real American theater is the Broadway theater.

B.J.: Let me put it this way. There’s no theater like the Broadway theater anywhere in the world.

Q: It’s the best of the American theater? B.J.: When it’s good, it’s the best of the American theater. When it’s bad, it’s terrible.

Q: And you’re dedicated to bringing the best of it to Los Angeles.

B.J.: We won’t settle for anything else.