| Leland Hayward | |
| Birth Date: | 13 September 1902 |
| Birth Place: | Nebraska City, Nebraska, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Agent, producer |
| Spouse: | |
| Children: | 3, including Brooke Hayward |
| Father: | William Hayward |
| Relatives: |
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Leland Hayward (September 13, 1902 – March 18, 1971) was a Hollywood and Broadway agent and theatrical producer. He produced the original Broadway stage productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and The Sound of Music.
Hayward was born in Nebraska City, Nebraska, the grandson of Monroe Leland Hayward, a United States senator from Nebraska. His father, Colonel William Hayward, was a celebrated hero of the First World War who commanded the 369th Infantry Regiment, the "Harlem Hellfighters". Hayward's father and mother, Sarah Coe Ireland, divorced when he was nine. Hayward's father subsequently remarried, to Maisie Manwaring Plant, one of the wealthiest women in America at the time,[1] who later traded her Fifth Avenue mansion to Cartier for a perfectly matched strand of pearls.[1]
Hayward attended The Hotchkiss School and then studied at Princeton University, but dropped out. He took on a number of jobs including newspaper reporter and press agent, but eventually became a talent agent in Hollywood. In the early 1940s, he handled about 150 artists, including Fred Astaire who had been his first client, James Stewart, Ernest Hemingway, Boris Karloff, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, as well as the two former husbands of his second wife Margaret Sullavan, Henry Fonda and William Wyler.[1] He dated some of his female clients, including Greta Garbo and Katharine Hepburn.[2] Hepburn refused to marry him, despite a three-year relationship, choosing instead to focus on her career.
In 1945, Hayward sold his talent agency and became a producer. His 1949 production of South Pacific was a great success. He produced both the 1948 play Mister Roberts and the 1955 film version.
Other noteworthy film productions included The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), and The Old Man and the Sea (1958). He was a co-producer (with David Merrick) of the 1959 show Gypsy. His biggest success, however, was The Sound of Music that opened the same year.
Hayward's forays into television were similarly notable. He produced The Ford 50th Anniversary Show on June 15, 1953, a live two-hour simulcast on CBS and NBC that looked back on the history of the United States and the world up to 1953. The program featured a memorable extended duet by Ethel Merman and Mary Martin.[3] In 1953, Hayward conceived Producers' Showcase (1954–1956), a series of 90-minute color spectaculars to be broadcast monthly on NBC. Illness forced Hayward to withdraw from the project shortly before the first broadcast, and production was assumed by his attorneys, Saul and Henry Jaffe.[4] Hayward later produced That Was The Week That Was, a groundbreaking American adaptation of a British television show, from 1963–1965.
Hayward's interest in aviation led to his co-founding, in 1941,[5] Southwest Airways, with financial help from his Hollywood friends.[6]
Hayward was an eccentric in his food habits. He ate only white foods such as potatoes, chicken hash, lamb chops, eggs, custard and vanilla ice cream.[7]
After suffering several strokes, Hayward died at his home, Haywire, in Yorktown Heights, New York, on March 18, 1971.
Hayward was married five times.
In her 1977 memoir, Haywire, Hayward's daughter Brooke recounts in detail the family's thoroughly dysfunctional dynamics.