Leland Hayward - Life and Career

Life and Career

Hayward was born in Nebraska City, Nebraska, the grandson of Monroe Leland Hayward, a 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 Maisie Manwaring Plant, one of the wealthiest women in America at the time, who later traded her Fifth Avenue mansion to Cartier for a perfectly matched strand of pearls.

Hayward attended boarding school, 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 wife Margaret Sullavan, Henry Fonda and William Wyler. He dated some of his female clients, including Greta Garbo and Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn refused to marry him, despite a three-year relationship, because she was too focused on her career.

In 1945, Hayward sold his talent agency and became a producer. He produced The Sound of Music (1959) which was a massive success. 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 featuring a memorable extended duet by Ethel Merman and Mary Martin. 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. 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, Southwest Airways, with financial help from his Hollywood friends.

After suffering several strokes, Hayward died at his home, Haywire, in Yorktown Heights, New York, on March 18, 1971.