Too many folks here I think tend to follow the lead of folks who point to the financial success or loss of a show. Mainly people who read "Variety" back then especially tended to follow that, unlike today when movie and plays weekly returns are available on the internet. Back then, shows were advertised on the subways, buses, on "Ed Sullivan", "Life" magazines, more newspapers, etc. So a 400 performance run, give or take a hundred or so performances, was not necessarily small potatoes. They might well have been thought of by the public as hits at the time, and having an album recorded too might have preserved that assumption. |