Theatre Register

Tom O’Horgan

Shows · Tom O’Horgan

Director 1924–2009

Tom O'Horgan (May 3, 1924 – January 11, 2009) was an American theater and film director, composer, actor and musician. He is best known for his Broadway work as director of the hit musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. During his career he sought to achieve a form of "total theater" described by The New York Times as "wittily physical", and which earned him a reputation as the "Busby Berkeley of the acid set".

Also credited on3 works

Dude
Hair
Jesus Christ Superstar

These come off the person record, which names a work and not a production. So we can say this name is attached to the work and we cannot say which staging, or in what capacity. For a composer or a writer that is the whole career we hold; there is no cast list to find them in.

In the literature8 passages

  • Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Pardon Our Antenna is that buried deep in its cast was Tom O’Horgan, the future director of such Broadway hits as Hair (1968), Lenny (1971), and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), as well as such mega-flops as Inner City (1971), Dude, or The Highway Life (1972), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on th…ebooks/Dietz, Dan/Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals, The - Dan Dietz.txt
  • Previews were halted after three days so that the show’s original director, Rocco Bufano, could be replaced by Hair’s director, Tom O’Horgan (though the show seemed like pure O’Horgan from the beginning). Late in previews, the producers, Adela and Peter Holzer, told Ragni they would close the show if he didn’t make the book intelligible.…ebooks/Mandelbaum, Ken/Not Since Carrie_ Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops - Ken Mandelbaum.txt
  • Tom O’Horgan may be the only Broadway director who had four shows running simultaneously: Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Lenny and Inner City . He wrote the music for and directed Senator Joe .ebooks/Tepper, Jennifer Ashley/Untold Stories of Broadway, Part 2, The - Jennifer Ashley Tepper.txt
  • I walked into the Hellinger, and I saw Tom O’Horgan. He told me that they were having sound problems, and I began to help. I was in the right place at the right time. It wasn’t the fault of any individual, but a lot of things conspired against doing sound the way that they wanted it done in that house.ebooks/Tepper, Jennifer Ashley/Untold Stories of Broadway, Part 2, The - Jennifer Ashley Tepper.txt
  • The first thing that we did after I got there was to get rid of the wireless mics. Tom O’Horgan re-choreographed the shows based on handheld mics with cords. Robin Wagner, the set designer, said, “Why don’t I put fake vines on the microphones? They’ll look like they’re from the garden of Gethsemane.” We all worked together. I changed the…ebooks/Tepper, Jennifer Ashley/Untold Stories of Broadway, Part 2, The - Jennifer Ashley Tepper.txt
  • 37 Tom O’Horgan (1924–2009) directed the Broadway productions of Hair (1968) and three musicals that opened in 1971: Jesus Christ Superstar, Lenny , and Inner City. Hair was still running at the time, giving O’Horgan an incredible monopoly over Broadway, which explains Lerner’s remark.ebooks/Unknown/Alan Jay Lerner_ A Lyricist's Letters - Unknown.txt

Passages naming this person, found by keyword across 178 books. A keyword match is not a biography, and a common name will pull in the wrong one.

What this page does not know

  • What this person played. No cast list we hold records a character against a performer.
  • Any staging. This name appears in no production cast list we hold — 1,877 of 7,139 people are in that position, most of them writers, composers and designers rather than performers.
  • Which of the credits above the roles on this record — director — apply to. The roles sit on the person and never on a credit, so a director who also acted looks the same here as one who did not.

Something wrong here? Correct a field or report the problem. Every change is recorded in public under the contributor licence.