Michael Butler - Sagittarius

Adapted from an Article in Status Magazine by Frederic A. Birmingham.

Michael Butler is living proof of the apothegm, "The millionaire is the one true art form America has produced."  For Michael Butler is both a millionaire and an art form unto himself.

He is the millionaire scion of the of the Butler family of Chicago.  In 1841 his great-great grandfather established a network of enterprises which today includes vast holdings in aviation, electronics, paper mills, ranching, and utilities.  Michael has added to the family interests with ventures into resort buildings and international finance.  A political candidate himself, Michael was appointed to John F. Kennedy as an advisor on the Middle East, an area of the world he had come to know through his tenure with the Butler Overseas Corporation.  He has also directed a South American publishing firm, run for State Senator, organized new industries in India, the Middle East and Africa.

Strikingly handsome, the 6' 4" Butler is an elegant party-giver and party-goer, and expert hunter, seaman, yachtsman, outdoors man and an internationally rated Polo Captain.  He is currently Captain of the famed Oak Brook Team.

Michael sports a guardsman's mustache, and his hair, while not falling down around the back of his neck, has the full, tousled appearance that sets him apart from the close shorn millions.

As an art form Michael Butler has revolutionized the broadway stage.  He did it while making a financial success in the big time of a sexy, youthful, impish frolic he believed in.  It is a play that fairly spits in the face of the establishment, but it may make him the first to close the ever widening generation gap and as he puts it, "build a bridge joining the hippies and the squares."  It is the play you are about to see. It is Hair.

Michael Butler has accomplished, in his first try as a Broadway producer, what famous names in show business may never do in a lifetime.  he owns the "hottest ticket" in New York and Hair seems destined for the same kind of stature in Los Angeles.

One New york Newspaper said, "Michael Butler blew up Broadway...with Hair!"  But perhaps Walter Winchell summed up best the influence hair will have on future Broadway productions.  Mr. Winchell wrote, "Hair is the musical that may force Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and LeRoi Jones out of show business."
 

Kragen, Smothers & Fritz, Inc.
Sagittarius, Aquarius, Aries
 

Kragen, Smothers & Fritz, Inc., one of the partners of Westward Hair, was formed in June 1868 by Tom Smothers and his personal managers, Ken Kragen and Ken Fritz.  The KSFI complex is the result of the three partners' desire to set up a multi-faceted entertainment and communications company willing to experiment and take chances and anxious to introduce fresh products and new ideas.

In less than six months KSFI has consolidated an operation which maintains operating subsidiaries or divisions in television production (The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Glen Campbell Show), public relations, merchandising, convention services, music publishing and records.  With it's involvement in the production of Hair KSFI now enters the field of legitimate theater production. (Ken Kragen recently left KSFI to undertake independent motion picture and TV production.)

Why Hair?  As Tom Smothers puts it, "We feel that Hair will be to the legitimate theater what The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour is to prime time television.  Hair reflects the attitudes and speaks in the language of young people today."

"The beauty of Hair," Ken Kragen adds, "is that young people feel that it tells it like it is, and yet older people who have not lost the capacity to be moved and have kept a willingness to communicate and understand, find Hair a rewarding experience in total theater."

Ken Fritz sums it up this way: "One of the things that has made our involvement with Westward Hair especially exciting that the theater we are occupying is, itself, like a bridge across the generation gap.  Because of this we have renovated the Earl Carroll Theater, which was originally built in 1938, with an eye towards retaining the historical features of it.  Then we've opened with what we think is the most important new play in American theater in recent years."

Copyright Natoma Productions.