Herman Levin was born and educated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Missouri, and the Dickinson Law School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In 1931, he moved to New York where he attended law school at St. John's University by night, working by day for Fiorello La Guardia's campaign manager. In 1935, he was admitted to the New York bar and began to handle theater-oriented cases.
He abandoned law in 1942 and, with Richard Dorso, formed Century Artists, a theatrical agency. In 1944, he sold his interest in Century and managed his own business with an eye on producing plays.
Call Me Mister (1946) was Levin's first production. The firm name of the partnership was the D&L Company, the initials of Melvyn Douglas and Herman Levin, its general partners. Call Me Mister ran on Broadway from April 17, 1946 to January 10, 1948 (734 performances); the second company opened in November, 1946 and ran on the road for more than a year. The show was the first of three Levin productions to tour America.
Levin produced his next two shows in partnership with Oliver Smith. No Exit (1946) was an artistic success, but a financial failure. It won the Donaldson Award for Best Foreign Play of the 1946-1947 season and the New York Critics Circle Award as the best foreign play of the year. However, 40,000 dollars was lost on the venture, for this first professional American production of Sartre opened November 26, 1946 and closed in January 1947, running only 31 performances in all. Bonanza Bound (1947) opened and closed in Philadelphia, playing only one week (December 26, 1947 - January 3, 1948), and losing over 200,000 dollars. It is distinguished most by the fact that its chorus featured a young showbiz hopeful named Gwen Verdon.
Richard III (1949) was Levin's fourth show, organized under the firm name of the Bard of Avon Company. It is the only production in Levin's career on which he voluntarily worked without Smith. Richard Whorf's adaptation, acting (as Richard) and set design won unanimous critical acclaim for the production. Mr. Whorf had first presented this concept of the play with a G.I. cast at Biarritz during World War II. Richard III ran 23 performances, February 8 - 26, 1949.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949) ran almost three years including its tour, playing 750 performances on Broadway alone. It opened in previews in Philadelphia on November 17, 1949 and closed its tour there November 1, 1952, playing 26 cities in between, including extended runs in New York and Chicago.
During the years 1950 - 1956, Levin had no successes. Bless You All (1950) previewed in New Haven, then Philadelphia, then closed in New York, playing a total of 84 performances there (opened New Haven, November 13,1950, closed New York, February 24, 1951). The Temptation of Maggie Haggerty opened and closed in Boston, November, 1952. The play lost almost 15,000 dollars. Levin then agreed to co-produce a new Ziegfeld Follies with Lee Shubert, but the project was halted by Shubert's death. The second project was a musical, Three Tigers for Tessie, which he and Alan Jay Lerner as co-producers dropped in 1955. The third project was Eudora Welty's The Ponder Heart, for which Levin did little more than option the rights.
In 1956, Herman Levin made history with the opening of My Fair Lady. The show closed six years later, running for 2,717 performances in New York and thus becoming the longest running American musical. In 1963, Levin produced The Girl Who Came to Supper based on Terence Rattigan's play The Sleeping Prince. It starred Florence Henderson and Jose Ferrer. In 1968, Levin produced The Great White Hope, which received the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award, and the New York Critics Circle Award as the best play of the year, and which toured until 1971.
On the heels of Levin's triumph came two disappointments: Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen and Tricks. The former, a musical version of Teahouse of the August Moon, sparked protests because of the small number of Asian-American actors cast. Tricks was based on a play by Moliere. Although it received critical acclaim during its pre-Broadway run it closed after only thirteen performances. In 1976 Levin revived My Fair Lady with Ian Richardson and Christine Andreas, but after it closed in 1977, Levin withdrew from active theatrical production.
In addition to his production work, Levin served as president and a member of the board of organizations such as the League of New York Theatres, the National Association of the Legitimate Theatre, the Council of the Living Theatre, and the Independent Booking Office.
Herman Levin was married and divorced three times. He died on December 27, 1990 following a stroke. He was survived by his daughter, Gabrielle Kraft, a mystery writer.
