It's probably safe to assume that some of you are going to watch the movie of 1776 today. It's one of my favorite films and it's based on one of my favorite musicals — and the movie probably resembles the original Broadway production as much as any film adaptation could.
I don't know a whole lot about the history of the musical but I know that it underwent major revisions during rehearsals and out-of-town tryouts and that at least ten songs — some sources say double that number — were in and then out and one or two were then in again. It was not an uneventful workshop period.
In the finished play and movie, there's a scene in which via a dispatch, General George Washington requests that the War Committee (of which John Adams is chairman) would travel to the New Jersey training ground in New Brunswick. There is, he writes, much whoring and drinking there that needs to be dealt with. Adams, Ben Franklin and some others go there, in part because Franklin is enticed by the prospect of whoring and drinking. They later return to their congress to report on what they witnessed.
On stage and the film, of course, we do not see what they saw. They merely describe off-stage action. In rehearsal and tryouts, there was indeed a scene in New Brunswick with an actress named Carol Prandis playing one of the local "working girls." To her, Franklin — who came across more like an aging pervert at this stage of the production — sang a song about how more fornication would lead to more births and therefore more people to populate their new country.
It was called "Increase and Multiply" or maybe "Encrease and Multiply." I've seen it both ways. Here's how it sounded in a demo recording. The singer is Sherman Edwards, who wrote the songs for the show…
When it and the entire New Brunswick scene were cut, Howard DaSilva (who was Ben Franklin) quit the show and Ms. Prandis was dismissed. DaSilva was eventually persuaded to return to it while Ms. Prandis pretty much got out of acting and later married composer Stephen Schwartz. At least, that's what some have reported. 1776 was, of course, revised enough to become a hit when it opened in New York so at least that part of the story has a happy ending.