1853 Birthday of Broadway impresario David Belasco, namesake of the Belasco Theatre, who writes and/or produces dozens of plays including The Return of Peter Grimm and Laugh, Clown, Laugh!, and two that inspire great operas, Madame Butterfly and Girl of the Golden West. His ghost is believed to haunt the Broadway theatre that bears his name.
1968 Art Carney stars in Lovers, a double bill of Brian Friel one-acts, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. The limited engagement breaks box office records, and later transfers to a second limited run at the Music Box Theatre, for a total of 148 performances.
1975 After a smash run at The Public Theater in New York City, the Marvin Hamlisch-Edward Kleban musical A Chorus Line makes the move uptown to Broadway's Shubert Theatre. The Michael Bennett-helmed show, including such songs as "What I Did for Love" and "One," features Donna McKechnie, Kelly Bishop, and Robert LuPone. A Chorus Line truly proves to be, as its lyrics say, "one singular sensation," racking up 6,137 performances to become Broadway's longest running show up to that time. (In June 1997, Cats breaks that record.) A 1985 film version of A Chorus Line, directed by Sir Richard Attenborough, features Michael Douglas and Terrence Mann in its cast.
1996 Tony Award-winning musical star Patti LuPone returns to the Broadway stage in Terrence McNally's Master Class, taking over the reins from the play's original Tony Award-winning star, Zoe Caldwell. When LuPone finishes her run as opera diva Maria Callas in the Tony-winning play, stage and television star Dixie Carter becomes the third—and final—actor to play Callas in the production. Faye Dunaway plays the part on tour.
2001 Director-choreographer Graciela Daniele's revival of Annie Get Your Gun celebrates its 1,000th performance at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway. Leads on that date are Crystal Bernard and Tom Wopat.
2002 Judd Hirsch returns to Broadway in the role that earned him the 1986 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play: Nat in Herb Gardner's I'm Not Rappaport. The production not only brings back much of the original creative team (director Daniel Sullivan, scenic designer Tony Walton, and lighting designer Pat Collins), but it also opens at the same theatre—the Booth. Starring opposite Hirsch in the revival is Ben Vereen, taking on the role of Midge originally played by Cleavon Little.
2013 Jeff Blumenkrantz and Brett Ryback star as suspects and detective, respectively, in the New York premiere of Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair's two-person whodunit musical Murder for Two, opening at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre as part of the Second Stage Theatre Uptown Series. The production is a hit, and later transfers to New World Stages for an extended run.
2019 Moulin Rouge! the stage adaptation of the 2001 musical, opens on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. With a book y John Logan and direction by Alex Timbers, the musical stars Karen Olivo and Aaron Tveit as lovers Satine and Christian, with Danny Burstein as gleeful empresario Harold Zidler, Sahr Ngaujah as Toulouse-Lautrec, Tam Mutu as The Duke of Monroth, Ricky Rojas as Santiago, and Robyn Hurder as Nini.
More of Today's Birthdays: Nat C. Goodwin (1857-1919). Jack Gilford (1908-1990). Estelle Getty (1923-2008). Barbara Harris (1935-2018). Charlie Smalls (1943-1987).
