1903 Daniel Frohman opens the New Lyceum Theatre on Manhattan's West 45th Street with E. H. Sothern in The Proud Prince. Designed by Herts & Tallant, the theatre is later rechristened simply the Lyceum. It is the oldest continuously-operating legitimate theatre in New York.
1915 Opening night at the Princess Theatre for Harold Brighouse's popular comedy Hobson's Choice, about a man who bars his daughters from marrying so he won't have to pay dowries. It runs over 100 performances and is filmed at least three times.
1921 Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie, starring Pauline Lord and George Marion, opens at the Vanderbilt Theatre. Critics check their high praise for the show with reservations about the play's "happy ending," suggesting that O'Neill is making concessions to commercial theatre. O'Neill considers the show "a failure," but it wins the author his second Pulitzer Prize.
1937 George M. Cohan stars in the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical I'd Rather Be Right, which opens at the Alvin Theatre. Cohan stars as a man he hates, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The book, written by Hart and George S. Kaufman, follows Roosevelt's attempts to balance the budget in order to finance a young couple's wedding. The show runs for nine months, with the first of those having Cohan in a leg cast.
1949 Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary by starring in S. N. Behrman's comedy, I Know My Love, which opens at the Shubert Theatre. Oddly enough, the show focuses on a couple looking back over 50 years of marriage. The Lunts also appear on the cover of Life the following week in honor of the event.
1961 Alfred Drake stars as master actor Edmund Kean in the Robert Wright and George Forrest musical Kean, which opens at the Broadway Theatre.
1971 Barbara Cook makes her final appearance in a book musical on Broadway in the Truman Capote tuner The Grass Harp, also featuring Karen Morrow, Max Showalter, and Russ Thacker. It runs at the Martin Beck Theatre, with a cast album of the Claibe Richardson/Kenward Elmslie score lifting it to minor cult status.
1980 Hugh Leonard's A Life opens at the Morosco Theatre and goes on to score four Tony nominations: Best Play, Best Director for Peter Coe, Best Actor in a Play for Roy Dotrice, and Best Featured Actor in a Play for Adam Redfield.
1989 A splashy stage adaptation of the movie musical Meet Me in St. Louis opens at the Gershwin Theatre on Broadway with Betty Garrett, George Hearn, and Donna Kane (in the role originated on film by Judy Garland).
1995 Ellen Burstyn and Giancarlo Esposito star in Sacrilege by Diane Shaffer at the Belasco Theatre. Don Scardino directs.
2000 Charles Busch's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife opens at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in a Lynne Meadow-helmed production, starring Linda Lavin and Michele Lee. The pair earn Tony nods for their performances, as does the play itself.
2003 A revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens starring Ashley Judd, Jason Patric, Margo Martindale, and Ned Beatty. The Tennessee Williams play is directed by Anthony Page at the Music Box Theatre.
2006 The oddball and sad story of real-life Hamptons cat ladies "Little" Edie and Edith Bouvier Beale makes an unlikely hit musical, Grey Gardens, which transfers to the Walter Kerr Theatre from a sold-out Off-Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons. Written by Scott Frankel, Michael Korie, and Doug Wright, and based on the cult classic documentary, the production earns Tony Awards for stars Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson.
2016 Tony Award winner Kristin Chenoweth opens My Love Letter to Broadway, a two-week concert stand at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. The set list includes both musical theatre favorites and American Songbook classics.
2017 Inspired by the real bond kings of the day, Ayad Akhtar's Junk opens Lincoln Center Theater's Vivian Beaumont in a production directed by Dough Hughes. Set in the high-flying, risk-seeking financial world of the 1980s, the play stars Steven Pasquale as Robert Merkin.
More of Today's Birthdays: Brian Hooker (1880–1946), Philip Merivale (1886–1946), Alice King (1892–1939), Dennis King (1897–1971), Paul Ford (1901–1976), Peggy Conklin (1906–2003), Burt Lancaster (1913–1994), Dale Wasserman (1914–2008), Sidney Luft (1915–2005), Martin Aronstein (1936–2002), Gary Yershon (b. 1954), Lynn Nottage (b. 1964), David Schwimmer (b. 1966), Phillip Boykin (b. 1968).
Watch Kristin Chenoweth preview songs from My Love Letter to Broadway at an open rehearsal:
