1937 Ethel Barrymore and Dudley Digges star in The Ghost of Yankee Doodle. Written by Sidney Howard, the play deals with a pacifist whose industrialist family stands to profit from selling arms to Japan. It runs for 48 performances.
1949 Katharine Cornell is That Lady, a princess confined in her castle by a jealous monarch. Guthrie McClintic stages the Kate O'Brien play.
1950 For just 30 nights audiences can experience The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger. Cyril Ritchard directs and stars in Sir John Vanbrugh's Restoration comedy at the Morosco Theatre.
1965 Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion live "The Impossible Dream" as their musical, Man of La Mancha, opens at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre. The pre-Broadway run stars people who also comprise the original Broadway cast including Richard Kiley in the title role. His co-stars include Irving Jacobson, Joan Diener, Ray Middleton, and Robert Rounseville. Future actors to play Don Quixote over the 2,328 performance run include José Ferrer, John Cullum, Hal Holbrook, and Lloyd Bridges.
1979 The official opening of Adelaide Court/Cour Adelaide in Toronto, Canada. The old York County Courthouse has been renovated at a cost of $2.3 million and houses the Adelaide Theatre and the Cort Theatre.
1994 The first day of business at the new theatre website Playbill On-Line.
1998 George C. Wolfe's acclaimed Central Park revival of On The Town opens at the Gershwin Theatre, starring Perry Laylon Ojeda Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Robert Montano, Lea DeLaria, Mary Testa, Tai Jimenez, Sarah Knowlton, and Jonathan Freeman, Annie Golden, and Nora Cole.
1999 The Public Theater continues to foster up-and-coming playwright Suzan-Lori Parks as her second production there, In the Blood, opens at the Shiva Theater. A modern-day Scarlet Letter, In the Blood follows an unmarried mother struggling to raise her children. It runs 32 performances. Two years later, Parks returns to to the Public with Topdog/Underdog, which earns her the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
2004 Woody Allen returns to the stage to direct his new play, A Second Hand Memory, about a family of misfits. Off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company hosts the premiere, which stars Kate Blumberg, Beth Fowler, Dominic Chianese, and Michael McKean.
2009 The second Broadway engagement of Irving Berlin's White Christmas opens at the Marquis Theatre, starring James Clow, Mara Davi, Melissa Errico, and Tony Yazbeck.
2013 Regular Singing, the final work in Richard Nelson's The Apple Family Plays series, opens at The Public Theater on the day in which it is set, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It stars Maryann Plunkett, Jon DeVries, Laila Robins, Jay O. Sanders, Stephen Kunken, and Sally Murphy.
2016 Food Network celebrity chef Alton Brown brings his live culinary show, Alton Brown Live: Eat Your Science, to Broadway for an eight-performance run. Billed as a "culinary variety show," the show combines songs, comedy, puppets, and food demonstrations.
More of Today's Birthdays: A. E. Matthews 1869. Hoagy Carmichael 1899. Benjamin Britten 1913. Geraldine Page 1924. Peter Hall 1930. Tom Conti 1941. Richard Kind 1956. Scarlett Johansson 1984.
Take a look through photos of Man of La Mancha from its original production, Broadway revivals, and regional stagings:
