1915 Fanny Brice is reviewed in Variety for her performance at the Palace. Variety says that when she “learns to refrain from starting to disrobe before she is out of sight of the audience, her new act will be a step—several of them, in fact—in the right direction.”
1942 Josephine Bentham and Herschel Williams‘ comedy Janie begins a 642-performance run at Henry Miller’s Theatre. Antoinette Perry directs the play about three teenage girls who throw a secret party for soldiers at a neighboring army camp.
1959 The Crooked Mile opens at London’s Cambridge Theatre. There are 164 performances of the musical by Peter Wildblood. The tale of two Soho street gangs stars Millicent Martin and Elisabeth Welch.
2000 Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s Cats closes on Broadway after nearly 18 years and 7,485 performances. The final performance is held at 6 PM for an invitation-only audience. It keeps its position as the longest-running show in Broadway history for just six years, before being overtaken by another Lloyd Webber show, The Phantom of the Opera. Cats returns to Broadway sixteen years later, in a revival starring Leona Lewis as Grizabella.
2001 Mandy Patinkin kicks off his Kidults concert tour at the Neil Simon Theatre on Broadway.
2002 The first national tour of The Producers launches in Pittsburgh, starring Lewis J. Stadlen and Don Stephenson as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom.
2012 Christopher Curtis and Thomas Meehan‘s musical Chaplin, depicting the life of screen legend Charlie Chaplin and chronicling the rise and fall of the infamous Little Tramp, opens on Broadway at the Barrymore Theatre for a 135 performance run. Rob McClure stars in the title role, opposite Erin Mackey as wife Oona O’Neil, Christiane Noll as mother Hannah Chaplin, and Jenn Colella as villainous gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.
2016 Fun Home, Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron‘s Tony Award-winning musical based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, closes on Broadway after 582 performances.
Today’s Birthdays: Thomas Jefferson 1856. Adele Astaire 1896. Brian Murray 1937. Harry Groener 1951. Amy Irving 1953. Kate Burton 1957. Jeff Marx 1970. Misty Copeland 1982.
Watch highlights from the 2012 Broadway production of Chaplin:
