1882 Birthday of , actor in the grand style, and scion of the Barrymore acting clan. Though he begins as a light comedian, he becomes identified with the classics, notably Hamlet.
1918 stars in 's musical parody Sinbad at the Winter Garden Theatre. It runs 164 performances.
1921 stars in a revival of one of the great hits of the early 1920s, , ' play is about an Irish farm lass who inherits a fortune, but must give up all she loves to get it. It runs 88 performances at the Cort Theatre.
1927 Dracula wings in at the Little Theatre in London. adapts 's novel. dons the cape, with Deane and Dora May Patrick as neck and neck co-stars.
1946 Birthday of tap dancer and actor , who appears on Broadway in , , , and .
1968 and star in a trio of one-act comedies by , collectively titled . It runs 1,097 performances and is followed by several other Simon "Suite" plays, including and London Suite.
1972 What are the chances for a little rock musical about a high school summer romance that spills into the school year? Pretty good, apparently. opens in New York, riding a wave of '50s nostalgia that makes it (briefly) the longest running show in Broadway history (3,388 performances). It's followed by a film version that becomes one of the most successful movie musicals鈥攁nd soundtracks鈥攅ver.
1975 , collaborator with on such musical books as Miss Springtime and Oh, Boy! (with a score by ), dies at age 93. In 1928, he contributed lyrics to . Wodehouse's short stories and novels about Bertie Wooster and all-knowing servant Jeeves inspire a number of works of stage and film.
1988 Composer , half of the famous Lerner-Loewe musical team, dies at the age of 87. He brought us such musical classics as , , , , and .
1995 On Valentine's Day, 's opens on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre. directs the production.
1998 's award-winning play The Vagina Monologues gets a starry reading to benefit breast cancer research as part of an event called "V-Day." It's the first in an annual series of Valentine's Day readings of the play that highlight a range of women's issues, particularly violence against women. In less than a decade, the event, dubbed "Victory Against Violence Day," spreads to more than a thousand cities worldwide.
2009 , a conductor and musical archivist who devoted himself to finding and recording the restored scores of early works of the American musical theatre, dies at age 55.
2016 The world premiere of '蝉听A Bronx Tale The Musical, featuring a score by and , opens at the in New Jersey. The production transfers to Broadway .
More of Today's Birthdays: (1894-1974). (1895-1953). (1902-1969). (1934-2016). [Raymond Joseph] Teller (b. 1948). (b. 1948). (b. 1959). (b. 1978).
Watch highlights from the 2016 Paper Mill Playhouse production of A Bronx Tale The Musical:
