1920 Opening night for 's , starring as a onetime railway porter who goes to Africa and rises to become the corrupt head of a new empire there. It runs 204 performances鈥攆irst at the Provincetown Players' theatre on Macdougal Street, and later uptown at the Selwyn and Princess Theatres.
1922 Birthday of character actor , who makes his Broadway debut in the original cast of , and uses his booming voice and blustery presence to good effect in dozens of shows, notably , , , , , , and (Tony Award).
1930 Playwright Albert Ramsdell Gurney is born. goes on to write such plays as The Cocktail Hour, , and .
1937 Opening night of , 's adaptation of 's play, based on the Amphitryon legend, and starring and as Jupiter and Alkmena.
1944 Elwood P. Dowd sees a large white rabbit as 's opens at the 48th Street Theatre. The illustrious Dowd is played by , with his sister, Veta Louise Simmons, being portrayed by . stages the production that runs for a whopping 1,775 performances on Broadway before transferring to London, where it plays 610 performances with its star Sid Field. A movie version is released in 1950 with screen legend as Dowd. The comedy wins the 1944 Pulitzer Prize, but the New York Drama Critics Circle Award goes to .
1951 Opening night of , starring in the raucous musical set in the world of Burlesque. It runs 350 performances at the Winter Garden Theatre, earning Silvers the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.
1961 The New York City Transit Authority commands producer to remove 2,800 posters for his musical from subway cars, fearing they might give some people the wrong idea about housing.
1984 The Astor Place Theatre hosts the opening of The Foreigner by . The story follows a young Englishman's visit to rural Georgia for holiday and his trials and tribulations with the locals. The show runs for 686 performances. Shue, also a cast member in the production, dies in a tragic plane crash in 1985.
1990 A revival of the 1926 musical opens at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, but the locale has been changed from Long Island to Harlem, with an all-black cast led by .
1994 Eight gay men examine their lives as they take weekend holidays in the country in Love! Valor! Compassion! The play, by , uses humor on the surface but forces viewers to see that AIDS has become a shadow on the lives of contemporary human beings. directs the production, opening Off-Broadway at .
2001 and star in a Broadway revival of 's , which earns a Tony Award for , and runs nearly a year.
2010 , an 11-year-old who appeared on Broadway in and whose battle with leukemia moved many on Broadway and in the pop world, passes away. During her final months, her fellow child performers from Broadway shows were seen selling bracelets and key chains that read, 鈥淪hine for Shannon,鈥� to help her family pay the medical bills. Broadway theatres dim their lights in her memory the following night.
2012 A new Broadway production of and 's period drama opens at the Walter Kerr Theatre. plays the awkward Catherine Sloper, with as handsome suitor Morris Townsend. Also in the cast are as Catherine's widower father, Dr. Austin Sloper, and as romantic-at-the-core Aunt Lavinia Penniman.
2015 , 's Olivier Award-winning play that imagines a future in which Britain's current Queen Elizabeth II has passed away and her son, the current Prince Charles, has assumed the throne, opens on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. stars in the title role.
2018 The first Broadway revival of 's opens at the Helen Hayes Theater鈥攖he same theatre where the original production played in 1982, when the play was called and the theatre was called The Little Theatre. and star in the roles originally played by Fierstein and .
More of Today's Birthdays: (1903鈥�1975). (b. 1940). (b. 1955). (b. 1972).
Watch highlights from the 2012 Broadway revival of Mary Chase's , starring :
