This Week in Broadway History:
May 18 - 24
🎭OPENING NIGHTS🎭
May 20, 1916: The Seagull by Anton Chekhovmade its Broadway debut at the Bandbox Theatre.
May 21, 1959: Curtain up! Light the lights! Everything's coming up Gypsy, which opened at the Broadway Theatre. Ethel Mermanfans rejoiced!
May 22, 1961: It has been 60 years since a show opened on Broadway on this date. The show was Mandingo, it gave Dennis Hopperhis Broadway debut (and his only credit), and it lasted 8 performances at the Lyceum Theatre.
May 23, 1922: For many years, Abie's Irish Rosewas the longest running play in Broadway history, and 99 years after its debut at the Fulton Theatre, with 2,327 performances, it is still the third longest running!
May 24, 1966: It's today! Mame and her bugle opened a new window when the show opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, winning Angela, Bea and Frankie Tony Awards, and earning the show a 1,508 performance run.
🎂HAPPY BIRTHDAY🎂
May 18: Auntie Mame novelist Patrick Dennis (100 years!), actor Robert Morse, Mean Girls scribe Tina Fey
May 19: playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Tommy composer Pete Townsend
May 20: icon Cher, actor Judy Kuhn, writer/lyricist/actor Lisa Kron, actor Sierra Boggess
May 21: actor Mark Jocoby, director Tina Landau, actor Paolo Montalban
Barbara Barrie Asmeret Ghebremichael
Alex Lacamoire Paolo Montalban
May 22: actor Laurence Olivier, actor Linda Emond, dancer/actor Asmeret Ghebremichael
May 23: Company actors Barbara Barrieand Charles Kimbrough, Les Miz and City of Angels actor Randy Graff
May 24: music legend (and the guy behind The Girl From the North Country) Bob Dylan, actor Alfred Molina, orchestrator/conductor Alex Lacamoire
📆ON BROADWAY THIS WEEK IN 1949📆
Can you imagine? The original (and Tony-winning) production of Kiss Me, Kate was at the New Century, and Wizard of Oz fans could see Ray Bolger in his Tony-winning turn in Where's Charley? at the St. James.
What a time to be alive!
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