Today In Theatre History: JANUARY 3
By Robert Viagas
and Christopher Reichheld and Anne Bradley
03 Jan 2009
1909 Birthday of Victor Borge (1909-2000), pianist and comedian whose 1953 Comedy in Music ran 888 performances, the longest run ever for a solo musical on Broadway. He followed it with Comedy in Music, Opus 2 in 1964 and Comedy With Music in 1977, but did not achieve another long run.
1928 Beatrice Lillie and Clifton Webb are in the cast of She's My Baby -- or so says the man who pretends to be a father and husband in order to borrow $200,000. Rodgers and Hart provide the music and lyrics to this Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby book.
1938 A dramatic night on Broadway as the Mercury Theatre presents Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock at the Windsor Theatre after the original production was shut down by the WPA for its attack on capitalism. Will Geer plays Mr. Mister. It runs 108 performances.
1944 Ruth Gordon writes and stars in her autobiographical play, Over 21, which opens tonight at the Music Box Theatre and runs 221 performances.
1945 Richard Basehart is the lead in The Hasty Heart. This John Patrick drama at the Hudson Theatre, about patients in a military hospital in Southeast Asia, will run 207 performances.
1952 Twelve years after it was critically slammed, the hard-bitten musical Pal Joey gets a revival that becomes one of Rodgers and Hart's longest: 540 performances for a show whose cast includes Harold Lang, Helen Gallagher, Elaine Stritch and, recreating her original role, Vivienne Segal. During the run of this production, Lang will be replaced by his understudy, Bob Fosse -- his first Broadway lead.
1957 The Small War on Murray Hill gets a small showing at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York. This comedy by Robert E. Sherwood highlighting an incident during the Revolutionary War wins just 12 performances, despite a cast that includes Leo Genn, Jan Sterling and Daniel Massey. Garson Kanin directs.
1962 Brecht on Brecht, or more precisely George Tabori on Brecht. Tabori translates and adapts a sampler of Brecht's prose, poetry, songs and drama. Lotte Lenya, Viveca Lindfors, Dane Clark and Anne Jackson are among the cast for 424 performances at Theatre deLys in New York.
1992 Dame Judith Anderson, who appeared in notable New York productions of Hamlet and Medea, dies today. More of Today's Birthdays: Josephine Hull 1886. Marion Davies 1897. ZaSu Pitts 1898. Anna May Wong 1905. Jesse White 1917.
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