1911 Ethel Barrymore gives The Twelve Pound Look at the Empire Theatre. This James Barrie one-act is preceded by a revival of his Alice Sit-by-the-Fire also starring Barrymore. Later she will tour the vaudeville circuit with the first mentioned show.

1957 Tom Ewell, Nancy Olson, and Darren McGavin navigate The Tunnel of Love at the the Royale Theatre. Joseph Fields directs and helps adapt Peter De Vries' novel. This comedy will sail for 417 performances.

1963 City Center Light Opera revives Bernstein, Comden, Green, Fields & Chodorov's Wonderful Town for 16 performance. Featured performers include Kaye Ballard and Gabriel Dell.

1973 El Grande de Coca Cola stars Ron House as a nightclub owner whose family poses as famous stars to entertain the customers. It will run for 1,114 performances at the Mercer Arts Theatre in New York.

1983 Hoping to follow up his success in The Magic Show, magician Doug Henning plays the title role in the musical Merlin at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. The show runs six months, and is regularly stolen by Chita Rivera, who plays the villainous Queen, and by a young actor named Nathan Lane, who has just his second Broadway role, as her son, Prince Fergus.

1996 Jonathan Larson's alt-rock musical Rent opens Off Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop. The show by the late playwright transfers to Broadway's Nederlander Theatre where it garners Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score. It also is awarded the year's Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

1997 An all-star Broadway revival of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, opens at the Criterion Theatre. The cast features Amy Irving, Lili Taylor, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Calista Flockhart, Billy Crudup, David Strathairn, Jerry Stiller, and Eric Stoltz.

2003 The New York City Council overrides a mayoral veto and bans cell phones in Broadway and Off-Broadway theatres, and other public cultural events. Offenders can face a fine of $50 and eviction from the venue in question. Pagers are also banned. Mayor Michael Bloomberg objects that the law will be impossible to enforce.

2007 Ellen Hanley, 80, the musical theatre actress best known for playing the wife of Fiorello H. LaGuardia in Fiorello!, dies of a stroke in Norwalk, CT.

More of Today's Birthdays: George Segal 1934. Stockard Channing 1944.