By Anne Bradley
and Doug Nevins
12 Jun 2009

1961 American ideals and and practices are put on trial as The Red Eye of Love opens at New York's Living Theatre. The satire by Arnold Weinstein will last 169 performances.

1967 Michael Langham stages his final season as artistic director of Canasa's Stratford Shakespeare Festival. His final production with the Festival is a new staging of Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra.

1970 Parliamentary history is made as Sir Laurence Olivier becomes the first actor to be seated in Britain's House of Lords when he is named a life peer. At the time, he is playing Shylock in a National Theatre production of The Merchant of Venice.

1996 The world of pornography enters the theatre as Ronnie Larsen's Making Porn plays at the Actor's Playhouse. The erotic comedy-drama, in which a straight man becomes a porn star in the gay adult video industry, stars Rex Chandler. Larsen directed and also co-starred in the production, which ran 395 performances.

1998 The Jello Is Always Red, a musical revue of his songs and sketches by Clark Gesner, who created You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, plays Off Broadway at the York Theatre Company. James Morgan directs the production starring Celia Gentry, Neal Young and Gesner himself.

Today's Birthdays: E. Ray Goetz 1886. Uta Hagen 1919. Lorraine Serabian 1945.