PLAYBILL VAULT'S Today in Theatre History: OCTOBER 30

By Robert Viagas
and Sam Maher and Steve Luber
30 Oct 2012

1896 Birthday of Ruth Gordon, later to star on Broadway in dozens of plays, including Ethan Frome, The Country Wife and her own Years Ago; also in Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (source of Hello, Dolly!), and in many films including "Rosemary's Baby" and "Where's Poppa?". She marries playwright Garson Kanin and lives to 1985.

1922 Broadway premiere of Luigi Pirandello's influential surrealist drama, Six Characters in Search of an Author, with Florence Eldridge.

1934 Henry Fonda earns stardom in The Farmer Takes a Wife by Frank B. Elser and Marc Connelly, which opens today at the 46th Street Theatre for 104 performances.

1940 Ethel Merman knocks 'em dead in Cole Porter's Panama Hattie, which opens today at the 46th Street Theatre for a 501-performance run that introduces the standard "Make It Another Old-Fashioned, Please."

1949 A new musical based on Alan Paton's novel "Cry, the Beloved Country" opens tonight at the Music Box Theatre. Kurt Weill provides the music for tonight's Lost in the Stars, whose book and lyrics are by Maxwell Anderson. The story follows black suffering in South Africa and starred Todd Duncan, Leslie Banks, Warren Coleman, and Inez Matthews. What is interesting here is that the musical dealt with racism, but blacks weren't even allowed to sit in the orchestra of the theatre. The show closed after only 28 performances due to this "no coloreds downstairs" policy and also because of a wide variety of reviews. Some critics loved the show, while others called it "artful artlessness."

1956 A revival of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara opens tonight at the Martin Beck Theatre. Charles Laughton directs this star-studded cast, which includes Glynis Johns, Eli Wallach, Cornelia Otis Skinner and Burgess Meredith. The revival will run 29 weeks, racking up 232 performances.

1963 The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Edward Albee opens tonight at the Martin Beck Theatre. John Chapman, critic for the Daily News, calls the show "magnificent theatre." Colleen Dewhurst, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Michael Dunn co-star in this show that is directed by Alan Schneider. Albee's inspiration is the Carson McCullers' story of the same name. The show will run for 123 performances.

1975 Tom Stoppard's Travesties opens at the Barrymore Theatre tonight. Running 156 performances, it stars John Wood and Tim Curry. It focuses on notables like James Joyce and Lenin passing through Zurich in 1917.

2001 Off-Broadway's Manhattan Class Company hosts the New York premiere of The Glory of Living by the prolific playwright Rebecca Gilman, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and starring Anna Paquin.

2001 Also today, a Halloween Eve resurrection for Broadway's The Rocky Horror Show, which had suspended performances Sept. 23, in the wake of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. The campy musical goes to to play another two months, finally closing Jan. 6, 2002.

2003 The Wicked Witch of the West rides again in #Wicked, a musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz. Idina Menzel (who will win a Tony Award for her performance) and Kristin Chenoweth play the witches, with veteran Joel Grey hoofing as the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The production also wecomes back to Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz.

2007 Robert Goulet, the suave singer and actor who originated the role of Sir Lancelot in Camelot, dies at age 73 of pulmonary fibrosis while awaiting a lung transplant, in Los Angeles.

More of Today's Birthdays: Jane White 1922. Dick Gautier 1937. Henry Winkler 1945. Matthew Morrison 1978.