By Robert Viagas
and Sam Maher, Steve Luber and Anne Bradley
14 Nov 2009

1905 Blanche Bates is Minnie, sweetheart of the mines in Girl of the Golden West. She tends a saloon, fugitive lover and pursuing sheriff. Writer, director, producer David Belasco was no stranger to the subject, having worked as an actor in Virginia City, Nevada, during the Comstock Lode boom. Puccini would later adapt the story into the opera, "La Fanciulla del West."

1945 Ralph Bellamy stars as a presidential candidate trying to present a happy facade to voters with his estranged wife (Ruth Hussey) in State of the Union. Lindsay & Crouse's play opens a 765-performance run at the Hudson Theatre today. It will go on to win the 1946 Pulitzer Prize and be made into a film by Frank Capra, with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

1950 London's Old Vic, damaged during the war, presents Bartholomew Fair in it's restored theatre.

1950 The witches of Bell, Book, and Candle begin their brew. John Van Druten's play stars Lilli Palmer as a witch falling in love with mortal Rex Harrison. The run spans 233 performances at the Barrymore Theatre.

1971 Just a year after they worked together on Company, playwright George Furth and director Michael Bennett team up for Twigs, a program of one-act plays featuring Sada Thompson. It opens at the Broadhurst Theatre and runs 289 performances, winning Thompson a 1972 Tony Award as Best Actress in a Play.

1977 Anne Bancroft is directed by Arthur Penn in the play, Golda. This documentary-style drama about Israel's former prime minister runs 13 weeks.

1993 Robert Schenkkan's The Kentucky Cycle, three plays tracing the place of Kentucky in American history, 1775-1975, opens at the Royale Theatre. It was one of the few plays to win the Pulitzer Prize before it opened in New York, and New York audiences did not take to it. Despite the presence of Stacy Keach in major roles, it closes after just 33 performances.

1996 The spirit of Bob Fosse infuses a bare-bones revival of Kander & Ebb's Chicago that would become the runaway smash of the season. Director Walter Bobbie, choreographer Ann Reinking staging the show "in the style of Bob Fosse," and actors James Naughton and Bebe Neuwirth, all took home Tonys, as did the show itself. By fall 2003, the show had hit the 2,900-performance mark and a film adaptation won the 2003 Oscar for Best Picture.

1999 Matthew Broderick, Mia Farrow, Uta Hagen and Jonathan Pryce will star in a benefit reading of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf tonight at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. The special reading benefits the HB Playwrights Foundation & Theatre, which is named for Herbert Berghof, who was married to Uta Hagen. A gala supper followed the performance at the Marriott Marquis. Among the more than 130 playwrights who have found a home at HB are Tennessee Williams, Horton Foote, Donald Margulies, Thornton Wilder, Martin Sherman and Saul Bellow.

2002 "I want to hear a poem," 1999 Fresh Poet of the Year Steve Colman says as Russell Simmon's Def Poetry Jam opens on Broadway, featuring the contemporary urban slam-style poetry pioneered on his HBO show of the same name. The production will run 198 performances at the Longacre Theatre, and win the 2003 Tony Award as Best Special Theatrical Event.

2003 Dorothy Loudon, who created one of the more indelible portraits in musical comedy history with her tony-winning portrayal of the slatternly, orphan-hating Miss Hannigan in the original Annie, dies today at age 70. Other credits in a long career included playing opposite Katharine Hepburn in West Side Waltz in 1981 and starring in the original Broadway production of Noises Off in 1983. Loudon was born Sept. 17, 1933, in Boston, and went to school at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She earned three Tony nominations: for the aforementioned plus Fig Leaves Are Falling and Michael Bennett's Ballroom.

2003 As part of a new initiative to spread the influence and awareness of the Tony Awards throughout the year, the 2003 Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre are bestowed in a ceremony at the Lyceum Theatre. Honorees include the principal ensemble of La Boheme, hair and wig designer Paul Huntley, Johnson-Liff Casting Associates and The Acting Company.

2006 The Broadway revival of Chicago celebrates its tenth anniversary with a special benefit performance that brings together some three dozen stars who appeared in the show over the years, playing each scene with multiple actors.

More of Today's Birthdays: Haila Stoddard 1913. Brian Keith 1921. Sandahl Bergman 1951.