Today In Theatre History: APRIL 26

By David Gewirtzman
and Anne Bradley and Ernio Hernandez
April 26, 2011

1926 Sex. It's a comedy. Mae West plays a Canadian woman with no time for those mountees; it's the British navy for her. It runs through one season, but the following it is raided as immoral. The cast is arrested and West, who also co-produced, is sentenced to 10 days in jail and is fined $500. A well-received off-off-Broadway revival in 2000 proved that the show still had laughs and a unique social point of view.

1967 Comden and Green supply the lyrics to Jule Styne's music for Hallelujah, Baby!. Leslie Uggams plays a woman who never grows old. Arthur Laurents penned the book. Burt Shevelove stages the 293 performances.

1970 There's a book by George Furth, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Harold Prince helming, Michael Bennett on hand to choreograph, and Elaine Stritch in the lead; who wouldn't want to be in that Company? There will be 705 performances at Broadway's Alvin Theatre. Boyd Gaines, Veanne Cox and La Chanze will later star in a Roundabout Theatre Broadway revival.

1970 Actress and author Gypsy Rose Lee, 56, died today in Los Angeles. She was immortalized along with her mother and sister, actress June Havoc, in the musical Gypsy. Arthur Laurents based the book for that musical on her memoir.

1992 The music and life of jazz legend Jelly Roll Morton comes to life on stage as Jelly's Last Jam opens at Broadway's Virginia Theatre. Savion Glover and Gregory Hines share the title role at different ages. George C. Wolfe directs the production he wrote the book for.

1995 Manhattan Theatre Club's production of Richard Greenberg's Night and Her Stars opens Off-Broadway at the American Place Theatre. David Warren directs a cast that includes Patrick Breen, Keith Charles, Peter Frechette and John Slattery. The show follows the scandals of the late 1950s quiz show scandal.

2001 Ken Ludwig and Don Schlitz present their Broadway musical Tom Sawyer, based on the Mark Twain novel. Unlike the Tony-winning "Huckleberry Finn"-based Big River, this new musical is treated by critics like a dead cat on a string, and lasts less than two weeks.

2003 Peter Stone, the Tony Award-winning librettist who wrote the books of the Broadway musicals Titanic, My One and Only, Sugar, The Will Rogers Follies and 1776, dies at a Manhattan hospital.

2004 Bling-flashing rapper Sean "P. Diddy" Combs makes his Broadway debut in a revival of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. He plays Walter Lee Younger, the role originated by Sidney Poitier in the 1959 Broadway original. His co-stars are Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald, both of whom win Tony Awards in their roles.

2009 The Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway production of Christopher Hampton's 1970 comedy, The Philanthropist, directed by Tony Award nominee David Grindley and starring Tony winner Matthew Broderick, opens at the American Airlines Theatre.