1927 Birthday of Barbara Cook, ingenue of the 1950s who creates lead roles in Flahooley, Candide, The Grass Harp, and The Music Man (as the original Marian the Librarian), and later reinvents herself as a top-flight cabaret singer.
1939 The first play to win both a Pulitzer Prize and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life, opens at the Booth Theatre. The story tells of a group of denizens in a San Francisco bar. Gene Kelly and Celeste Holm are in the ensemble of the play, which runs 185 performances, followed by a 32 performance return engagement. Sarayon sends Columbia University a telegram rejecting his Pulitzer Prize because he does "not believe in prizes or awards in the realm of art."
1940 Ethel Waters and the Katherine Dunham dancers are featured in the Vernon Duke/John Latouche musical Cabin in the Sky, with choreography by George Balanchine. It runs 156 performances at the Martin Beck Theatre.
1956 Terrence Rattigan's double-bill Separate Tables opens at the Music Box Theatre and earns a Tony Award for leading lady Margaret Leighton. It runs 332 performances.
1992 David Mamet's new play, Oleanna, opens at the Orpheum Theatre. The play has exceptional advance sales of $200,000, an amount especially healthy for an Off-Broadway production. Rebecca Pidgeon is the girl who accuses her professor, played by William H. Macy, of sexual harassment in the show, which runs 513 performances.
1995 After being absent from the Broadway stage for nearly 35 years, Julie Andrews returns in Victor/Victoria, the Blake Edwards, Leslie Bricusse, and Henry Mancini musical. The original film version, in 1982, was directed by Edwards, as is the Broadway production. Tony Roberts and Michael Nouri star in the gender-bending musical, which has additional music by Frank Wildhorn. The show runs 734 performances, with the title role later taken on by Liza Minnelli and Raquel Welch.
2001 Pop crooner Harry Connick, Jr. makes his debut as a Broadway composer with the musical Thou Shalt Not, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman, which opens a limited run through January 6, 2002.
2006 Butley, starring Nathan Lane as the title character, who smokes and drinks his way through a day when he loses both his wife and his lover, opens at the Booth Theatre. Directed by Nicholas Martin, the revival also stars Dana Ivey, Pamela Gray, Roderick Hill, Julian Ovenden, Darren Pettie and Jessica Stone.
2007 Solo show A Bronx Tale, which marks the Broadway debut of stage and screen star Chazz Palminteri, officially opens on at the Walter Kerr Theatre, directed by Jerry Zaks.
2009 Opening night for a Broadway revival of Brighton Beach Memoirs, which is planned to run in alternating repertory with another Neil Simon play, Broadway Bound. The two plays share a setting and many characters. The production closes abruptly on its first weekend, and the second production is scratched.
2010 James Earl Jones, Vanessa Redgrave, and Boyd Gaines star in the Broadway premiere of Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Driving Miss Daisy, which opens a limited engagement the John Golden Theatre.
2015 Stephen Karam's The Humans opens Off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theatre Company's Laura Pels Theatre. Joe Mantello directs a cast including Reed Birney, Jayne Houdyshell, and Sarah Steele. The production transfers to Broadway the following year, winning Tony Awards for Birney's and Houdyshell's performances, and Best Play.
2018 After an absence of more than 50 years, Elaine May returns to the Broadway stage in Kenneth Longergan's The Waverly Gallery. Lucas Hedges, Joan Allen, Michael Cera, and David Cromer co-star in the production, opening at the Golden Theatre. May wins a Tony Award for her performance as Gladys Green, the owner of a small Greenwich Village art gallery who is battling Alzheimer's disease.
More of Today's Birthdays: Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825–1849). Georges Bizet (1838–1875). Leo G. Carroll (1892–1972). Billy Barty (1924–2000). William Biff McGuire (b. 1926). Adam Pascal (b. 1970).
Watch highlights from Adam Pascal's performance as Huey Calhoun in Memphis:
