1921 Opening night of the popular farce Getting Gertie's Garter about a man who gives a young woman a jeweled garter, then schemes to get it back before his fiancé finds out.
1922 Stage veteran Arthur Hill is born in Canada. After appearing in several productions on the West End, Hill makes his Broadway debut in the 1955 production of The Matchmaker. He goes on to appear in the Broadway productions of Look Homeward, Angel, All the Way Home, and as George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, winning a Tony Award for that performance.
1924 Michael Stewart is born. He writes the books for several classic musicals, including Bye Bye Birdie, Hello, Dolly!, and Mack & Mabel. Late in his career he takes up work as a lyricist on the Cy Coleman musicals I Love My Wife and Barnum.
1996 Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts team up to bring I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, to Off-Broadway's Westside Theatre. The show that explores the entire spectrum of male-female relationships, from dating to in-laws, becomes Off-Broadway’s longest-running musical revue on January 7, 2001, breaking the record formerly held by Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. It closes on July 27, 2008, after 5,003 performances.
1997 Scott Wise, a Tony winner for Jerome Robbins' Broadway, heads a cast that also includes Marla Schaffel and Patrick Wilson in Lucky in the Rain, opening at the Goodspeed Opera House. The show's music and lyrics are taken from the songbook of the late Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson. Sherman Yellen wrote the book for the musical about the romantic entanglements of two American journalists living in 1920s Paris.
2010 After a hiatus of several weeks, Tony-winning theatre favorites Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch reopen the acclaimed, Tony-nominated revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's A Little Night Music at the Walter Kerr Theatre. Peters and Stritch succeed Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, respectively, in the roles of actor Desirée Armfeldt and her worldly-wise mother Madame Armfeldt.
2012 Bring It On: The Musical, the pop-fueled musical inspired by the popular film franchise about rival cheerleading teams, opens on Broadway at the St. James Theatre. The show has a book by Jeff Whitty, music by Tom Kitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and lyrics by Amanda Green and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Directed and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler, the production runs 171 performances and earns Tony nominations for Best Musical and Best Choreography. The cast includes 30 actors making their Broadway debuts, including Taylor Louderman, Adrienne Warren, and Ariana DeBose.
More of Today's Birthdays: Jerome Moross (1913-1983). Lionel Bart (1930-1999). Julie Bovasso (1930-1991). Geoffrey Holder (1930-2014). Dom DeLuise (1933-2009). Sam Mendes (b. 1965). Ryoko Yonekura (b. 1975). Danny Tidwell (1984-2020).
