1927 When a woman loves sailors so much she follows them all around the world, it's time to Hit the Deck. Vincent Youmans provides the score for Herbert Fields' book adapted from the…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1905 Sir Henry Irving's production of The Merchant of Venice was to have opened the annual Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-upon-Avon. But Irving was taken ill and Frank Benson and his …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1564 Okay, no one's actually certain that April 23, 1564 was William Shakespeare's birthday, but that's the accepted date. Over the next 52 years, the Bard would pen such works a…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1895 Broadway debut of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Henry Miller as Jack Worthing.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1925 Tallulah Bankhead and Edna Best are Fallen Angels at London's Globe Theatre. Noel Coward's comedy describes two wives who get drunk while trying to get even with their husbands …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1908 The four Cohans are the stars of The Yankee Prince. George M. wrote, directed and co-produced this musical at Broadway's Knickerbocker Theatre. It will run 28 performances.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1946 Actor Tim Curry is born in Cheshire, England. He will create memorable Broadway roles including Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, Mozart in Amadeus, Dada artist Tristan Tzara in…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1936 In Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead the task becomes impossible as the six dead soldiers refuse the grave. This one-act protest against the war will run three months at the Ethel Barrymor…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1917 John Barrymore stars in Gerald DuMaurier's Peter Ibbetson at Broadway's Republic Theatre. Lionel Barrymore, Constance Collier, Madge Evans, and Laura Hope Crews are also in the …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1929 In The Camel Through the Needle's Eye, Miriam Hopkins plays a poor woman who discovers the hard way that money can't buy happiness. This drama will run six months.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1865 Our American Cousin starring Laura Keene is in performance tonight when John Wilkes Booth shoots President Abraham Lincoln at the Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C. Booth's broth…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1886 Birthday of Willie Howard (1886-1949), half of the comedy team of Willie and Eugene Howard, who will appear in vaudeville, in musicals Sally and Girl Crazy, and in various editions of r…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1905 The colossal Hippodrome Theatre opens on Broadway today. The inaugural production is the colorful extravaganza A Yankee Circus on Mars. It will run 176 performances.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1914 Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Herbert Beerbohm Tree are the very first Eliza Doolittle and Professor Higgins. George Bernard Shaw's tale of class and character, Pygmalion, wins 118 perf…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1868 Birthday of master actor George Arliss, who starred in a series of historical vehicles, including Hamilton and Disraeli.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1904 New York City bids adieu to Longacre Square, which had no particular reputation, and says hello to Times Square, which soon develops quite a reputation indeed. Mayor George B. McClellan…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1913 On The Purple Road there's a disguised Napoleon waiting to woo an unsuspecting girl named Wanda. Valli Valli is the innocent soon to meet her Waterloo at the Liberty Theatre in New …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1947 The first Tony Awards ceremony is held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Thirteen awards are presented to the likes of Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman, Fredric March, Jose Ferrer, A…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1921 Sarah Bernhardt, who recently had one leg amputated, comes to London to play the title role in Louis Verneuil's Daniel at the Prince's Theatre. When she found a wooden leg unwie…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1911 Minnie Maddern Fiske stars as Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh, a woman anxious to conceal her mid-continent past under a veneer of British manners. Harry James Smith's comedy runs at the Lyceu…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMAll data provided by The Broadway League View Broadway Grosses in a sortable table or view by show at the Playbill Vault
SOURCE: Playbill at 03:30PM1922 Eugene O'Neill's drama The First Man describes the strange tale of a scientist who curses the unborn child in his wife's womb. The wife dies in childbirth and the child thri…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1930 Bert Lahr is a Flying High mechanic who breaks an aeronautical record because he doesn't know how to land the plane. The writing team of DeSylva,Brown and Henderson provide the lyri…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1932 - Denis Johnston's drama, The Moon in the Yellow River, opens at the Guild Theatre. Egon Brecher stars as a German electrical engineer caught in the Troubles of rural Ireland.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1903 Opening night of The Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett play about a child, much in the same vein as her Secret Garden. Little Princess will run just 34 performances.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM