The Wizard of Oz

THE BOOK

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an American children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum originally published on May 17, 1900.

Dorothy meets the Cowardly Lion, from the first edition

The full name of the Wizard of Oz in Frank Baum’s book was Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs.

Writer L. Frank Baum chose "Oz" as the name of the fantasy land in his The Wizard of Oz stories while making up the stories for his children and their friends. He spotted a file cabinet marked O-Z, and impulsively named the magical land was "Oz."

In the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Emerald City is not green but is just a regular city, and everyone who enters it is forced to wear green-tinted glasses.

There was a popular 1902 Broadway musical adaptation whose success led Baum to write thirteen additional Oz books that serve as official sequels to the first story.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz sold three million copies by the time it entered the public domain in 1956.

THE FILM

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was famously adapted in the 1939 film starring Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr. It was considered innovative because of its songs, special effects, and revolutionary use of the new Technicolor.

Theatrical release poster

The Wizard of Oz had its red-carpet premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on August 15, 1939. The premiere was a star-studded event, with many of the film's cast and crew in attendance. Judy Garland, who played Dorothy Gale, arrived at the theater in a white gown and a blue ribbon in her hair. The other stars of the film, including Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr, were also there.

When The Wizard of Oz premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, over ten thousand spectators showed up.

The role of Dorothy Gale, given to Judy Garland, was originally to be played by Shirley Temple or Deanna Durbin. The wizard role was written for W.C. Fields — but he turned it down when MGM Studios refused to pay his asking price.

In the original novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy wore silver shoes. They used Ruby slippers in the movie to take advantage of the new Technicolor film.

The Cowardly Lion, Dorothy, Scarecrow, and the Tin Man

Due to the stubborn nature of French Bulldogs, Toto in The Wizard of Oz had to be recast as a terrier.

A cairn terrier named Terry was paid $125 a week to play the dog Toto in The Wizard Of Oz. Judy Garland, who played Dorothy was paid $500 a week.

A canine double played Toto when Terry was recovering from being stepped on by an actor.

The Cowardly Lion’s costume in The Wizard of Oz was made from a real lion skin.

The Cowardly Lion's facial makeup included a brown paper bag. Bert Lahr couldn't eat without ruining his makeup. Tired of eating soup and milkshakes, he decided to eat lunch and have his makeup redone.

The Wizard of Oz saved the lives of the "munchkins." In 1938, the Nazis plan was "exterminating undesirables," including those born with a physical impairment. Landing their roles allowed them to escape Nazi Germany and come to US. They couldn't speak English; their voices are someone else's.

The snow used in the Wizard of Oz was 100% pure asbestos.

The tornado in The Wizard of Oz is just a 35 foot (10.7 metres) stocking blown by artificial wind and dirt held up by a "gantry" on a set - the gantry cost more than the whole anticipated budget for the entire scene; $218,347.23 in today's money.

"Over the Rainbow" is a ballad composed by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Yip Harburg for The Wizard of Oz. It was sung by actress Judy Garland in her starring role as Dorothy. Arlen wrote its melody while on a drive with his wife.

"Over the Rainbow" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and became Garland's signature song. It was voted song of the century by the Recording Industry Association of America.

"Over the Rainbow" was nearly cut from The Wizard of Oz as it was deemed too long. It isn't even three minutes.

The Wizard of Oz received one negative review, from the New Yorker, whose film critic despised the film's "Vulgarity [of] raw, eye-straining Technicolor" and "Singer Midgets".

While The Wizard of Oz was considered a critical success upon release, it failed to make a profit for MGM until the 1949 re-release, earning only $3,017,000 on a $2,777,000 budget, not including promotional costs, which made it MGM's most expensive production at that time.

 Liza Minelli, daughter of Judy Garland, was once married to Jack Haley, Jr., son of Jack Haley, the actor who played the Tin Man in the same film. He was Minnelli’s second husband.

A blue and white gingham dress worn by 17-year-old Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz sold for $266,000 (£140,000) at an auction in 2005. The dress, which has a 27in waist and Garland's name sewn on the inside hem, was one of six made for the 1939 film.

The Wizard of Oz original camera negatives are stored 650 feet underground in a Kansas salt mine.

THE MUSICAL

Wicked is a Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz , which premiered on May 28, 2003 at the Curran Theatre, San Francisco. It is based on the Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (published in 1995), itself a retelling of the classic 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Touring cast members in the curtain call at a show in Omaha, Nebraska, By Cornstalker

The writer of Wicked thought of Elphaba's name by using the initials of L. Frank Baum - L.F.B. = El-pha-ba.

In July 2017, Wicked surpassed The Phantom of the Opera as Broadway's second-highest grossing musical, trailing only The Lion King.

Steal one's thunder

The phrase "to steal another's thunder" meaning "to get in first and do whatever the other wanted to make a big impression with" is said to derive from an incident involving the playwright and critic John Dennis (d1734). He found he could create the sound of thunder for plays by shaking tin sheets backstage and had used it in one of his own at the Drury Lane Theatre, London in 1700. However this sound effect was not enough to encourage audiences to the play and after a run of two weeks, it was replaced by a staging of Macbeth.

Dennis saw the production and noted that the thunder was being produced in his special way. He wrote a furious review: "That is my thunder, by God; the villains will play my thunder, but not my play." The production of Macbeth had purloined his idea and, ever since, anyone taking credit for your own achievement has "stolen your thunder."

Daniel Webster stealing Henry Clay's thunder - cartoon 

Dictionary of Phrases & Fables by Nigel Rees, Red Herrings and White Elephants: The Origins Of The Phrases We Use Every Day by Albert Jack

The Sound of Music

THE VON TRAPP FAMILY 

In 1924 Maria Augusta Kutschera entered Nonnberg Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Salzburg, Austria as a postulant, intending to become a nun.

While still a schoolteacher at the abbey, Maria was hired to tutor one of the seven children of widowed naval commander Georg von Trapp. The child had scarlet fever and was too ill to walk to school. Eventually, Maria began to look after the other children as well.

Maria Von Trapp in 1948

At the age of 22 Maria Kutschera married 47-year-old Georg von Trapp on November 26, 1927. They wed in the church of Nonnberg Abbey with all seven children present.

Maria bore Georg two daughters and a son, bringing the total number of the von Trapp children to ten.

The Von Trapp family lost their fortune in the worldwide Great Depression, and the children's singing careers were purely a way to earn a livelihood.

Soprano Lotte Lehmann heard the family sing, and she suggested they perform at concerts. When the Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg heard them on the radio, he invited them to perform in Vienna.

The Von Trapps moved to America after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938. The day after they left, Hitler ordered the Austrian borders shut. The Nazis made use of their abandoned home as Heinrich Himmler's headquarters.

Initially calling themselves the "Trapp Family Choir", the von Trapps began to perform in the United States and Canada.

Trapp Family Singers preparing for a concert in Boston in 1941.

The von Trapps settled in Stowe, Vermont, where they opened the Trapp Family Lodge, which is operational to this day.

Maria Augusta von Trapp's memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers was published in 1949 by J. B. Lippincott Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Maria sold the rights to her memoir to German producers who made two films. The Trapp Family and its sequel, The Trapp Family in America, were hugely popular in post-War West Germany.

Because she'd sold the rights to the German producers, Maria and the von Trapps didn't see any money from The Sound of Music's success.

THE MUSICAL 

The Sound of Music musical was based on Maria Von Trapp's 1956 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers and the 1956 German movie The Trapp Family.

The lyrics were written by Oscar Hammerstein II and the music composed by Richard Rodgers.

The Sound of Music musical opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 16, 1959. Both of the major New York critics hated it, finding it way too saccharine, but producers already had $2 million in advance ticket sales their lack of enthusiasm didn't really matter.

The Sound of Music's original title was The Singing Heart.

Original poster of musical. Wikipedia

The Broadway musical was the final collaboration of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II; Hammerstein died of stomach cancer nine months after the opening.

"Edelweiss" was the last song Oscar Hammerstein ever wrote, at the last minute during the show's tryout in Boston.

Mary Martin played the original Maria. During her two years in the Broadway show, she only missed one show.

The real-life Baroness Maria von Trapp fell from a tree and broke her arm while coaching Mary Martin for the role.

Mary Martin and children in a publicity photo, 1959

Due to the design of the two-story set, Martin had to run three miles during every show to make her entrances and exits.

The play won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical and a third Best Actress for Martin (following South Pacific and Peter Pan).

The original cast recording of The Sound of Music was nearly as popular as the show itself. Recorded just a week after the show's Broadway premiere and released by Columbia Records, the album was number one on the Billboard charts for 16 weeks.

THE FILM 

The Sound Of Music movie, starring Julie Andrews as Maria, had its premiere in New York on March 2, 1965.

Theatrical release poster by Howard Terpning

Director Robert Wise interviewed more than 200 children to cast the von Trapp siblings. Patti Duke, Mia Farrow, Sharon Tate and Geraldine Chaplin all auditioned for the role of Leisl, which eventually went to Charmian Carr. Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss also auditioned to be von Trapp children.

Growing pains were a problem for the filmmakers during shooting: Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich) grew six inches in six months.

Two of the actors who played major characters did not actually sing in the movie. Christopher Plummer's singing voice was dubbed by Bill Lee, and Peggy Wood's was dubbed by Margery McKay.

While filming the iconic opening scene, twirling in the hills of Austria, Julie Andrews kept getting knocked down in the mud by the gusts from the helicopter carrying the camera.

Charmian Carr slipped and fell through a window in the gazebo while filming "Sixteen Going on Seventeen." Her bandaged ankle had to be airbrushed out in later versions of the film.

During the shooting of the movie, the city of Salzburg refused to allow Nazi flags to be hung off buildings for filming. Robert Wise threatened to instead use real newsreel footage of the city enthusiastically greeting Hitler. The city quickly backpedalled and allowed the shot.

There were plenty of differences between Maria Augusta von Trapp's 1949 memoir and The Sound of Music film. For one thing, the von Trapps did escape Austria as the Nazis came to power, but they didn't flee over the Alps, they got on a train to Italy and then traveled to America, where they had a concert tour scheduled.

Maria Von Trapp was not invited to the premiere of the movie. Von Trapp later inquired why and producers told her, “There were no seats left,” without apology.

If you look closely at the film, you'll spot the real Maria von Trapp in a cameo, walking past a stone archway while Julie Andrews sings "I Have Confidence."

The Sound of Music won five Oscars in 1965, including Best Picture. It's one of only four films ever to win a Tony Award for Best Play or Musical, and later win Best Picture.

It had the longest first run in U.S. cinemas ever at four and a half years.

A cinema manager in Seoul, South Korea felt that The Sound of Music was too long, so he shortened it by cutting out all the songs.

Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews on location in Salzburg, 1964

Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution of the mid-sixties banned The Sound Of Music. The Chinese leader stated it was an example of western pornography. He only allowed uplifting films and songs which upheld the class struggle.

The Sound of Music is the third-highest-grossing film of all time at the U.S. box office, adjusted for inflation, according to Box Office Mojo. It is behind Gone With the Wind, at #1 and Star Wars.

Sources Broadway, Monterey Herald

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet is a tragic romance in which Romeo, a member of the House of Montague, secretly falls in love and marries Juliet, a member of the rival House of Capulet.

Shakespeare lifted his plot from Luigi da Porto's 1530 Italian novella Giulietta e Romeo. The bard's main source was a 1562 English verse translation of this text by Arthur Brooke titled The Tragical History of Romeus & Juliet.

Title page of Arthur Brooke's poem, Romeus and Juliet.

According to citations, Romeo Monteveccio and Juliet Cappelleto were married in Citadela, Italy on March 11, 1302. This real life wedding may have had an influence on Shakespeare's sources.

Written sometime between 1591 and 1595, Romeo and Juliet was first published in a quarto version in 1597. The First Quarto states that "it hath been often (and with great applause) plaid publiquely", setting the first performance before its 1597 publication.

Shakespeare did not include a balcony in Romeo and Juliet, instead writing that Juliet was wooed by Romeo at a window. (There were no balconies in Elizabethan England.) The ‘balcony scene’ was the brainchild of a playwright called Thomas Otway (1652–85), who rearranged the play. His version, The History And Fall Of Caius Marius, was far more popular than Romeo And Juliet in his era.

An 1870 oil painting by Ford Madox Brown depicting the play's famous balcony scene

Shakespeare popularized the idiom "Wild Goose Chase" in Romeo and Juliet. The phrase features in a scene where Mercutio expresses his inability to understand and keep up with Romeo's mind, saying, "Nay, if thy wits run the wild goose chase, I have done."

In Shakespeare's day, female roles were played by teenage boys, as women and young girls were not allowed on the stage. By the 1660s, however, the laws in England had changed, allowing females to act professionally. English actress Mary Saunderson (1637- 1712) was the first female actress to portray Juliet in Romeo and Juliet.

The first version of Tchaikovsky's orchestral fantasy Romeo and Juliet received its première performance on March 16, 1870. It was the Russian pianist, conductor and composer Mily Balakiev who suggested he wrote a work based on Shakespeare's tale about the tragic lovers. Balakirev was a much more senior composer at the time and a leading member of ‘The Five’, a group of high-profile Russian Nationalist composers that also included Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Cui and Borodin. Tchaikovsky was just 29-years-old. He’d had some modest success but was struggling for musical inspiration when Balakirev pressed the idea on him.

When Tchaikovsky showed his mentor the famous love theme Balakirev wrote: “I very much want to hug you for it.”

Tchaikovsky at the time he wrote Romeo and Juliet

The great French actress Sarah Bernhardt played the young Juliet in several productions of the play. She was a mere 70 years old the last time she took on this role.

On January 19, 1994, the headmistress of Kingsmead Primary School in Hackney, East London, Jane Brown, refused to allow her pupils to attend a performance of the ballet of Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Opera House. The reason given was that the ballet was “too heterosexual.” 

The Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare's lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine's Day.

Source QI: The Third Book Of General Ignorance by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, James Harkin and Andrew Hunter Murray

Playwright

The first playwrights in Western literature whose plays still exist were the Ancient Greeks starting around the 5th century BC. These ancient Greeks wrote plays for annual Athenian competitions among playwrights. Important among them are Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes.

Bust of Aristophanes

For the ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis, "the act of making". This is the source of the English word poet.

In 458 BC Aeschylus, an ancient Greek tragedian, was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his bald head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile.

The word wright in "playwright" does not come from "write," but is an ancient English term for a craftsman or builder. In a similar way that a wheelwright makes wheels, a playwright makes plays.

The term "playwright" was coined by Ben Jonson in his Epigram 49, To Playwright, as an insult, to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theater. Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and so were regarded as the province of poets. The term playwright later lost this negative connotation.

The playwright Christopher Marlowe met a violent death whilst drinking in a Deptford, London tavern on May 30, 1593. The exact circumstances and the motive behind his death remain uncertain. 

According to historical accounts, Marlowe was involved in a dispute at the tavern. There are various versions of the events. Some sources suggest that the dispute was over a bar tab; one version states that Marlowe was stabbed in the eye by a man named Ingram Frizer, who acted in self-defense during the scuffle. Another theory suggests that Marlowe's death was part of a larger conspiracy due to his involvement in espionage activities.

Christopher Marlowe

Cervantes was told by the playhouse manager that his Eight Interludes did not measure up to the works of other playwrights of the era, which made him quite angry. However, he remained optimistic about their chances and published them so that at least the reading public might know them. They have appeared, like the "Exemplary Novels", in several English translations, but have never gained as wide a public as Don Quixote.

Aphra Behn, (1640-89) was the first English professional woman playwright. She wrote at least 17 plays, mostly comedies, but including one farce opera, The Emperor of the Moon (1687), which made use of massive stage spectacle.

The phrase "to steal another's thunder" meaning someone else taking credit for your achievement is said to derive from an incident involving the playwright and critic John Dennis (d1734). He had invented a device that could create the sound of thunder by shaking tin sheets backstage. This early sound effect, however was not enough to encourage audiences to see one of his plays at London's Drury Lane Theatre in 1700. After a run of two weeks, the play was replaced by a staging of Macbeth. Dennis saw the production and wrote a furious review: "See what rascals they are. They will not run my play and yet they steal my thunder." The production of Macbeth had purloined his idea.

Playwright William Wells Brown was the first black American to write a play in the United States. Escape, or A Leap for Freedom, was written in 1858.

The playwright John Osborne (December 12, 1929 –December 24, 1994) made his name with Look Back in Anger (1956), which proved a landmark in the history of the British theatre and a major contribution to the image of the Angry Young Man. Osborne compared critics to faulty sewage systems and described the suicide of his fourth wife, actress Jill Bennett, as "the coarse posturing of an overheated housemaid."

Publicity photograph of John Osborne (1929-1994) from 1971

In 1983 a Broadway theatre was named after Neil Simon. It was the first time such an honor had been bestowed on a living playwright.

10-year-old Krshaana Rawat from Jaipur, India was bestowed the title of the youngest practicing playwright by the Guinness Book of Records on April 21, 2018. Krshaana wrote the entire 85-minute play called Mystical Magical Adventures – The Lost Key, which was staged to hundreds of people in her home city of Jaipur. 

Mystical Magical Adventures – The Lost Key, is about a young girl named Tinky, who meets four mystical creatures who take her on a magical adventure to save a kidnapped fairy. The play was performed at the Birla Auditorium in Jaipur and featured over 40 performers, including professional actors, actresses, and dancers. Krshaana herself played the lead role of Tinky.

Play (theatre)

Tragedies originated in Ancient Greek theatre, where they were performed at religious festivals. The three most famous Greek tragedy writers were Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

The theatre of Dionysus in Athens. By JarekPT - Wikipedia

The oldest play still in existence is The Persians by Aeschylus, written in 472 BC. The Persians is based on experiences in Aeschylus's own life, specifically the Battle of Salamis. It is unique among surviving Greek tragedies in that it describes a recent historical event.

Euripides' lost play Andromeda was based on the myth of Andromeda and first produced in 412 BC. Andromeda may have been the first depiction on stage of a young man falling in love with a woman.

The ancient Greeks also had comedies, which were presented in competitions at the festival of Dionysia.

A play in front of 2 statues from the Mausoleum. By Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin 

Aristophanes (about 446–386 BC).was regarded as the greatest of the ancient Greek comedy authors and is the only one whose work survives. He wrote about 40 plays in all, of which eleven survive.

One of Aristophanes' plays, The Clouds was performed 425 BC. The work did not survive completely, but a later version did survive. It is a satire against Socrates, and pictures the great philosopher as a swaggering con artist. Some of the accusations were re-used at Socrates' trial, twenty years later.

Terracotta comic theatre mask, 4th/3rd century BC By Giovanni Dall'Orto.Wikipedia

In 1st century AD Rome, the lead actor in the play, Laureolus, would be switched out in the end with a condemned criminal and actually crucified on stage.

Natyasastra, the earliest Indian treatise on theatre, dance, and music, is attributed to Bharata (AD c.200) and shows the performing arts had already developed fully in India. The earliest surviving Sanskrit plays are fragments from the 2nd century.

With the rise of Christianity in Europe acting was forbidden, and had virtually ceased by the 6th century.

After many hundreds of years during which the church had banned all dramas, the priests begun to use small playlets to teach an uneducated people Bible stories. From these miracle plays developed.

Mystery plays, popular dramatic representation of scenes from the Old and New Testaments were performed in many towns across Europe from the 13th to the 16th centuries.

Former Carmelite monk John Bale (November 21, 1495 – November 1563) was a playwright, who in 1538 wrote a drama, King Johan, which is considered the first English historical play. Of his mysteries and miracle plays only five have been preserved.

John Bale

William Shakespeare, England's greatest playwright, wrote both comedies and tragedies. In Shakespeare's day a comedy did not mean a play that would make people laugh or that had a lot of jokes. Instead it was a play in which all the problems work out all right in the end. This was unlike a tragedy, where the problems do not work out, usually resulting in someone's demise.

The English stage adopted the classical custom during the Elizabethan era. The standard program presented two plays: a comedy was always followed by a tragedy. For a quick change, the players did not put on different shoes. They merely "pulled up their socks" from ankle to knee length. This told the audience that the stage was now set for something serious. So now whenever people are asked to take things seriously, they are told to "pull up their socks."

A woman appeared on a public stage in England for the first time on December 8, 1660, playing Desdemona in Othello. Anne Marshal  is believed to have been the most likely star, but no one at the Vere Street Theatre, London, thought to record the trailblazing actress’ name.

Ye Bare and Ye Cubb was presented on August 27, 1665 at Fowkes Tavern in Accomack County on the eastern shore of Virginia. It was the earliest known performance of a play in the British North American colonies. The three actors were accused of frivolity, hauled before a local magistrate and charged with "performing a play." The judge demanded that the offending performers re-enact their show and were acquitted after performing much of the play to a delighted court.

The shortest run for a West End play in London was a production of Lord Lytton's 1838 melodrama The Lady of Lyons, which opened on December 26, 1888. The audience was asked to leave after waiting for an hour because nobody could raise the safety curtain. The play was cancelled after that fiasco.

Elmer Rice (1892-1967) was educated in law at New York University. Leaving the profession in 1914, he needed to make a living, and decided to try writing full-time. His first play, On Trial, a melodramatic murder mystery, was a great success and ran for 365 performances. The play was purportedly the first American drama to use the flashback technique, important also in literature and films.

In 1922, Britain’s first radio play was broadcast by the BBC. The Truth About Father Christmas by Phyllis M. Twigg was lost to history because the BBC did not have tape recorders for another decade.

The BBC screened on July 14, 1930 the world's first TV play, a production of Luigi Pirandello’s The Man With A Flower in His Mouth. The test broadcast was watched at the time by Ramsay MacDonald, the UK Prime Minister, with his family from their official residence at 10 Downing Street.

The Mousetrap had its premiere at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, on October 6, 1952. The Agatha Christie play began its run in London the following month at the Ambassadors Theatre. It celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2002 and its 27,500th performance in September 2018.

St Martin's Theatre, Covent Garden, London. By Lisa - originally posted to Flickr 

The Mousetrap took its title from a play performed in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The world record for most performances of a theatre actor in the same role belongs to actress Catherine Russell.  She holds the record for playing Margaret Thorne Brent in the off-Broadway murder mystery  Perfect Crime since it opened on April 18, 1987. As at March 2024 she's clocked up over 13,800 performances.

Source Europress Enyclopedia

The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera (original title: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialization in Le Gaulois.Song from September 23 1909 to January 8, 1910.  It was published in volume form in late March 1910 and an English edition came out the following year.

Cover of the 1921 edition of Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux (1868-1927)

The story was partly inspired by historical events at the Paris Opera during the nineteenth century and the legend that a ballerina’s skeleton was uncovered and used in Carl Maria von Weber's 1841 production of Der Freischütz.

Movie versions include one starring Lon Chaney in 1925, one from 1943 with Claude Rains, and another from 1962 with Herbert Lom.

The earliest movie memory of Gregory Peck was being scared by The Phantom Of The Opera when he was aged nine.

The book was adapted to a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It received its first performance at Her Majesty's Theatre in London on October 9, 1986.

Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman performing the title song

Each of the performances of the Phantom of the Opera musical uses 230 costumes, 281 candles and ten smoke machines.

The Phantom of the Opera became the longest-running show on Broadway on January 9, 2006, surpassing the previous record holder, Cats, with its 7,486th performance. It held the title for 17 years until its final curtain call on April 16, 2023.

Peter Pan

Peter Pan is a fictional character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie (1860–1937). He is a free spirited boy who can fly and never grows up. Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood playing on the mythical island of Neverland as the leader of the Lost Boys.

Barrie first created Peter Pan in stories he told to amuse the sons of his friend Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, George and Jack, with whom he had forged a special relationship. They started off with Barrie telling them their little brother Peter could fly. This grew into a tale of a baby boy who did fly away.

Peter Pan was based on Barrie's older brother, David, who died in an ice-skating accident the day before his 14th birthday. The reason Peter always stays the same age is because David's family always remembered him as the boy who never grew up.

The character's name comes from two sources: Peter Llewelyn Davies, one of the boys, and Pan, the mischievous Greek god of the woodlands.

Peter Pan's arch enemy, Captain Hook was modeled on Herman Melville's Moby Dick character Captain Ahab.

The first appearance of Peter Pan came in Barrie's adult novel The Little White Bird, which was serialized in the United States, then published in a single volume in the UK in 1902. He appears as a seven-day-old baby in the chapter entitled Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.

Barrie returned to the character of Peter Pan as the center of his stage play entitled Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, which had its first stage performance at Duke of York's Theatre, London on December 27, 1904. A Broadway production was mounted in 1905 starring Maude Adams.

Announcement of the original play (historical). Wikipedia Commons

Barrie adapted the play into the 1911 novel Peter and Wendy (most often now published simply as Peter Pan).

In the original Peter Pan book, J.M. Barrie killed the Lost Boys when they got too old.

J.M. Barrie added the requirement of fairy dust for flying, because so many children injured themselves trying to fly from their beds after seeing the first production of Peter Pan.

Wendy's popularity as a girl's name is attributed to the character Wendy Darling from the 1904 play Peter Pan and its 1911 novelization. The name was inspired by young Margaret Henley, daughter of Barrie's poet friend W. E. Henley. With the common childhood difficulty pronouncing Rs, Margaret reportedly used to call him "my fwiendy-wendy."

Title page of Peter and Wendy Wikipedia Commons

In Peter Pan, James Barrie tells how Nana, the Darling children's Newfoundland pet dog which served them as nursemaid as well, had been shabbily treated by their father. Realizing how unkind he had been to the animal and feeling ashamed of it, in self-inflicted punishment he went to live in the doghouse. When the tale of Peter Pan captured people's imagination, it perpetuated the phrase "in the doghouse."

In 1929, James Barrie signed over the rights of Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Since that time, the children's hospital has received a royalty from every production of Peter Pan that hits the stage, in addition to sales of the book and all related products.

Walt Disney portrayed Peter Pan in a school play, claiming that "No actor ever identified himself with the part he was playing more than I."

On February 5, 1953, Walt Disney released Peter Pan, an animated film based on the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up.

Advertising poster for 1953 theatrical exhibition

Michael Jackson cited Disney's Peter Pan as his favorite movie of all time, from which he derived the name for his estate Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara, where he had a private amusement park.

Here is a list of songs inspired by Peter Pan.

Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist was Charles Dickens's second novel. He wrote it while living at 48 Doughty Street, near Russell Square, Clerkenwell, London at a little table in the first floor living room. Dickens was frequently chatting to visitors as he penned his story.

The story was originally published by Richard Bentley in monthly installments in the Magazine Bentley's Miscellany from February 1837 to April 1839.

Oliver Twist first appeared in book form six months before the initial serialization was completed. They were published by Richard Bentley in three volumes, under the author's pseudonym, "Boz."

Frontispiece first edition "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist tells the story of an orphan boy and his adventures among London's slums. He meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal, Fagin.

British book illustrator George Cruikshank provided one steel etching per month to illustrate each installment in Magazine Bentley's Miscellany .

George Cruikshank's original engraving of the Artful Dodger introducing Oliver to Fagin

Oliver Twist may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of hardships as a child laborer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s.

The original of the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist was a young pickpocket whose trial Dickens attended and whose sentence the author regretfully recorded as a journalist (He got 7 years transportation).

The sinister villain Fagin was also the name of Charles Dickens best friend Bob Fagin.

Mr Brownlow in Oliver Twist was based on a real Mr Brownlow who was secretary of the Foundling Hospital for 58 years.

Charles Dickens made the first ever reference to fried fish when he referred to a "fried fish warehouse" in Oliver Twist.

Lionel Bart wrote a musical based on the book titled Oliver!, which premiered in the West End in 1960. It was a huge hit from the beginning, becoming the first modern British musical to be transferred successfully to Broadway.

The Broadway version of Oliver! at the Imperial Theatre

As a result of the success of Oliver!, Lionel Bart was earning £16 a minute. To finance his musical Twang!! (based on the Robin Hood story) the composer signed away all rights to Oliver! The new show flopped badly and Bart estimated he lost about £100 million in that and in the lost rights to Oliver! He filed for bankruptcy in 1972 with debts of £73,000.

Oliver! a 1968 British musical drama film based on the stage musical of the same name was released on September 26, 1968. It took $77,402,877 worldwide, making it the seventh highest-grossing movie of 1968.

Oliver! (1968 movie poster) Wikipedia

At the 41st Academy Awards for 1968, Oliver! was nominated for eleven Oscars and won six, including Awards for Best Picture, and Best Director for Carol Reed.

Oliver! is the only G-rated film (since the development of the MPAA rating system in 1968) to have received an Academy Award for Best Picture.

Oberammergau Passion Play

In 1633, the plague reached the Bavarian village of Oberammergau and the villagers vowed that if they were spared from the plague, they would present a Passion play every ten years. They were indeed spared, the villagers kept their promise and the following year the first performance of the Oberammergau Passion Play was presented.

Except in wartime, the villagers have maintained their pledge of performing it every ten years to this day and attracts thousands of tourists.

1860 production

Such a vow would not have been possible in England as in 1581 Elizabeth I had authorized a complete prohibition of the mystery cycle plays and later there was a ban,

The text of the play is a composite of four distinct manuscripts dating from the 15th and 16th centuries covering the short final period of Jesus' life from his visit to Jerusalem and leading to his execution by crucifixion

Musical theatre

During the 18th century, the most popular forms of musical theater in Britain were ballad operas, which included lyrics written to the tunes of popular songs of the day (often spoofing opera).

John Gay's The Beggar's Opera was the most popular ballad opera; the first recorded long-running play of any kind, it ran in 1728 for a-then unheard of 62 successive performances at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, which was managed by John Rich. Its success made 'Gay rich and Rich gay'.

The Black Crook opened on September 12, 1866 at the 3,200-seat Niblo's Garden on Broadway. The show is considered to be the first example of an American musical in that its popular songs and dances were interspersed throughout a unifying play and performed by the actors. Despite being five-and-a-half hours long, it ran for a huge 474 performances, and revenues exceeded a record-shattering one million dollars.

Poster of musical theatre The Black Crook, representing the finale

In musical theatre  it was not until about 1870 that the 'chorus girl' became a player in her own right. At first she was asked to do no more than move gracefully in unison with her companions, often accompanied by fairly static 'chorus boys.'

The first stage production that was considered a musical comedy was a show that was transferred from the Prince of Wales Theatre to the Gaiety Theatre in London in 1892. Staged by George Edwardes, the show called In Town featured a chorus line of Gaiety Girls.

A Gaiety Girl proved equally successful in London in 1893, and a production of the show played in New York in the same year. When it was reviewed in newspapers, it was designated a musical comedy and regarded as a new form of entertainment.

Theatre programme from 1894

The early musicals were usually two-act shows with an emphasis on song and dance. Plots were kept simple: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. The young lovers always had at least one duet, and there was always a comic character to lighten the plot. In 1927 Jerome Kern combined multiple forms of ballet, music and theater to invent the modern musical with Show Boat.

Show Boat opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway on December 27, 1927. The first hugely popular musical comedy, it told a serious dramatic story about the lives of a family of showboat performers from the 1880s to the 1920s. With lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Show Boat pointed the way to the musical plays of the 1940s and 1950s.

Sheet music Wikipedia Commons

Edmond Rostand's drama, Les Romanesques was produced in Paris in 1894; its story of innocent young love was adapted in the 1960 American musical The Fantasticks. The show premiered at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, a small Off-Broadway theatre in New York City's Greenwich Village, on May 3, 1960. The Fantasitick's original off-Broadway production ran a total of 42 years and 17,162 performances, making it the then-world's longest-running musical.

After six months at the off-Broadway New York Shakespeare Festival Theater, Hair opened at the Biltmore Theater in New York, in 1968. It was the first rock-musical to play on the Great White Way.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, influenced by the Jesus Movement that was becoming popular among hippies and other young 'trendies', a number of Bible-based musicals were premiered. Among them were Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's popular musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, which was a modern look at Christ's build up to his crucifixion and his relationship with Judas Iscariot. Another was Godspell, of which the star, David Essex later commented: "Though I wouldn't say it (Godspell) made me a Christian, I certainly became aware of the incredibly good sense of Christ's teachings."

The world's longest-running musical is The Phantom of the Opera. It opened in London's West End on October 9, 1986, and has since played over 14,000 performances. The show has also been performed on Broadway, in Las Vegas, and in cities all over the world.

Topol, who won a Golden Globe for his performance as Tevye in the 1971 movie Fiddler on the Roof, played the role in shows and revivals about 3,500 times.

Here is a list of well known songs sung in musicals.