Alfred Cortot (1877-1962)
Charles Munch (1891-1968)
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Yvonne Levering (1905-2006)
Fritz Wunderlich (1930-1966)
Salvatore Accardo (1941)
Dale Duesing (1947)
and
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
Jane Smiley (1949)
and from The Writer's Almanac:
On this day in 1957, 20 years after George Gershwin died, Leonard
Bernstein’s West Side Story opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on
Broadway. It was not immediately successful. It only became famous when
it was turned into a film in 1961 and won 10 Academy Awards, including
Best Picture. It’s based on the story of Romeo and Juliet, but it is set
in the gang-ridden streets of New York.
During the weeks leading up to the opening of West Side Story, the news
was full of stories of gang violence and racial confrontations. At the
end of August, Strom Thurmond filibustered for more than 24 hours to try
to prevent passage of the Voting Rights Act. The day before the show’s
opening, federal troops forcibly integrated Little Rock High School.
In general, critics responded favorably to West Side Story, but all the
major Tony Awards went instead to The Music Man, a bubbly, nostalgic
musical about a small town in Iowa.
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