"Cats": Broadway's
Longest-Lived Show 

by Joal Ryan
June 19, 1997, 1:55 p.m. PT 

"Singing pets, a giant garbage can, T.S. Eliot." 

All right, maybe that wasn't the exact pitch
composer Andrew Lloyd Webber used to sell people
on a little musical he was cooking up called Cats.

No matter. The important thing to know is that
Webber's show, combining those three elements
(vocalizing Tabbies and Fluffies, a
garbagey-looking set, Eliot poems set to music),
worked--very well. 

Tonight in New York, Cats slinks its way into the
record books as the longest-running Broadway show
ever. Its historic 6,138th performance will bump A
Chorus Line one slot down in the longevity
department. 

Cats opened at the Winter Garden theater on
October 7, 1982. Loved by audiences (especially
out-of-towners), tolerated (on generous days) by
critics, the London-born production ushered in a
new era of the Broadway musical: The mega-event.
Theater's equivalent of the summer blockbuster. 

This was, and is, Cats: Big songs (Memory), big
emotions (middle-aged cat Grizabella's Act Two
ascent to heaven), big set pieces (all that giant
garbage on the stage). Miss Saigon can thank its
helicopter landing pad for the Webber felines that
went before it. 

These days, Cats isn't so much a show, as a New
York institution--like the subway cars. Used,
abused and expected to show up on time, day in,
day out. But take a moment to step back, and the
Cats stats look remarkable. 

During the course of its Broadway run, Cats has: 

Been seen by an estimated 8 million people.
(Fifty million worldwide.) 
Pumped $3.12 billion into the New York City
economy. 
Employed 231 actors. (Nineteen have died;
two--Marlene Danielle and Susan Powers--have
been with the show since day one.) 
Sold 390,000 T-shirts, 130,000 sweat shirts
and 1.14 million souvenir books. 
Outlasted two U.S. presidents (Reagan and
Bush) and the Eastern European Communist
Bloc. 
Proved to a generation of TV watchers that
there was more to Betty Buckley than being
Abby Bradford on Eight Is Enough. (Buckley
was Broadway's original Grizabella--the cat
that sings Memory.) 

Tonight, Webber, director Trevor Nunn, former
members of the cast and invited guests will mark
Cats' achievement at a special performance.
After-show festivities include a street party
outside the Winter Garden between 50th and 51st
streets.

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This was found from the website of E! Online at:  

http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0%2C1%2C1311%2C00.html