August 6, 2015: Hamilton premieres at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, at 226 West 46th Street, half a block west of Broadway. It would be fitting to say that it "revolutionizes" Broadway.
Born on January 11, 1755 on the Caribbean island of Nevis, Alexander Hamilton was taken in by a prosperous merchant, who set him up in New York. He served alongside George Washington throughout the War of the American Revolution, and was in the boat with him as he crossed the Delaware River to win the Battle of Trenton. He rose to the rank of Brigadier General, and became Washington's chief aide.
He founded the Bank of New York and the New York Post, and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Along with James Madison (aiming to sway Virginia), he and John Jay (aiming to sway New York) wrote The Federalist Papers, designed to get State legislatures to ratify the Constitution. Ironically, 9 of the necessary 13 States did so before Virginia (which ended up being the 10th) and New York (the 11th) even voted. But those were the 2 biggest States, so they were needed for support.
Hamilton served President George Washington as America's 1st Secretary of the Treasury. He federalized the States' debts, making himself the father of the national debt. He supported cities, internal improvements, and international trade, while the 1st Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, supported farmers and internal trade.
While personally friendly, their political rivalry led to America's 1st political parties. Jefferson founded the Democratic-Republican Party, which evolved into the Democratic Party. Hamilton didn't found a party, but his supporters coalesced into what became the Federalist Party. Supporters of what, at the time, passed for big business made them the forerunners of the Republican Party, even though members of Jefferson's party called themselves "Republicans" first.
Hamilton and Jefferson kept things civil between them. Hamilton and Aaron Burr did not. A grandson of early American theologian Jonathan Edwards, and the son of Aaron Burr Sr., who was President of what became Princeton University, he served in New York's State legislature, as its Attorney General, and as its U.S. Senator. He and Hamilton had already come into conflict prior to 1800.
Hamilton supported John Adams for President in 1796, and he won. He supported Adams for re-election in 1800, and he lost -- but, the way things worked at the time, Jefferson and Burr finished in a tie in Electoral Votes. The U.S. House of Representatives had to decide. Hamilton didn't want Jefferson, but at least he considered Jefferson sane and reliable; he thought Burr was unfit for the office, and used his influence to get Jefferson elected. Burr did not forget.
And yet, the way things worked at the time, by finishing 2nd, Burr became Vice President. The 12th Amendment to the Constitution was soon ratified, eliminating the circumstances that the 1800 election caused.
Burr ran for Governor of New York in 1804. Hamilton, still a New Yorker, used his influence, and Morgan Lewis was elected in a landslide. Burr blamed Hamilton, and the accusations flew back and forth. The accusations did not include womanizing on either man's part, even though both were guilty.
Finally, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel. This was something in which "gentlemen" sometimes engaged. And, to "maintain his honor," a "gentleman" did not dare refuse. Dueling was already illegal in the State of New York, but not yet in the State of New Jersey. They took ferries across the Hudson River to Weehawken, New Jersey, about a mile from where the New Jersey entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel would be built.
It was July 11, 1804. Hamilton had no intention of killing Burr, and did not get a shot off. Burr had every intention of killing Hamilton, and aimed right at him, shooting him in the abdomen. Hamilton knew immediately, telling his seconds, "This is a mortal wound. Take care of that pistol. It is undischarged and still cocked. It might go off and do harm. I did not intend to fire at him." Hamilton was ferried back across the River, and it took him a very painful day and a half to die. He was only 49 years old.
Burr was not charged with anything in regard to the duel, served out his term as Vice President, knew he had no chance of ever being elected President, and lived until 1836, at age 80. He is buried in Princeton Cemetery in New Jersey, as is his father. There is a President buried there, but not Burr: It's Grover Cleveland, who lived in Princeton the last few years of his life. Hamilton is buried at Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, his grave adjacent to that of Robert Fulton, the man usually credited with inventing the steamboat.
When the War of 1812 came around, America sure could have used more good public servants. Burr was persona non grata, and rightly so. But Hamilton would have been only 57 years old. He had more to do. He would have been 70 the next time, and thus far the only other time, a Presidential election went into the House, in 1824, with John Quincy Adams triumphing over Andrew Jackson, a result that would likely have pleased Hamilton.
Since 1928, Hamilton has been honored by his portrait appearing on the U.S. $10 bill.
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Lin-Manuel Miranda was born on January 16, 1980 in Manhattan. His father, Luis Miranda Jr., is a Puerto Rican-born New York City political consultant. So his son likely had a good education in New York City politicians, past and present, including Hamilton.
He grew up in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights, which led to the title of the 1st musical he wrote, In the Heights. Debuting on Broadway in 2008, it won a Tony Award for Best Musical, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. It was filmed in 2021.
In 2011, he turned the cheerleader-competition film Bring It On into a musical. In 2014, he wrote the song "Bigger!" for the Tony Awards ceremony, and he won an Emmy Award for it. At 34, he was an Oscar short of an "EGOT." (Fun fact: The Emmy Awards broadcast is the only television program that is ineligible for an Emmy Award.)
Miranda returned to Broadway in 2015, writing the script, music, and lyrics for, as well as starring in, the musical Hamilton. If Hair was the 1st Broadway musical to truly embrace rock and roll (instead of satirizing it, as Bye Bye Birdie had done), Hamilton was the 1st musical to embrace hip-hop. Miranda called it, "America then, told by America now."
Burr was played by the black established Broadway star Leslie Odom Jr., Eliza Hamilton by Asian-American actress Phillippa Soo, George Washington by black actor Christopher Jackson, both Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette by black actor Daveed Diggs (no relation to Broadway star Taye Diggs); and white but gay actor Jonathan Groff played King George III as very effeminate, even though this was one of the few Kings of England to be both straight and completely faithful to his wife.
The musical won near-universal acclaim from critics and audiences, and became a popular culture phenomenon. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and was nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards, winning 11, including Best Musical, Best Book and Best Score for Miranda, and Best Actor for Odom (defeating Miranda).
The stage version of the musical was filmed for Disney+ in 2020, but as of 2022, there are no plans to make a feature film out of it. Miranda has said, "I don't love a lot of movie musicals based on shows, because it's hard to stick the landing... I don't know what a cinematic version of Hamilton looks like. If I had, I'd have written it as a movie."
Trying actors in roles not of their own race was not new. Orson Welles had staged an all-black, Caribbean-set "voodoo" version of Macbeth in 1936. Joseph Papp had cast black and Hispanic actors in Shakespeare plays as part of his Public Theater as far back as the 1950s, and had even flipped the original versions of Shakespeare's plays, where teenage boys played the female roles, and cast women as Hamlet.
Hamilton inspired more accurate casting in shows. A subsequent revival of West Side Story had actual Hispanic actors playing the Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks, and their families and girlfriends. Sometimes, they go the opposite way, and follow Hamilton's lead, and cast minority actors in traditionally white roles. Six, a musical about the wives of England's King Henry VIII, debuted in London in 2019 and on Broadway in 2021, with 3 black actresses, 2 white, and 1 Asian.
& Juliet (pronounced "and Juliet"), an imagining of what Shakespeare's Juliet Capulet might have done if she hadn't killed herself along with Romeo Montague, with some of the hit songs of Swedish songwriter Max Martin, debuted in London in 2019, and will premiere on Broadway on November 17, 2022, starring Lorna Courtney, a black New Yorker.
UPDATE: & Juliet was a smash, and was nominated for 9 Tonys, although it won none. In 2024, a musical version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby premiered, with Eva Maria Noblezada, a Filipina-Mexican actress, playing Daisy Buchanan, alongside white actors playing her husband Tom and her pursuer Jay Gatsby, making both relationships interracial, which would not have happened in 1922 when the story takes place.
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August 6, 2015 was a Tuesday. These Major League Baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 2-1 at Yankee Stadium. CC Sabathia started, and left with a 1-1 tie. Jacoby Ellsbury hit a home run against his former team in the bottom of the 7th, making a winning pitcher out of Justin Wilson. Alex Rodriguez went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 10-8 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
* The Washington Nationals beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 8-3 at Nationals Park in Washington.
* The Atlanta Braves beat the Miami Marlins, 9-8 at Turner Field (now Center Parc Stadium) in Atlanta.
* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Minnesota Twins, 9-3 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Cincinnati Reds, 3-0 at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. Michael Wacha pitched 7 innings of 4-hit shutout ball, and 3 relievers finished the 5-hit shutout.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Kansas City Royals, 8-6 at Comerica Park in Detroit.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the San Francisco Giants, 5-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the San Diego Padres, 10-1 at American Family Field in Milwaukee.
* The Houston Astros beat the Oakland Athletics, 5-4 at the Oakland Coliseum (then named the O.co Coliseum). Jed Lowrie doubled José Altuve home with the winning run in the top of the 10th inning.
* And the New York Mets, the Colorado Rockies, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Baltimore Orioles, the Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Indians, the Los Angeles Angels, the Seattle Mariners, the Tampa Bay Rays and the Texas Rangers were not scheduled.
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