On 28 November 1917 brother-and-sister dance team Fred and Adele Astaire made their Broadway debut in Over the Top, starring Ed Wynn and Justine Johnstone.

On 9 April 1919 brothers John and Lionel Barrymore opened at the Plymouth Theater in New York in Edward Sheldon's play The Jest, which became a hit.

On 17 July 1913 Irving Berlin's wife, Dorothy, died of typhoid fever, five months after their marriage; in his grief Berlin wrote the ballad "When I Lost You," which sold two million copies of sheet music.

On 3 October 1910 Charlie Chaplin, a twenty-one-yearold member of a British pantomime company, performed his act "The Inebriate Swell" (complete with false moustache) at the Colonial Theater in New York City. He was a hit.

On 6 April 1917, after reading a newspaper report that the United States had declared war on Germany, George M. Cohan wrote "Over There," a patriotic song...