Hair Moves Uptown to Broadway

On April 29, 1968, Hair opened at the Biltmore Theatre on West 47th Street, completing an odd migration from Joseph Papp's Public Theater the previous October to a three-week run at the Cheetah nightclub that winter. Gerome Ragni and James Rado wrote the book and lyrics, Galt MacDermot wrote the music, and between the Cheetah closing and the Broadway opening the show was rebuilt with thirteen new songs, including Let the Sun Shine In. The story follows Claude, Berger, and their circle of draft-age hippies in New York wrestling with Vietnam, sex, and each other. What made the Biltmore opening a genuine New York event was the brief nude scene added for Broadway, the first time paying customers on that street had seen naked performers standing under stage light.