Record Night

For once, on this night in 1983, "A Chorus Line" was not about getting the part; it was about setting the record as Broadway's longest-running musical. Its 3,389th performance was a reunion of 332 dancers from present and previous casts who had rotated in and out during its eight-year run. They came, as The Times noted, "from the four continents to which they had dispersed, from stardom and from unemployment lines." Times staff photographer Fred R. Conrad took this photo shortly before rehearsal at the Booth Theater dressing room. By the end of the night, the enormous cast worked up an appetite: at the invitation-only supper that followed, the waiters served 30 pounds of caviar and 35 cases of champagne. The show's run would eventually total 6,137 performances, a record that would later be beaten by "Cats."