VIDEO: On This Day, May 9: NINE Opens On Broadway

On this day in 1982, the Tony Award-winning Best Musical, Nine, opens at Broadway's 46th Street Theatre (now the Richard Rodgers).

Nine is the story of a celebrated film director Guido Contini and his attempts to come up with a plot for his next film as he is pursued by hordes of beautiful women, all clamoring to be loved by him and him alone. Flashbacks reveal the substance of his life which will become the material for his next film: a musical version of the Casanova story.

Based on Italian director Federico Felini's comic masterpiece of biographical filmmaking, 8 1/2. Maury Yeston's sultry and enchanting musical follows the life of this world famous film director as he prepares his latest picture and balances the numerous women in his life. Contino is also, after recent box office failures, drifting towards a nervous breakdown, from which he is held back only by the support of his wife, Luisa. As his sanity disintegrates, he drifts into nostalgic reverie, eventually focusing on the formative sexual encounter of his life, which occurred at the age of nine.