The Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot opened on Broadway on this date in 1960. It was an adaptation of The Once and Future King, T.H. White's retelling of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1958). The original cast recording — featuring Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet — was a favorite of President Kennedy and his family. Not long after her husband's assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy gave an interview to T.H. White. She told him how her husband would often ask her to play the album at bedtime, to take his mind off his crippling back pain. Kennedy was particularly moved by the final number, in which Arthur knights a young boy on the eve of a great battle, and implores him to keep the legend of Camelot alive. "The song he loved most came at the very end of this record, the last side of Camelot, sad Camelot ...'Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.' [...] There'll never be another Camelot again." (Source: The Writer’s Almanac)
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