“Hamilton” the musical currently presents three U.S. presidents every night – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison – but nearly every one of the 43 presidents has been portrayed on Broadway at one time or another. Lincoln has been the star of more than a dozen Broadway plays, starting with Benjamin Chapin’s Lincoln in 1906; Washington is a distant second. But even more obscure presidents such as Rutherford B. Hayes have gotten their moments in the spotlight. Hayes and two other presidents were portrayed by Gene Wilder in “The White House,” a short-lived 1964 play by A. E. Hotchner that crammed in 24 of the presidents between John Adams and Woodrow Wilson.

In honor of Presidents Day, here is a collection of photographs of presidents of the United States depicted on Broadway through the years. Click on any to see it enlarged and read the (sometimes extensive) captions.

Christopher Jackson as George Washington in Hamilton, 2015 Bryan Cranston as President Lyndon Baines Johnson in All The Way, 2014, by Robert Schenkkan Okieriete Onaodowan as James Madison in Hamilton Ralph Bellamy as FDR in Sunrise at Campobello. . Dore Schary’s play, which ran on Broadway for 16 months and won four Tony Awards in 1958, including for best play, chronicles Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s battle with polio and his return to politics. The play ends a decade before he becomes president. Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln in Illinois. Robert Sherwood’s play, which won the 1939 Pulitzer for Drama, ran for 14 months, and was revived on Broadway in 1993, begins with Lincoln’s childhood. It ends with Lincoln saying goodbye to his friends in Springfield and leaving on a train to assume the presidency. Benjamin Walker as Andrew Jackson in Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, 2010. The musical by Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman, brought a campy downtown sensibility in its depiction of the seventh president of the United States as a combination sexy rock star, immature populist, and killer. They build in an ambivalence towards Jackson’s legacy with the meta-theatrical device of including a character who is a historian commenting on that legacy – until Jackson kills her halfway through the musical. Will Ferrell as President George W. Bush in You’re Welcome America: : A Final Night With George W. Bush. Written by Ferrell, the juvenile satire began performances on Broadway the day in 2009 that Bush left office. Frank Langella as Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon, 2007. Peter Morgan’s dramatization of journalist David Frost’s television interviews with the president was set three years after Nixon resigned his office in disgrace. In the 2012 revival of Annie, Merwin Foard (second from stage left) portrayed F.D.R. Foard had previously portrayed President James Garfield in Sondheim’s Assassins. Presidents are frequently peripheral characters. Theodore Roosevelt has a cameo in Newsies Actor William Daniels as John Adams in the 1969 Broadway musical “1776” about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The musical will be presented in the Encores! concert series later this season. Actors (L-R) William Daniels as future president John Adams, Howard Da Silva as Benjamin Franklin, Betty Buckley as Martha Jefferson and Ken Howard as future President Thomas Jefferson in “1776” Benjamin Chapin in “Lincoln,” 1906.

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