Despite what has sometimes been said, including by John Kander, the role of theatrical agent Henry Glassman (played by David Rounds) was in the show in early New York previews. When the role was cut from the show, some of his function as a character was given to the character of the Matron, as the role was listed in playbills for the original production. (This character was often listed as Mama Morton or Matron “Mama ”Morton in programs for later productions.)
Despite what has sometimes been written, it was not a secret before her first performance that Liza Minnelli was going to replace Gwen Verdon for five weeks while Verdon was out for throat surgery. On August 1, 1975, it was reported in the New York Times and in Newsday that Minnelli would temporarily take over the role starting on August 8, which was when Minnelli did take over. Other news outlets took up the story. Variety reported that people were lined up around the block buying tickets to see Minnelli, whose run was sold out or nearly sold out before her first performance. By this point in the run, the pre-opening advance was running down, and there was already a notable decline in the weekly grosses, which immediately went up to capacity when Minnelli took over.
Different sources give different performance totals for the run. Some sources did not deduct the correct number of canceled performances due to the musicians strike in September and October 1975. One source made the further mistake of adding the previews to an incorrect total of post-opening performances. In addition, that source had the wrong number of previews.
As far as we can tell, the correct total number of performances (not including previews) was 907, following 25 previews, not 24, as erroneously stated in some sources.