Jan. 9, 1954, was a most memorable date in my life.

On that date, the television screen showed a pair of windows which seemed to open entirely on their own by magic. Through the window flew actor Mary Martin – the wires which lifted her off the ground could be seen, reflecting metallically, as she moved through the lights, but I never met anyone who minded that.

It was the first live broadcast of the musical show “Peter Pan.” After that, any of my friends whose parents wouldn’t allow them to stay up and watch it were second class citizens. We played Peter Pan, probably daily, for months to come. Since I was age 5 at the time, I was usually cast as one of the lost boys, but occasionally one of the gang with a better role wasn’t available to play, so I got promoted. Once, I even got to play Captain Hook.

Last Thursday, if everything has gone according to plan, the NBC television network broadcast another live production of that wonderful show. I can’t review it for you, since it hasn’t happened yet, but a week before the broadcast, NBC broadcast a preview of the coming show, which showed all of the actors in the costumes and make up in which they probably performed their roles last Thursday.

Last year, about this time, NBC made a bold experiment, investing a great deal of money in the possibility that if they made an elaborate production of the musical show “The Sound of Music,” that record audiences would tune in, and they could charge a great deal for the advertising slots on the show. Their experiment was a success, and 38.69 million viewers watched at least part of the production. It was one of the most-watched programs ever broadcast.

Paying top actors, dancers, singers, designers and other artists to prepare for a production which would only be performed once was a risk, but it paid off for NBC in 2013, so they decided to take the same risk last week. You may know whether it was a success for them. Since I’m writing a week in advance, as always, I can’t possibly know yet.

This week, I’d like to spend this column giving some background to “Peter Pan,” and commenting on how this production fits into the show’s long and colorful history.

PETER, HIMSELF

The original story of Peter Pan was that he was a stubborn little boy who decided that he didn’t want to grow up and assume a mortgage, and a job, and all the burdens of adulthood. Instead, he ran away to a magical island, named “Neverland.” There he learned to fly, and ran about having child-like run-ins with pirates, and mermaids and other fantastical frequenters of child’s play, where great adventure takes place, but somehow, nobody is actually injured.

The character of Peter Pan was the creation of a Scottish novelist and playwright, who lived as an adult in London. His name was Sir James Matthew Barrie, although he used the name “J.M. Barrie” on all his publications. The writer based the title character on his own older brother, who drowned in an accident on the day before his 14th birthday.

Barrie’s mother found comfort in the idea that her much-loved son would eternally be young and free of cares, and often talked of that view, to her other children.

Barrie first wrote about Peter as one character out of many in his 1902 novel “The Little White Bird.” The character became a runaway favorite element of the book, so in 1904, Barrie took the sections of his novel dealing with Peter, and turned them into the stage play “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.”

In the play version, Peter first encountered the character of Wendy Darling. One information source says that her name came from a very young child named Margaret Henley, who had difficulty pronouncing the letter “R.” As a result, she called Barrie “Fwendy,” which meant “Friendy,” and he translated it into the name Wendy. Unknown before that time, the name came into common usage in English-speaking countries.

The play was a success, and eventually the story was adapted and expanded, and the story passed back into the genre of the novel. In 1911, it was published with the title “Peter and Wendy.” In that version, Barrie made an important change to his story. He once told a lecture audience that when the play came out, Peter tells the Darling children that all that is necessary in order for them to fly, is for them to think happy and wonderful thoughts. To Barrie’s dismay, a surprising number of children went home and jumped off pieces of furniture, and even occasionally from upstairs windows, thinking they would soar into the air.

In the 1911 book, he changed the children’s first flight to require that they first be sprinkled with a magic fairy dust or they would be unable to fly, which reduced, but did not end, the number of attempts by young fans to fly.

From time to time, scholars have raised the tale of the Llewelyn Davies family, who were neighbors of Barrie’s in London during the period at which he enjoyed his greatest success. Barrie was friends with both parents and often made up stories to entertain the family’s five sons. Among the names of the Llewelyn Davies sons are Peter, John and Michael. Barrie owned a huge St. Bernard dog named “Porthos,” who often fulfilled human functions in the stories he made up for the boys. This is presumed to be the root of the dog Nana who serves as the nannie to the Darling children in “Peter Pan.”

From time to time, people have found a passage in Barrie’s writing, or have found an event in the writer’s life, which has caused them to make public claims that the author had, or wanted to have a sexual relationship with members of the Llewelyn Davies family. This was hinted at in a 2004 film starring Johnny Depp called “Finding Neverland.”

For many reasons, the vast majority of historians and literary experts have rejected the claim. For one thing, when the family’s father, Arthur Llewelyn Davies, died, he left his wife and sons in the writer’s care. The family’s mother remained a close friend of Barrie’s until her death, and all five boys were closely attached. The youngest son, Nicholas, encountered the accusations late in his life and published a scathing rejection of them.

Barrie remained free of suspicion throughout his life, and was even invited to tell his famous stories to the two young daughters of England’s Duke of York. The duke later became King George VI, and the girls grew up to be Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret.

THE SHOW

Since the very earliest productions of the 1904 play, Peter Pan has usually been played by an adult woman. This is true for a number of reasons, including that the many physical actions, including sword fighting, and often lifting and carrying other characters, including Wendy, which are required of the character, are often considered too much to ask of a genuine child, and learning the number of lines and songs required has been considered too much to ask of a child. The fact that laws restrict how many hours children may rehearse and perform in a given day is yet another problem.

The tradition of male characters who are essentially innocent and pure hearted being played by women has been known since the very early days of opera. Only one male actor has been known to play Peter in professional theater, when slight, blond actor Jack Noseworthy played the part on Broadway for a brief period. It was decided that the key to Peter’s charm is that he is a boy, not a man.

In the early 1950s, producer Edwin Lester of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Organization was looking for a vehicle to showcase the talents of Mary Martin. Martin was a strong singer who had sung a number of operas early in her career but who had made a name for herself and acquired a large following as the tomboy character Nellie Forbush in the musical show “South Pacific.”

Just a note in passing, among the things for which Martin is known is for being the mother of actor Larry Hagman, who would win fame for himself playing J.R. Ewing on the television series “Dallas.”

Lester acquired the rights to “Peter Pan,” and he hired a composer named Moose Charlap to write songs to insert into the play, but the result wasn’t popular. Interestingly, Charlap was the creator of many of the most popular songs from the show, including “Tender Shepherd,” “I Gotta Crow” and “I’m Flying.”

Hoping to save his investment, Lester hired famed Broadway composer Julie Stein to compose more numbers and lyricist team Betty Comden and Adolph Green to turn the production from a play with music to a full-fledged musical show.

In 1954, while the show was still finding its feet on tours around the country the world of television was dealing with a different problem. Virtually all televisions at that time showed a picture only in black and white. TV executives had made a huge investment in color technology, but the public held back, so they sought reasons for the public to trade in their black and white sets for much more expensive color sets.

NBC created a series of individual specials which it hoped would be so popular that they would drive the public to buy color sets, to better see and enjoy them. The series of specials was called “Producers Showcase” and the network scheduled one live performance of “Peter Pan” as one of the series. Martin was hired for the television special, as was suave English actor Cyril Ritchard. The character of Captain Hook was made into a foppish dandy to play to Ritchard’s personality, and his musical numbers include a waltz, a tango and a tarantella.

From the earliest performances at the beginning of the 20th century, the role of Captain Hook was performed by the same actor who played Mr. Darling, the father of Wendy and her brothers. Interestingly, the role was originally intended to be performed by the actress who played the children’s mother, but the actor playing their father thought it was a role certain to win him success,, and since he was a better-known personality he got the chance to play the pirate.

While Barrie clearly never intended Hook to be played by the same actor as Mr. Darling, it is not illogical that when the children pass from the reality of their home to the fantasy of Neverland, they might carry with them the image they have of their father, who demands that they not make noise in the house and otherwise holds them to behavior standards, while their mother is indulgent. Hook is certainly a relatively benevolent villain, who perpetually plots to kill Peter Pan and the Lost Boys yet never succeeds in doing it.

The original performance took place live. It was so successful, it was repeated the following year, and that resulted in the network being flooded with demands to see the show broadcast again. In 1960, it was not only performed a third time with the same cast except the children who had outgrown their roles. This time, it was recorded on video tape, and has been rebroadcast frequently since. It has been released on home video and DVD, and copies are still available for sale on the Internet, although there have been many complaints about the quality of the recording, though not of the performances.

A cartoon using the same characters and much of the same music was turned out by Disney Studios, in the 1950s, and remains one of their most popular and successful cartoons.

No fewer than 10 live productions have been made since the first recording in 1960, plus at least one more which is currently being filmed in live action, in which a computer takes scans of live actors and shapes a performance which resembles a cartoon with lifelike characters.

The title role has been performed by Sandy Duncan and Cathy Rigby, among others. Each of the productions has either added or subtracted songs, or done both. The most changed song was titled “Ugg-a-Wugga,” which is sung and danced by the tribe of Native Americans who live in Neverland under the leadership of a princess named Tiger Lily. The original song uses nonsense syllables to represent the languages of the Native Americans, and employs references such as “Red Skins.”

THE 2014 VERSION

Like last year’s production of “The Sound of Music,” Thursday’s performance was done live. That presumably means if someone sang a sour note, or tripped and fell, the error came right across the airwaves.

The result puts enormous pressure on cast, crew and orchestra, but it also makes a much less mechanical product. Feature films are great things, and the fact that you can erase an error and splice in the correct performance has a certain appeal, but for most audience members, including me, it isn’t nearly as successful.

The title role was performed by pretty, young Allison Williams, who has a role in the television series “Girls.” Williams is the daughter of NBC News anchor Brian Williams.

Playing Captain Hook is film actor Christopher Walken. He has given interviews with the press in which he discussed the difficulties in playing a children’s villain. If Hook is too frightening, he could cause nightmares on a nationwide basis, but if he is not frightening enough, he could make the production terribly bland.

In a switch from the tradition of connecting Hook to Wendy’s father, Mr. Darling is played by Broadway and television actor Christian Borle, probably best known from the television series “Smash.” Borle also played Smee, Captain Hook’s often comical first mate. Borle is also the only principal carry-over from 2013’s live musical show, as he played Max, the agent who booked the Trapp Family Singers, in that production.

The producers of this version have hired Amanda Green, the daughter of the man who, with his partner Betty Comden, wrote many of the original lyrics for the show to tunes by Stein. She has produced a song called “Vengeance” to provide some back story for Captain Hook. The new song is adapted from the song “Ambition,” which was written for the show “Do Re Mi.”

Several other songs have been “borrowed” from other scores, and one song was added in, called “When I Went Home,” which was written for the 1954 production, and was then cut.

The often-criticized “Ugg-a-Wugg,” has been given completely new words and is now called “True Blood Brothers.”

Based upon the previous week’s preview, I suspect the show was a major success. I hope that our world is filled with many young children who are now pretending to be Peter and Hook and Wendy. Magic is not a hard sell.