On opening night at the outdoor Madison Square Garden Roof Theatre, millionaire playboy Harry K. Thaw shot and killed architect Stanford White: the otherwise undistinguished musical's run continued for some 60 performances[1] largely on the publicity from this incident.
When the show was revived for four performances at the Berkeley Lyceum Theatre in October 1906, the cast included May Yohe and Robert O'Connor.
Theater critic and historian Burns Mantle later cited a letter he received from Woolf which read, “Mamzelle Champagne was my Columbia varsity show, and was transported by a manager, Henry Pincus, to the open Madison Square Roof with a professional cast.
Thaw eventually got up, crossed over to White's seat and shot him point-blank while the show onstage was in the midst of a number titled "I Could Love a Million Girls".
The murder is central to the plot of E.L. Doctorow's 1975 historical novel Ragtime, and in the 1981 movie veteran actor Donald O'Connor sings "I Could Love a Million Girls".