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Andrew Lloyd Webber was born on March 22, 1948 to William and Jean Lloyd Webber. The musical Cats paired Andrew with the deceased poet T.S. Eliot and producer, Cameron Mackintosh. It was an incredible hit and beat A Chorus Line for longest running musical and highest grossing musical. Cats made Andrew rich and famous. It all began when Lloyd Webber showcased a song cycle he had written based on Eliot’s book of poems at his country house, Sydmonton. T. S. Eliot's widow Valerie came to see the performance in 1980, liked the songs, and gave Andrew a cache of relevant unfinished fragments, unpublished poems and letters, including one in which Eliot pondered the possibility of ending the OLD POSSUM'S collection with a poem about dance. The idea of a musical was born. Lloyd Webber had broached the subject to Hal Prince, an American musical theater director. He knew he needed some magical concept, or brilliant trick, to transform the song cycle into a show.
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