Musical theatre responsible for "Les Misérables", which became the longest-running international musical hit in history. The team, in collaboration with Richard Maltby Jr., continued to produce hits, including "Miss Saigon", inspired by the Puccini opera "Madama Butterfly". The British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber saw similar success with "Evita", based on the life of Argentina's Eva Perón; "Cats", derived from the poems of T. S. Eliot (both of which musicals originally starred Elaine Paige); "Starlight Express", performed on roller skates; "The Phantom of the Opera", derived from the Gaston Leroux novel, "Le Fantôme de l'Opéra"; and "Sunset Boulevard" (from the classic film of
Portrayal of East Asians in American film and theater Lee Curtis, David Carradine, Joel Grey, and many others. "Madame Butterfly" was originally a short story written by Philadelphia attorney John Luther Long. It was turned into a one-act play, "Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan", by David Belasco. Giacomo Puccini re-made the play into the Italian opera "Madama Butterfly", set in 1904. The 1915 silent film version was directed by Sidney Olcott and starred Mary Pickford. All the versions of Madame Butterfly tell the story of a young Japanese woman who has converted to Christianity (for which she is disowned by her family) and marries Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, a