Not just any assassin is good enough for Broadway musical

NEWSDAY
Presidential assassins are a bunch of losers, but even in that dismal category there are losers among the losers. "Assassins," currently on Broadway, includes only nine of the 13 people who've made attempts on the lives of U.S. presidents.
"We eliminated those who didn't add anything new or supply anything unique," explained John Weidman, librettist for the Stephen Sondheim musical.
Even the first to join the motley crew -- Richard Lawrence, who tried to shoot Andrew Jackson in 1835 -- didn't make the cut. Lawrence was delusional but not as interestingly delusional (or as successful) as Charles Guiteau, who killed James Garfield in 1881.
John Shrank, who fired his pistol point-blank at former President Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, at least made an early workshop of the musical, according to Weidman, who says sufficient stage time for character development was also a factor in winnowing the featured assassins.
Then there were Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, Puerto Rican nationalists who went after Harry S. Truman in 1950. They, like Lawrence, were out before the script writing even commenced. "They just didn't add anything," says Weidman, who found the pair "lacking the variety of psychological shadings and complexities" of the chosen. There were only two shoo-ins: Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth.