Thursday, November 17, 2011
1836 Birthday of satirist William S. Gilbert, later to achieve immortality as the lyricist half of the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta-writing team that produced The Mikado, The Pirates of P…
SOURCE: Playbill at 07:00PM[SHARE]Monday, November 14, 2011
1905 Blanche Bates is Minnie, sweetheart of the mines in Girl of the Golden West. She tends a saloon, fugitive lover and pursuing sheriff. Writer, director, producer David Belasco was no str…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Sunday, November 13, 2011
1833 Birthday of master actor Edwin Booth (1833-1893), a major interpreter of Shakespeare and brother to actor Junius Brutus Booth and presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. Broadway's…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, October 28, 2011
1928 Six-time Tony-winning costume designer Florence Klotz is born today. Her designs will be worn by the original casts of Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, On the Twentieth…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, October 21, 2011
1933 Trying to follow-up the success of their Pulitzer-winning musical Of Thee I Sing, George and Ira Gershwin, George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind bring back President John Wintergreen and…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, October 14, 2011
1893 Lillian Gish, film acting pioneer whose Broadway career lasted from 1913 to 1976, is born today. Her stage shows will include Camille, The Trip to Bountiful and several versions of Uncl…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 11, 2011
1918 Jerome Robbins born today. The choreographer spent most of his early career moving easily between the worlds of classical ballet and Broadway, choreographing and/or directing classics i…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, October 7, 2011
1907 The Gay White Way, a musical revue whose title meant something quite different in that innocent era, opens at the Casino Theatre for a then-healthy run of 105 performances. Blanche Ring…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Saturday, October 1, 2011
1928 Mae West's controversial play Pleasure Man opens at the Biltmore Theatre. It's the story of an actor who has impregnated so many women that the brother of one of them takes up a…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, September 30, 2011
1915 The huge Hippodrome Theatre opens one of its most successful extravaganzas, Hip! Hip! Hooray!, with lyrics by John L. Golden, and starring Marjory Bentley and Dippy Diers. It will run 4…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, September 16, 2011
1892 Songwriter and producer Earl Carroll (1892-1948) is born today. His best-remembered contribution to Broadway was the eponymous revue The Earl Carroll Vanities, which had nine editions b…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, September 13, 2011
1894 Birthday of British playwright J.B. Priestley (1894-1984), author of plays An Inspector Calls, When We Are Married, Laburnum Grove and A Severed Head.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, September 8, 2011
1914 A farce about selling soap called It Pays to Advertise, by Roi Cooper Megrue and Walter Hackett, opens at the Cohan Theatre. It stars Grant Mitchell and Ruth Shepley.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Wednesday, September 7, 2011
1909 Director Elia Kazan is born. Kazan would go on to direct the award-winning plays Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire. His success reached to the silver screen as well. He w…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Monday, September 5, 2011
Joan Marcus, the busy production photographer for Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, offers a snapshot of her life — and shares some favorite photo memories.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]1881 Birthday of B. Iden Payne (1881-1976) a producer and playwright, who, as a professor at the University of Texas, inspired three generations of Broadway artists, including Tommy Tune and…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Sunday, September 4, 2011
1895 Actor E.H. Sothern scores a personal triumph in the adventure melodrama The Prisoner of Zenda.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Saturday, September 3, 2011
1827 Birthday of John Drew Sr., patriarch of the Drew and Barrymore acting dynasties that will include Georgiana Drew Barrymore; siblings Ethel, Lionel and John Barrymore; and today's mo…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, September 2, 2011
1918 A stage adaptation of Booth Tarkington's popular Penrod stories proves a bust. It opens today and runs just 48 performances.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, September 1, 2011
1898 Birthday of one of Broadway's most endearing leading ladies of the 1920s, Marilyn Miller (1898-1936), whose vehicles will include Sally, Sunny, Rosalie and As Thousands Cheer.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, August 30, 2011
1898 Birthday of actress Shirley Booth (1898-1992), who will appear in more than 30 Broadway plays in between film and TV stints. Her major stage roles include A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Monday, August 29, 2011
1899 The Girl From Maxime's one of Georges Feydeau's most sparkling farces, has its U.S. premiere at the Criterion Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Sunday, August 28, 2011
1917 Jerome Kern, Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse open their romantic musical-comedy Leave It To Jane tonight at the Longacre Theatre. The score includes "Just You Watch My Step," &q…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Saturday, August 27, 2011
1878 Birthday of Sam S. Shubert (1878-1905), co-founder of the theatre-owning and producing titan, the Shubert Organization. Broadway's Shubert Theatre is named for him.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, August 26, 2011
1904 "Clifford Bradshaw" is born today in the person of future British author Christopher Isherwood, today in Cheshire, England. Isherwood will go on to write "The Berlin Stor…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, August 25, 2011
1918 Birthday of composer Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), who will bridge the worlds of classical and Broadway, both as conductor for the New York Philharmonic and as composer of classic scor…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, August 23, 2011
1852 Broadway premiere of Uncle Tom's Cabin, based on the novel about slavery by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Sunday, August 21, 2011
1944 Robert Wright and George Forrest put words to classical themes by Edvard Grieg to create the operetta Song of Norway, based on Grieg's life. It opens an 860-performance run today at…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Saturday, August 20, 2011
1884 Actress Julia Sanderson, one of musical theatre's leading ladies during the first decades of the 20th century, is born today as Julia Sackett. Shows in which she starred included Th…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, August 19, 2011
1873 Birthday of comedian Fred Stone (1873-1959) who, partnered with David Montgomery, became one of the most beloved Broadway performers of the early 20th century. Among their notable hits …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, August 18, 2011
1873 Birthday of Otto Harbach (1873-1963) who will write lyrics and/or book for more than three dozen musicals including Roberta; No, No, Nanette; The Cat and the Fiddle; Rose-Marie and The …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
