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]Monday, August 15, 2011
1879 The legendary Barrymore theatre family gets one more to add to its roster today as Ethel Barrymore is born. Her father is actor Maurice Barrymore and her brothers are John and Lionel. B…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Saturday, August 13, 2011
1895 Bert Lahr (nee Irving Lahrheim), the future stage and screen clown, is born today in New York. Following an early career in Vaudeville, Lahr will enjoy a widely successful career on Bro…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, August 12, 2011
1881 Birthday of Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959), who began his career as a Broadway actor in shows including Hearts Are Trumps and To Have and To Hold, and a Broadway playwright and producer, …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Wednesday, August 10, 2011
1911 Birthday of playwright Jerome Chodorov, who wrote the play, My Sister Eileen, which he later adapted as the book for the musical Wonderful Town, which won him a Tony Award. Other plays …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, August 9, 2011
1967 Playwright Joe Orton is found dead today in his London flat. Also found dead is his companion, writer and actor Kenneth Halliwell. It appears that Halliwell murdered the Loot playwright…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Monday, August 8, 2011
1975 Liza Minnelli to the rescue! With only six days to learn the role of merry murderess Roxie Hart, the Academy Award-winning stage and film star agrees to fill in for an ailing Gwen Verdo…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Sunday, August 7, 2011
1919 Actors' Equity calls the longest strike in American theatre history. Francis Bacon's Lightin' and 12 other Broadway shows go dark as the fledgling union's struggle for r…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Saturday, August 6, 2011
1880 Broadway director-producer Phillip Moeller is born today in New York. Among his greatest theatrical achievements are productions of They Knew What They Wanted, Elizabeth the Queen, Mour…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, August 5, 2011
1977 All Broadway marquee lights are dimmed tonight in honor of actor Alfred Lunt who died two days earlier. This is only the third time up to that point that such an action has been taken.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, August 4, 2011
1981 Melvyn Douglas dies today at the age of 80. Born in Macon, Georgia as Melvyn Edouard Heselberg, Douglas went on to become one of the more accomplished stage actors of his generation. Am…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Wednesday, August 3, 2011
1921 Composer Richard Adler is born today. Along with Jerry Ross he will go on to write two of the most influential musicals of the 1950s: The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees. The successful pa…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, August 2, 2011
1900 Birthday of actress and singer Helen Morgan, who rose to fame as a nightclub performer. She had a show at Billy Rose's Backstage Club, where the crowded conditions made her perch on…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Saturday, July 30, 2011
1983 Broadway lyricist Howard Dietz dies today at age 87. With composer Arthur Schwartz, Dietz wrote the score for The Band Wagon. Other songs by the duo include "Dancing in the Dark,&q…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, July 29, 2011
1981 An ad in Variety today accuses theatre critic John Simon of being "racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, vicious, and derisive." Included in the ad/protest are excerpts from Simon…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, July 28, 2011
1920 Two of Broadway's greatest songwriting talents make their mainstem debuts today: lyricst Lorenz Hart, age 25, and composer Richard Rodgers, age 18, open their first musical, Poor Li…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The latest edition of "The Playbill Broadway Yearbook," covering the season from June 1, 2010 to May 31, 2011, is now available for pre-ordering. Here is the index from the book &m…
SOURCE: Playbill at 04:36PM[SHARE]The latest edition of "The Playbill Broadway Yearbook," covering the season from June 1, 2010 to May 31, 2011, is now available for pre-ordering. Here is the index from the book &m…
SOURCE: Playbill at 04:35PM[SHARE]The latest edition of "The Playbill Broadway Yearbook," covering the season from June 1, 2010 to May 31, 2011, is now available for pre-ordering. Here is the index from the book &m…
SOURCE: Playbill at 04:34PM[SHARE]The latest edition of "The Playbill Broadway Yearbook," covering the season from June 1, 2010 to May 31, 2011, is now available for pre-ordering. Here is the index from the book &m…
SOURCE: Playbill at 04:33PM[SHARE]The latest edition of "The Playbill Broadway Yearbook," covering the season from June 1, 2010 to May 31, 2011, is now available for pre-ordering. Here is the index from the book &m…
SOURCE: Playbill at 04:31PM[SHARE]The latest edition of "The Playbill Broadway Yearbook," covering the season from June 1, 2010 to May 31, 2011, is now available for pre-ordering. Here is the index from the book &m…
SOURCE: Playbill at 04:30PM[SHARE]1982 Little Shop of Horrors begins a 2,209-performance run today at Off-Broadway's Orpheum Theatre. Based on the Roger Corman cult classic about a man-eating plant, this Alan Menken-Howa…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Monday, July 25, 2011
1853 Birthday of Broadway impresario David Belasco, namesake of the Belasco Theatre, who wrote and/or produced dozens of plays including DuBarry, Zaza and Laugh, Clown, Laugh!, and two that …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Sunday, July 24, 2011
1920 Producer Alexander H. Cohen, known for bringing quality plays to Broadway for six decades, is born today. Lastly represented on Broadway by the Noel Coward play, Waiting in the Wings, s…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Saturday, July 23, 2011
1938 Helen Hayes is named the stage's greatest performer when the New York Sun prints its list of great performers today. Compiled after polling 150 notable people, mostly in the theatre…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Friday, July 22, 2011
1912 The Shubert Brothers present the first of their annual Passing Show installments tonight. Passing Show of 1912 features Charlotte Greenwood, Trixie Friganza, and Eugene and Willie Howar…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, July 21, 2011
1951 Birthday of actress Lilias White, who will be featured in revivals of musicals including How to Succeed in Business and Once on This Island, and who will win the Tony Award for her perf…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Wednesday, July 20, 2011
1961 Stop The World - I Want To Get Off opens tonight at the Queen's Theatre on London's West End. The musical, which follows the life of one man from birth to death, will run 485 p…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, July 19, 2011
1938 Stage and film actor Burgess Meredith divorces Margaret Perry today. Perry, an actress, is the daughter of Antoinette Perry, after whom the Tony Awards are named. The union was rather s…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Monday, July 18, 2011
1928 Following the birth of "talkie" films, Variety prints an article focusing on the amount of legit theatre talent that is being sought for this new medium. Among those stage act…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
