Sunday, March 24, 2013
1909 Irish poet and playwright John Millington Synge dies today. He penned numerous plays including Riders to the Sea and The Playboy of the Western World. For the latter he traveled to the …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, March 23, 2013
1940 It's Separate Rooms for an actress who'd rather sleep with her pet Chihuahua than her playwright husband. Glenda Farrell and Lyle Talbot are the twosome. This comedy by Alan Din…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, March 22, 2013
1912 Karl Malden is born in Chicago, Illinois today. He will appear in numerous Broadway productions, most memorably as Mitch in the original A Streetcar Named Desire.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, March 20, 2013
1828 Birth of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), who will revolutionize world theatre with his realistic dramas A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, Rosmersholm and Peer Gyn…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, March 19, 2013
1872 Birthday of singer/actress Anna Held, future wife of Florenz Ziegfeld, and the classic sexy French flirt of her era. She will play this role in a series of musical vehicles including La…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, March 18, 2013
1927 Birthday of composer John Kander, who will compose scores for Broadway's Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Woman of the Year, Zorba and other musicals.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, March 17, 2013
1924 Doris Keane and Jacob Ben-Ami are Welded. Eugene O'Neill's drama outlines a marriage that is stronger than the couple realizes. It lasts three weeks at the 39th Street Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, March 16, 2013
1914 Female impersonator Julian Eltinge is lyricist and star of The Crinoline Girl. Otto Hauerbach provides the book and Percy Wenrich the score. S/he'll twirl at the Knickerbocker Theat…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, March 15, 2013
1926 Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock has its U.S. premiere at Broadway's Mayfair Theatre. It runs 74 performances.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, March 14, 2013
1911 Constance Collier, Tyrone Power (father of the future film star), and Sydney Greenstreet are in the cast of Thais. Paul Wilstach bases his play on the Anatole France story.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, March 11, 2013
1930 Edward Franklin Albee, vaudeville producer and theatre owner, dies today in Palm Beach, Florida. He joined B.F. Keith in the presentation of variety shows and by 1920 had a vaudeville c…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, March 9, 2013
1856 Comedian Eddie Foy is born today. He'll star in vaudeville and on Broadway, notably in Mr. Hamlet of Broadway, The Earl and the Girl and Piff! Paff!! Pouf!!!. His son, Eddie Foy, Jr…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, March 8, 2013
1920 Ziegfeld Girls of 1920 enjoys a 78-performance run at the New Amsterdam Roof Theatre. This revue boasts the talents of Fanny Brice, W.C. Fields, and Eddie Cantor.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, March 6, 2013
1933 Maxwell Anderson indicts Both Your Houses, a political story at the Royale Theatre. Morris Carnovsky is in the cast of this Theatre Guild production. It will go on to win the Pulitzer P…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, March 5, 2013
1908 Actor Rex Harrison is born today. He will make his London debut in Florence Kilpatrick's Getting George Married. He will star in the London production of Noël Coward's Design f…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, March 4, 2013
1922 Eugene O'Neill's drama The First Man describes the strange tale of a scientist who curses the unborn child in his wife's womb. The wife dies in childbirth and the child thrives.…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, March 3, 2013
1930 Bert Lahr is a Flying High mechanic who breaks an aeronautical record because he doesn't know how to land the plane. The writing team of Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson p…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, March 1, 2013
1922 Arthur Wing Pinero's The Enchanted Cottage constructs the story of a couple who find themselves transformed by their love for one another. Owen Nares and Laura Cowie are the lucky p…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, February 28, 2013
1894 Birthday of playwright Ben Hecht (1894-1964) , author or co-author of The Front Page, Twentieth Century, Jumbo, The Egoist and The Great Magoo.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, February 27, 2013
"The Death of Klinghoffer," the controversial 1991 opera by John Adams, is scheduled to make its much-belated Los Angeles-area debut in 2014. But the producing company won't be L.A. Opera, w…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:30AMSunday, February 24, 2013
1876 Birthday of Broadway comedian Victor Moore (1876-1962), who starred or co-starred in the original casts of many musical comedies, notably Of Thee I Sing, Anything Goes, Louisiana Purcha…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, February 23, 2013
1960 The Dublin Gate Theatre will hear Chimes at Midnight. Orson Welles directs his adaptation of Shakespeare and Holinshead.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, February 22, 2013
1930 Birthday of Marni Nixon, singer whose voice will be dubbed into the mouths of better-known performers, including Natalie Wood in the film of West Side Story. She will make her Broadway …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, February 21, 2013
1879 John Wellington Wells deals his magic and spells for the first time on Broadway with the American premiere of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's The Sorcerer at the old Broadway Th…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, February 20, 2013
1893 Birthday of playwright and producer Russel Crouse (1893-1966), whose prodigious output of scripts, many in partnership with Howard Lindsay, includes State of the Union and The Great Seb…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, February 19, 2013
1900 A week-long engagement at Dublin's Gaiety Theatre by the Irish Literary Theatre does not cause much of a stir. The company stages The Bending of the Bough by George Moore, Maeve by …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, February 16, 2013
1898 Birthday of Broadway leading lady and producer Katharine Cornell (1898-1974), who starred in and/or produced A Bill of Divorcement, The Age of Innocence, The Barretts of Wimpole Street,…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, February 14, 2013
Its Foursquare Foundation charitable arm loses a reported $2 million on the short-lived Broadway musical about church founder Aimee Semple McPherson.There was no divine intervention for the …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:10PM1882 Birthday of John Barrymore (1882-1942), actor in the grand style, and scion of the Barrymore acting clan. Though he began as a light comedian, he became identified with the classics, no…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, February 11, 2013
1901 A man marries his fiancee On the Quiet because his parents want him to finish Yale. Playwright Augustus Thomas based this comedy on a real incident. It unfolds at the Madison Square The…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, February 9, 2013
1865 Birthday of actress Beatrice Stella Tanner, better known by her stage name, Mrs. Patrick Campbell (1865-1940). She had a long correspondence with playwright George Bernard Shaw, and app…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM 
