Friday, December 5, 2014
1921 Novelist Theodore Dreiser's play, The Hand of the Potter, opens at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York. Scenes range from the poverty-stricken Lower East Side to the lavish&#…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, December 4, 2014
The culture team talks summer music festivals, whether fashion is art and if Australians are intellectuals. Plus we nominate our top December must-dos that don't involve tinsel Continue read…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:42AM1860 Birthday of Lillian Russell (1860-1922), who became the epitome of Gilded Age female sex appeal and stage presence starting in vaudeville at Tony Pastor's Theatre and graduating…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:13AMWednesday, December 3, 2014
1888 One of Frances Hodgson Burnett's greatest successes opens today: Little Lord Fauntleroy starring Tommy Russell. The story of a American boy who discovers he's the heir to a Brit…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, December 2, 2014
1912 The Firefly sparks the Lyric Theatre with music by Rudolf Friml and lyrics and book by Otto Harbach. This tale of an Italian street singer who disguises herself as a boy to be near the …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, December 1, 2014
1907 Theatrical producer Herman Levin is born in Philadelphia, PA.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, November 30, 2014
1924 Henry Oscar and Esme Biddle are the leads of Byron by Alice Law, at the Century Theatre in Bayswater, England. In a very small role is someone named Laurence Olivier.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, November 29, 2014
1895 Birthday of legendary film choreographer Busby Berkeley (1895-1976), whose career will be launched with a 12-show burst of creativity on Broadway between the end of 1926 and the…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, November 28, 2014
1923 Lionel Barrymore stars in David Belasco's Laugh, Clown, Laugh!, the Pagliacci-like story of a middle-aged clown who adopts a young girl, but later, as she grows into womanho…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, November 27, 2014
1906 Anna Held is The Parisian Model who inherits money mysteriously. Harry B. Smith provides the book and lyrics to Max Hoffman's score. While the show is directed by Julian Mitchell, t…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, November 25, 2014
1882 U.S. premiere of W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan's operetta Iolanthe, about fairies and other supernatural folk who get involved with Parliamentary peers.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, November 24, 2014
1849 Birthday of author Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924), author of several Broadway plays in the early the 20th century, including Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Little Princess, The Pr…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, November 22, 2014
1937 Ethel Barrymore and Dudley Digges star in The Ghost of Yankee Doodle. Written by Sidney Howard, the play deals with a woman pacifist whose industrialist family stands to profit from sel…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:37AMFriday, November 21, 2014
1694 Birthday of French author François Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire (1694-1778) whose satirical novel "Candide" served as source material for the 1956 Leo…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, November 20, 2014
1922 The Lucky One is the brother who doesn't get the girl in this A. A. Milne play. Staged at the Theatre Guild by Theodore Komisarjevsky with a cast including Dennis King, Romney Brent…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:30AMWednesday, November 19, 2014
1906 George Arliss and Mrs. Fiske star in The New York Idea, Langdon Mitchell's play which runs 66 performances at the Lyric Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, November 18, 2014
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 Pira…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, November 17, 2014
1901 Birthday of actor/director/producer/teacher/acting coach Lee Strasberg (1901-1982) in Austria-Hungary. As a founder of the Group Theatre and Artistic Director of the Actors Stud…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, November 16, 2014
1889 Playwright and director George S. Kaufman (1889-1961) is born today in Pittsburgh. A former newsman, Kaufman will make his mark with the comedy Dulcy in 1921, and will go on to writ…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, November 15, 2014
1875 British comic operetta titans W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan make their U.S. debut today with Trial by Jury at the Eagle Variety Theatre, where it runs 8 performances.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, November 14, 2014
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 12:00AMThursday, November 13, 2014
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&#…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, November 12, 2014
1874 Birthday of pioneering African-American performer-composer Bert Williams (1874-1922), who wrote music for Broadway's In Dahomey (1903) and Abyssinia (1906), but achieved…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, November 11, 2014
1872 Birthday of Maude Adams (1872-1953), Broadway's first Peter Pan, who originated the role in 1904, and returned at least three times through 1915.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, November 10, 2014
1900 Opening night of legendary musical Floradora at the Casino Theatre for a 553-performance run — the first major hit of the 20th century. The production is remembered principally fo…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, November 9, 2014
1818 Playwright and novelist Ivan Turgenev is born in Russia. His most notable play is A Month in the Country, but he will make a bit of history in 2002 when his 150-year-old play Fo…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, November 8, 2014
1913 Birthday of June Hovik, better known as June Havoc, even better known as namesake of Baby June, the character based on her in the musical Gypsy. The show pretty accurately sums up her c…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, November 6, 2014
1904 The timeless anthem "Give My Regards to Broadway" is first sung tonight on the Broadway stage tonight at the opening of George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones at the Libert…
SOURCE: Playbill at 11:00PMWednesday, November 5, 2014
1854 Birthday of John Philip Sousa (1854-1932), composer of countless marches, who also found time to write Broadway musicals including Chris and the Wonderful Lamp (1900), The Free Lanc…
SOURCE: Playbill at 11:00PM1895 Birthday of Charles MacArthur (1895-1956), newsman-turned-playwright, whose wisecracking oeuvre includes The Front Page, Twentieth Century (the play on which the musical On …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, November 3, 2014
1787 Birthday of British actor Edmund Kean (1787-1833), considered one of the finest actors of the early 18th century. Among his greatest roles was Shakespeare's Richard III. He will…
SOURCE: Playbill at 11:00PM 
