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 12:00AM1872 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 12:00AM1930 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 12:00AM1933 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 12:00AM1908 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 12:00AM1922 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 12:00AM1930 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 12:00AM1894 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 12:00AM"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 09:30AM1876 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 12:00AM1930 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 12:00AMWhat gets actors to high-profile stage roles? Talent, persistence and a bit of luck.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:00PM1879 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 12:00AM1893 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 12:00AM1898 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 12:00AM1882 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 12:00AM1901 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 12:00AM1938 When a grandfather holds off Death (by chasing him up a tree) so he can be sure his grandson will be taken care of, he's working On Borrowed Time. This comedy was adapted by Paul Os…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMIt’s January, guys. It’s freezing. There are no major holidays in sight. You can only confidently recommend one Broadway show to your friends and family without embarrassing your…
SOURCE: The Craptacular at 10:56AMGrand, Leeds: The Verdi bicentenary gets off to a flying start with Opera North's new production of Italian opera's greatest setting of a Shakespearian tragedy, directed by Tim Alb…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:46AMA.L. STEINER 1. Bifo: “the depth of the catastrophe represented by the collapse is awakening hidden potencies of the social brain.” Can we feel good about the crisis, as an alarm clock…
SOURCE: Culturebot at 05:41PMNew play explores the life of Walter Tull, one of the first black footballers in England who also became an officer in the first world war Continue reading...
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PM1899 "I would rather play Ibsen than eat and that's often what it amounts to," said Eva Le Gallienne, born in London today. Her determination and drive will lead her to a st…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1900 Blanche Bates, who will go on to play Cho-Cho San in Madame Butterfly, now stars in David Belasco's Naughty Anthony. Oliver Redpath co-stars in this comedy at the Herald Square Thea…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFew sights are as welcome each year as that of a packed lobby at the Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival, which opened with its typical gangbusters energy last weekend at Stage 773 in Lakeview an…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:31PM1909 Birthday of Victor Borge (1909-2000), pianist and comedian whose 1953 Comedy in Music ran 888 performances, the longest run ever for a solo musical on Broadway. He followed it with Come…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1879 World premiere of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York, with Alice Barnett as Ruth.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1904 Lillian Russell, a.k.a Diamond Lil, stars in Lady Teazle, a musical based on The School for Scandal. John Kendrick Bangs and Roderic C. Penfield provide the music to a score by A. Baldw…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1889 Beatrice Cameron stars as Nora Helmer in the U.S. premiere of Henrik Ibsen's groundbreaking drama, A Doll's House at Palmer's Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMAwards for extremely specific on-stage achievements.
SOURCE: City Paper (Philadelphia) at 05:42AM1912 Laurette Taylor stars in Peg O' My Heart, written and directed by her husband, J. Hartley Manners. This story of a winsome orphan becomes a vehicle for Taylor, and she will revive it of…
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