Wednesday, December 12, 2012
1902 There will be two debuts in Everyman. Edith Wynne Matthison makes her American debut, and Charles Rann Kennedy makes his stage debut.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, December 11, 2012
1893 Oscar Wilde gets his second Broadway production in a year with the U.S. premiere of his play A Woman of No Importance at Miner's Fifth Avenue Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, December 10, 2012
1901 Sadie Martinot, Guy Bates Post, and Junius Brutus Booth play The Marriage Game. This drama, adapted by Clyde Fitch from Emile Augier's Le Marriage d'Olympe, highlights what ruin…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, December 9, 2012
1902 Birthday of actress Margaret Hamilton, who will appear on Broadway in plays including The Farmer Takes a Wife, The Dark Tower, Goldilocks and a revival of Our Town, but who will forever…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, December 8, 2012
1903 Mam'selle Napoleon is Anna Held in this musical at the Knickerbocker Theatre. Produced by Held's husband Florenz Ziegfeld, with a score by Gustav Luders, this show will have a 4…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, December 7, 2012
1879 Composer Rudolf Friml (1879-1972) is born in Prague. He will emigrate to the U.S. and become one of the top Broadway operetta composers of the 1910s and 1920s. His works will include Th…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, December 3, 2012
1888 One of Frances Hodgson Burnett's greatest successes opens today: Little Lord Fauntleroy starry Tommy Russell. The story of a American boy who discovers he's the heir to a Britis…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, December 1, 2012
Backers hoped the show would be a long-running tourist attraction at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. The closing is attributed to disappointing ticket sales."Iris," the extravagant Cirque du…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:38AMSaturday, November 24, 2012
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 Pretty…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, November 23, 2012
1920 In Rollo's Wild Oat, the title character rents a theatre and hires actors so he can star in Hamlet. Roland Young has the lead in this Clare Kummer play.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, November 22, 2012
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 12:00AMWednesday, November 21, 2012
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 Leonard Ber…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, November 20, 2012
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 12:00AMMonday, November 19, 2012
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 12:00AMSunday, November 18, 2012
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 12:00AMSaturday, November 17, 2012
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 Studio, he w…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, November 16, 2012
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 write do…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, November 15, 2012
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 12:00AMWednesday, November 14, 2012
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 12:00AMTuesday, November 13, 2012
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 12:00AMMonday, November 12, 2012
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 even greate…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, November 7, 2012
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 12:00AMTuesday, November 6, 2012
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 Lance (1…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, October 27, 2012
1904 The New York City subway system makes its maiden run today. The first line runs right through Times Square, making it much easier for audiences from the far reaches of Manhattan to get …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, October 26, 2012
1844 William Harrigan, half of the iconic 1880s writing and performing team of Harrigan and Hart, is born today. He and Tony Hart will create the popular Mulligan Guards characters reflectin…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, October 25, 2012
1927 Birthday of Barbara Cook, sylphlike ingenue of the 1950s who created lead roles in Flahooley, Candide, The Grass Harp and The Music Man (as the original Marian the Librarian), and later…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, October 24, 2012
1904 Birthday of Moss Hart, Broadway playwright who will write or cowrite The Man Who Came to Dinner, Once in a Lifetime, As Thousands Cheer, You Can't Take it With You and Lady in the Dark,…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, October 23, 2012
1844 Actress Sarah Bernhardt born today. "The Divine Sarah" will create many memorable roles in French and English, notably in Alexandre Dumas, fils' classic La Dame aux Cameli…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, October 22, 2012
1903 Birthday of Jerome Lester Horwitz (1903-1952), better known by his stage name Curley Howard, who will team up with his brother Harry Moses Horwitz (a.k.a. Moe) and Larry Fine to form th…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, October 21, 2012
1933 Trying to follow-up the success of their Pulitzer-winning musical Of Thee I Sing, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind bring back President John Wintergre…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, October 20, 2012
1882 Birthday of Bela Lugosi, Hungarian-born actor who plays a variety of character roles before landing the part that will make him an icon, the title role in Dracula, first on Broadway…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM 
