Monday, December 29, 2014
1919 The Lafayette Players of New York, a black troupe, opens the newest theatre in Philadelphia, the Dunbar, with a production of Within the Law. The house, named for poet Paul Lawrence Dun…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, December 28, 2014
1925 Queenie Smith is featured in Tip-Toes, the George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin musical about a vaudeville trio stranded in Florida. It introduces the song "Sweet and Low Down, and…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, December 27, 2014
1920 Brock Pemberton's Miss Lulu Bett opens today at the Belmont Theatre. It will run 198 performances and win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, December 26, 2014
1904 Maude Adams returns to Broadway with a revival of J.M. Barrie's The Little Minister. It opens tonight and runs just 73 performances. A year later she'll be back with a better Ba…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, December 25, 2014
1865 Birthday of Fay Templeton (1865-1939), durable musical comedy actress from the 1870s to the 1930s. Her appearances include Roberta, Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway and Fiddle&#…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, December 24, 2014
1904 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 12:00AMTuesday, December 23, 2014
1893 Birthday of dancer Ann Pennington (1893-1971), who would display her fabled dimpled knee in many editions of The Ziegfeld Follies and George White's Scandals from 1913 to 1928.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, December 22, 2014
1639 Jean Racine (1639-1699) is born today in France. He will go on to write classics Phedre and Bérénice.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, December 21, 2014
1889 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 12:00AMSaturday, December 20, 2014
1912 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 …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, December 19, 2014
1865 Birthday of Mary Augusta Davey, who acted under the names Minnie Maddern, Minnie Maddern Fiske and Mrs. Fiske (1865-1932). Performer, director and producer of many dramas before and…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, December 18, 2014
1907 Playwright Christopher Fry (1907-2005), author of Ring Round the Moon and The Lady's Not for Burning, is born, with the additional surname of Harris, in Bristol, England.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, December 17, 2014
1906 Opening night for Lew Dockstader's Minstrels, the final Broadway appearance for one of the last of the great minstrel shows. It runs 26 performances at The New York Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, December 16, 2014
1899 Noël Coward is born today. He authored plays such as Hay Fever, Design for Living and Private Lives, many of which he performed in; scripts for the films "Brief Encounter" an…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, December 15, 2014
1919 Frank McGlyn is Abraham Lincoln in John Drinkwater's drama. The story follows Lincoln's life from 1860 to his assassination in 1865. There will be 193 performances at the Cort T…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, December 14, 2014
1885 Birthday of Brock Pemberton (1885-1950), producer of many Broadway plays and comedies during a 30-year career, including the original Harvey, Miss Lulu Bett, Six Characters in S…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, December 13, 2014
1925 Birthday in West Plains, MO, of actor Dick Van Dyke, who will appear on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie and The Girls Against the Boys, and create memorable TV and film roles in "The Di…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:28AMFriday, December 12, 2014
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 12:00AMThursday, December 11, 2014
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 12:00AMWednesday, December 10, 2014
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 12:00AMTuesday, December 9, 2014
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 12:00AMMonday, December 8, 2014
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 12:00AMSunday, December 7, 2014
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 includ…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, December 6, 2014
1896 Birthday of Ira Gershwin (1896-1983), one of Broadway's most sterling lyricists, mainly in collaboration with his brother George Gershwin. Ira's musicals will include Porgy …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, 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
1860 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 12:00AM 
