Sunday, 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 12:00AMWednesday, March 13, 2013
1928 It's one for all, and all for almost 10 months of The Three Musketeers. William Anthony McGuire stages his book based on the Alexandre Dumas novel. P.G. Wodehouse and Clifford Grey …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, March 12, 2013
1928 Birthday of playwright Edward Albee, who will go on to write Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia? and Pulitzer-winners, A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Ta…
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 12:00AMSunday, March 10, 2013
1925 Ernest Truex is The Fall Guy for a group of dope dealers. This James Gleason-George Abbott comedy will run at the Eltinge Theatre for almost three months.
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 12:00AMThursday, March 7, 2013
1907 The Herald Square Theatre in New York hosts the American premiere of Widower's Houses. George Bernard Shaw's comedy is offered by the Shuberts in 16 special matinee performances…
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 12:00AMSaturday, March 2, 2013
1900 Composer Kurt Weill is born today in Dessau, Germany. He will compose the score for Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera, and Mahagonny. Among his many works, Lady in the Dark will be …
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 12:00AMTuesday, February 26, 2013
1911 Chicago's Columbia Theatre opens its doors today. Architect J.E.O. Pridmore designed this house which seats 1,550. In 1923 it will become the Adelphi. In 1974 its doors will close f…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, February 25, 2013
1900 Birthday of legendary Broadway producer and director Jed Harris (1900-1979), who will present The Royal Family, Broadway, Our Town, The Heiress and The Crucible. Also said to be the mod…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, 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 12:00AMMonday, February 18, 2013
1859 Sholem Yakov Rabinowitz is born in Ukraine. Under the pen name Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916) he will write many stories in Yiddish, several of which will be adapted as plays, most notably…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, February 17, 2013
1902 Joseph Hart's popular musical Foxy Grandpa opens a 120-performance run today at the 14th Street Theatre.
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 12:00AMFriday, February 15, 2013
1905 Birthday of composer Harold Arlen (1905-1986) a cantor's son who cut his musical teeth in 1920s Harlem, and went on to write music for Broadway shows, Star and Garter, Jamaica, Hous…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, February 14, 2013
1882 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 12:00AM 
