Wednesday, December 26, 2012
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 12:00AMTuesday, December 25, 2012
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-dee-dee.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, December 24, 2012
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 12:00AMSunday, December 23, 2012
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 12:00AMSaturday, December 22, 2012
1639 Jean Racine (1639-1699) is born today in France. He will go on to write classics Phedre and Bérénice.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, December 21, 2012
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 12:00AMThursday, December 20, 2012
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 it of…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, December 19, 2012
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 aft…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, December 18, 2012
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 12:00AMMonday, December 17, 2012
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 12:00AMSunday, December 16, 2012
1899 Noel 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" and…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, December 15, 2012
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 12:00AMFriday, December 14, 2012
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 Search of…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, December 13, 2012
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 12:00AMWednesday, 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 12:00AMThursday, December 6, 2012
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 and …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, December 5, 2012
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-livin…
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
1907 Theatrical producer Herman Levin is born in Philadelphia, PA.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, November 28, 2012
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 womanhood, find…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, November 27, 2012
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 12:00AMMonday, November 26, 2012
1864 Edwin Booth opens a four-month stand in Hamlet at the old Winter Garden Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, November 25, 2012
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 12:00AMSaturday, 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 12:00AMThursday, 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 12:00AM 
