Thursday, 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
Devil in the Detail explores the emotional relationship that women have with clothes. Director Christopher Haydon and Guardian writer Hadley Freeman explain how they and the playwright Chloe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:02AM1907 Theatrical producer Herman Levin is born in Philadelphia, PA.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, August 7, 2014
Within the past month we have read with sadness of the deaths of four important artists who seemingly have little in common: composer and author Mary Rodgers Guettel, internationally famous …
SOURCE: John Mauceri at 06:32PMTuesday, June 24, 2014
Music Conservatory of Westchester, a not-for-profit music school in White Plains, NY, honored Tony winner Barbara Cook and conductor John Mauceri on Monday, June 23 with …
SOURCE: John Mauceri at 07:33PMMonday, June 23, 2014
On Friday morning, April 25, 2014, World War II was everywhere to be found in the arts section of our essential paper of record, The New York Times. A revived revival of Cabaret with old chu…
SOURCE: John Mauceri at 06:25PMThursday, January 30, 2014
1911 Hugh Herbert Hipple is born today in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After dropping two H's, he will become suave actor Hugh Marlowe. In 1940 he will appear in Elmer Rice's Flight T…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, January 29, 2014
1860 Birthday of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), one of the fathers of modern drama, whose comparatively small oeuvre includes classics The Cherry Orchard, The Three Sisters, The Seagull and Uncl…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM 
