Sunday, August 16, 2015
1913 Montague Glass' comedy Potash and Perlmutter begins a hit run at the Cohan Theatre, starring George Sidney and Alexander Carr as the hapless pair.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, August 15, 2015
1879 The legendary Barrymore theatre family gets one more to add to its roster today as Ethel Barrymore is born. Her father is actor Maurice Barrymore and her brothers are John and Lionel. B…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, August 14, 2015
We rank the 30 top musicals that made the leap from movie screens to Broadway and Off Broadway stages
SOURCE: Time Out at 08:50PM1888 Comedian DeWolf Hopper debuts his dramatic recitation of the poem Casey at the Bat at Wallack's Theatre. It will become a cornerstone of his act for the next 40 years.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, August 13, 2015
1895 Bert Lahr (nee Irving Lahrheim), the future stage and screen clown, is born today in New York. Following an early career in Vaudeville, Lahr will enjoy a widely successful career on Bro…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, August 12, 2015
1881 Birthday of Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959), who began his career as a Broadway actor in shows including Hearts Are Trumps and To Have and To Hold, and a Broadway playwright and produc…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, August 11, 2015
1867 Actor-producer Joseph Weber, of the vaudeville comedy team Weber and Fields, is born today.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, August 10, 2015
1911 Birthday of playwright Jerome Chodorov, who wrote the play, My Sister Eileen, which he later adapted as the book for the musical Wonderful Town, which won him a Tony Award. Other plays …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:32AMSunday, August 9, 2015
1967 Playwright Joe Orton is found dead today in his London flat. Also found dead is his companion, writer and actor Kenneth Halliwell. It appears that Halliwell murdered the Loot playwright…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, August 8, 2015
1975 Liza Minnelli to the rescue! With only six days to learn the role of merry murderess Roxie Hart, the Academy Award-winning stage and film star agrees to fill in for an ailing Gwen V…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, August 7, 2015
1886 Future stage actress and second wife of Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., Billie Burke is born today in Washington, D.C. Born Mary William Ethelbert Appleton, Burke spent her childhood in England,…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, August 6, 2015
1947 Today's Variety announces that John Garfield will star in the premiere production of a new Tennessee Williams play, titled A Streetcar Named Desire. As history will have it, however…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, August 5, 2015
1977 All Broadway marquee lights are dimmed tonight in honor of actor Alfred Lunt who died two days earlier. This is only the third time up to that point that such an action has been taken.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, August 4, 2015
1981 Melvyn Douglas dies today at the age of 80. Born in Macon, Georgia as Melvyn Edouard Heselberg, Douglas went on to become one of the more accomplished stage actors of his generation. Am…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, August 3, 2015
1921 Composer Richard Adler is born today. Along with Jerry Ross he will go on to write two of the most influential musicals of the 1950s: The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees. The successful pa…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, August 2, 2015
1900 Birthday of actress and singer Helen Morgan, who rose to fame as a nightclub performer. She had a show at Billy Rose's Backstage Club, where the crowded conditions made her perch on…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, August 1, 2015
1921 Opening night of the popular farce Getting Gertie's Garter about a man who gives a young woman a jeweled garter, then schemes to get it back before his fiance finds out.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, July 31, 2015
1967 Judy Garland is At Home at the Palace for a four week engagement at the famed theatre. Following a first act of vaudeville comic Jackie Vernon, soft-shoe and tap dancer John Bubbles…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, July 30, 2015
1983 Broadway lyricist Howard Dietz dies today at age 87. With composer Arthur Schwartz, Dietz wrote the score for The Band Wagon. Other songs by the duo include "Dancing in the Dark,&q…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, July 29, 2015
1981 An ad in Variety today accuses theatre critic John Simon of being "racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, vicious, and derisive." Included in the ad/protest are excerpts from S…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, July 28, 2015
1920 Two of Broadway's greatest songwriting talents make their mainstem debuts today: lyricst Lorenz Hart, age 25, and composer Richard Rodgers, age 18, open their first musical, Poor Li…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, July 27, 2015
1982 Little Shop of Horrors begins a 2,209-performance run today at Off-Broadway's Orpheum Theatre. Based on the Roger Corman cult classic about a man-eating plant, this Alan…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, July 26, 2015
1856 A Dramatic genius is born today in the person of George Bernard Shaw. Among Shaw's many playwriting credits will be Pygmalion, Man and Superman and Saint Joan. The former play, a co…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, July 25, 2015
1853 Birthday of Broadway impresario David Belasco, namesake of the Belasco Theatre, who wrote and/or produced dozens of plays including The Return of Peter Grimm and Laugh, Clown, Laugh!, a…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, July 24, 2015
1920 Producer Alexander H. Cohen, known for bringing quality plays to Broadway for six decades, is born today. Lastly represented on Broadway by the Noel Coward play, Waiting in the Wings, s…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, July 23, 2015
1938 Helen Hayes is named the stage's greatest performer when the New York Sun prints its list of great performers today. Compiled after polling 150 notable people, mostly in the theatre…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, July 22, 2015
1912 The Shubert Brothers present the first of their annual Passing Show installments tonight. The Passing Show of 1912 features Charlotte Greenwood, Trixie Friganza, and Eugene and Willie H…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, July 21, 2015
1951 Birthday of actress Lillias White, whose Broadway appearances include Effie White in Dreamgirls, Miss Jones in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Funmilayo Anikulapo&#…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:10AMSunday, July 19, 2015
1938 Stage and film actor Burgess Meredith divorces Margaret Perry today. Perry, an actress, is the daughter of Antoinette Perry, after whom the Tony Awards are named. The union was rather s…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, July 17, 2015
1953 Actress Maude Adams dies today. Born in 1873, Adams, at the age of 32, played the title role in James M. Barrie's Peter Pan when it had its American premiere at the Empire Theatre i…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, July 16, 2015
1924 Broadway premiere of George Dibdin-Pitt's Sweeney Todd, one of numerous adaptations of the penny-dreadful tale of murder and cannibalism that would later be adapted as a mus…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM 
