Saturday, January 14, 2012
1903 Opening night of The Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett play about a child, much in the same vein as her Secret Garden. Little Princess will run just 34 performances.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, January 13, 2012
1925 Birthday of one of Broadway's all-time greatest leading ladies, Gwen Verdon (1925-2000). She was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Actress or Featured Actress in a Musical six ti…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, January 3, 2012
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Monday, November 28, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
1836 Birthday of satirist William S. Gilbert, later to achieve immortality as the lyricist half of the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta-writing team that produced The Mikado, The Pirates of P…
SOURCE: Playbill at 07:00PMMonday, November 14, 2011
1905 Blanche Bates is Minnie, sweetheart of the mines in Girl of the Golden West. She tends a saloon, fugitive lover and pursuing sheriff. Writer, director, producer David Belasco was no str…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, November 13, 2011
1833 Birthday of master actor Edwin Booth (1833-1893), a major interpreter of Shakespeare and brother to actor Junius Brutus Booth and presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. Broadway's…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, October 31, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
1928 Six-time Tony-winning costume designer Florence Klotz is born today. Her designs will be worn by the original casts of Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, On the Twentieth…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, October 24, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
1933 Trying to follow-up the success of their Pulitzer-winning musical Of Thee I Sing, George and Ira Gershwin, George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind bring back President John Wintergreen and…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, October 14, 2011
1893 Lillian Gish, film acting pioneer whose Broadway career lasted from 1913 to 1976, is born today. Her stage shows will include Camille, The Trip to Bountiful and several versions of Uncl…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, October 11, 2011
1918 Jerome Robbins born today. The choreographer spent most of his early career moving easily between the worlds of classical ballet and Broadway, choreographing and/or directing classics i…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, October 7, 2011
1907 The Gay White Way, a musical revue whose title meant something quite different in that innocent era, opens at the Casino Theatre for a then-healthy run of 105 performances. Blanche Ring…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, October 1, 2011
1928 Mae West's controversial play Pleasure Man opens at the Biltmore Theatre. It's the story of an actor who has impregnated so many women that the brother of one of them takes up a…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, September 30, 2011
1915 The huge Hippodrome Theatre opens one of its most successful extravaganzas, Hip! Hip! Hooray!, with lyrics by John L. Golden, and starring Marjory Bentley and Dippy Diers. It will run 4…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, September 13, 2011
1894 Birthday of British playwright J.B. Priestley (1894-1984), author of plays An Inspector Calls, When We Are Married, Laburnum Grove and A Severed Head.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, September 8, 2011
1914 A farce about selling soap called It Pays to Advertise, by Roi Cooper Megrue and Walter Hackett, opens at the Cohan Theatre. It stars Grant Mitchell and Ruth Shepley.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, September 7, 2011
1909 Director Elia Kazan is born. Kazan would go on to direct the award-winning plays Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire. His success reached to the silver screen as well. He w…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, September 6, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
1985 Morrie Ryskind dies in his home in Washington, DC. The playwright who collaborated with George Kaufman, Ira Gershwin, and George Gershwin on three musicals, Strike Up the Band, Let '…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, August 10, 2011
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 12:00AMFriday, August 5, 2011
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 2, 2011
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 12:00AMMonday, August 1, 2011
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 12:00AMSunday, July 31, 2011
1969 Talk about a writer's revenge! Josef Bush, who has adapted De Sade Illustrated at Off-Broadway's Bouwerie Theatre, wreaks havoc on the set, spreading white paint all over it. Hi…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, July 30, 2011
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 12:00AMFriday, July 29, 2011
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 Simon…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, July 27, 2011
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 Menken-Howa…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM 
