1880 Broadway director-producer Philip Moeller is born today in New York. Among his greatest theatrical achievements are productions of Biography, Elizabeth the Queen, Mourning Becomes E…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1918 Birthday of composer Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), who will bridge the worlds of classical and Broadway, both as conductor for the New York Philharmonic and as composer of classic …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1884 Actress Julia Sanderson, one of musical theatre's leading ladies during the first decades of the 20th century, is born today as Julia Sackett. Shows in which she starred included Th…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:19AM1873 Birthday of comedian Fred Stone (1873-1959) who, partnered with David Montgomery, became one of the most beloved Broadway performers of the early 20th century. Among their notable h…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1873 Birthday of Otto Harbach (1873-1963) who will write lyrics and/or book for more than three dozen musicals including Roberta; No, No, Nanette; The Cat and the Fiddle; Rose-Marie …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1871 Playwright Jesse Lynch Williams is born today. During the 1917-1918 theatre season, Williams' play, Why Marry, will win the first-ever Pulitzer Prize for drama.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1975 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 12:00AM1886 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 12:00AM1947 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 12:00AM1921 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 12:00AM1920 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 12:00AM1938 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 12:00AM1895 Birthday of Oscar Hammerstein II, scion of a notable theatrical family who went on to become its most famous and honored member as a lyricist and librettist. Hammerstein enjoyed a major…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1915 A King is born today... in the form of Yul Brynner. Brynner will, of course, go on to star as one half of the title of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The King And I, opposite Gert…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1898 Birthday of actress Gertrude Lawrence (1898-1952), longtime acting partner of Noël Coward (Private Lives, Tonight at 8:30) and star of musicals by the Gershwin brothers (Oh, Kay!, …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1900 Birthday of director/producer/writer Tyrone Guthrie (1900-1971) who will stage Broadway productions of The Tenth Man, Tamburlaine the Great and the Leonard Bernstein musical Candide.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1902 Birthday of Richard Rodgers (1902-1979), one of the most prolific and successful Broadway composers. His greatest successes came in partnership with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (O…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1888 Birthday of Antoinette Perry (1888-1946), an actress and groundbreaking woman stage director who will help found the American Theatre Wing. In gratitude, the Wing will name its annu…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1939 Lee and J. J. Shubert collaborate with Hellzapoppin creators Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson to present The Streets of Paris on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre. The revue's stars inc…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1963 Stage actor Howard Da Silva finds himself at the other end of the spectrum: as director of a Lewis John Carlino double bill. Shelley Winters and Jack Warden star in the two one acts, Sn…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1946 Orson Welles circumnavigated the stage in Around The World, a musical he adapted from the Jules Verne novel, “Around the World in Eighty Days,” Cole Porter provided …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1868 Birthday of producer/director/manager Charles Dillingham (1868-1934), whose productions included As Good as New, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, Sunny, Bulldog Drummond, The Red Mill and …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1880 Writer Damon Runyon, whose short story "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" will go on to form the basis for the musical Guys and Dolls, is born today.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1928 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 12:00AM1915 The huge Hippodrome Theatre opens one of its most successful extravaganzas, Hip! Hip! Hooray!. Described by the New York Times as "a gargantuan spectacle, smarter and more sumptuou…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:16AM1898 Composer George Gershwin is born in New York. He'll go on to write Porgy and Bess, "Rhapsody in Blue," Girl Crazy and the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, Of Thee I Sin…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1928 Chee-Chee, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's musical about castration in ancient China, opens to searing reviews and goes on to close after just 31 performances, the team's …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1902 Cheryl Crawford (1902-1986), one of the most powerful and influential women in Broadway history, is born today. As producer and/or director, she will have a decisive hand in product…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1896 This day marks Florenz Ziegfeld's debut as a Broadway producer. The Parlor March opens at the Herald Square Theatre, starring Anna Held (his mistress and later wife). Ziegfeld's…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1879 The Daly Theatre opens at Broadway and Thirtieth Street in New York.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1889 Robert Benchley, the acclaimed actor, critic, and humorist of the early Twentieth Century, is born today. Benchley will marry Gertrude Darling and make his stage debut in this month in …
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