The revival of the Arthur Kopit-Maury Yeston musical, directed by David Leaveaux, opened on Broadway April 10, 2003.
SOURCE: Playbill at 01:35PM1878 Birthday of Sam S. Shubert (1878-1905), co-founder of the theatre-owning and producing titan, the Shubert Organization. Broadway's Shubert Theatre is named for him.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1880 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 12:00AM1985 Morrie Ryskind dies in his home in Washington, DC. The playwright who collaborated with George S. Kaufman, Ira Gershwin, and George Gershwin on three musicals, Strike Up the Band, Let &…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1922 Theoni V. Aldredge, one of Broadway's foremost costume designers of the late 20th century, is born today in Greece. Included among her dozens of Broadway projects will be A Chorus L…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:12AM1944 Robert Wright and George Forrest put words to classical themes by Edvard Grieg to create the operetta Song of Norway, based on Grieg's life. It opens an 860-performance run toda…
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 12:00AM1913 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 12:00AM1879 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 12:00AM1888 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 12:00AM1895 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 12:00AM1881 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 12:00AM1867 Actor-producer Joseph Weber, of the vaudeville comedy team Weber and Fields, is born today.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1967 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 12:00AM1975 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 12:00AM1977 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 12:00AM1981 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 12:00AM1921 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 12:00AM1900 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 12:00AM1921 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 12:00AM1967 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 12:00AM1983 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 12:00AM1981 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 12:00AM1920 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 12:00AM1982 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…
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