Sunday, September 28, 2014
1892 Birthday of playwright Elmer Rice (1892 -1967), author of many dramas including Street Scene, Counsellor-at-Law, Dream Girl, The Grand Tour and the libretto to Kurt Weill…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, September 27, 2014
1898 Birthday of Vincent Youmans (1898-1946), one of the iconic Broadway composers of the 1920s, whose career will go into a nosedive after that bubbly decade ends. His scores will inclu…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, September 26, 2014
1898 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 12:00AMThursday, September 25, 2014
1928 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 12:00AMWednesday, September 24, 2014
1902 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 12:00AMTuesday, September 23, 2014
1912 Another upbeat musical hit for George M. Cohan and his family: Broadway Jones which opens a 176-performance run today at Cohan's eponymous theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, September 22, 2014
1921 The Music Box Revue of 1921 is the premiere performance at the new Music Box Theatre, which opened on 45th Street today. This is the first edition of the Revue, itself the first to exhi…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, September 21, 2014
1896 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 12:00AMSaturday, September 20, 2014
1886 Birthday of writer/director John Murray Anderson (1886-1954), whose work for revues Ziegfeld Follies, Greenwich Village Follies and John Murray Anderson's Almanac helped launch…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, September 19, 2014
1904 Julian Eltinge, the famed female impersonator, makes his Broadway debut today in Mr. Wix of Wickham, the unsuccessful musical at the Bijou Theatre. The now legendary Jerome Kern, who wa…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, September 18, 2014
1911 Disraeli, a new drama, opens tonight on Broadway at the Wallack's Theatre. It stars George Arliss as the British prime minister in this play by Louis N. Parker. Arliss' memorabl…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, September 17, 2014
1879 The Daly Theatre opens at Broadway and Thirtieth Street in New York.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, September 16, 2014
1892 Songwriter and producer Earl Carroll (1892-1948) is born today. His best-remembered contribution to the theatre was the eponymous revue The Earl Carroll Vanities, which had nine…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, September 15, 2014
1889 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 …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, September 14, 2014
1910 Birthday of Lehman Engel (1910-1982), the Tony-winning Broadway conductor who will found the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. Among the shows he will conduct are original productio…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, September 13, 2014
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 12:00AMFriday, September 12, 2014
1866 The Broadway musical is born. The Black Crook opens at Niblo's Garden, a musical extravaganza featuring a melodramatic plot and scantily-dressed ballerinas who serve as chorus g…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, September 11, 2014
1912 Jane Cowl becomes a star while performing in Within the Law by Bayard Veiller, which opened on this night. The play is about a woman wrongfully accused of theft. This was also the prem…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, September 10, 2014
1915 Fanny Brice is reviewed in Variety for her performance at the Palace. Variety says that when she "learns to refrain from starting to disrobe before she is out of sight of the audie…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, September 9, 2014
1873 Birthday of influential director Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) in Austria-Hungary. He will stage innovative productions of The Eternal Road, Sumurun and A Midsummer Night's Drea…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, September 8, 2014
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 12:00AMSunday, September 7, 2014
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. …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, September 6, 2014
1919 The Actors' Equity strike is settled at 3 AM, and some shows reopen today.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, September 5, 2014
1881 Birthday of B. Iden Payne (1881-1976) a producer and playwright, who, as a professor at the University of Texas, inspired three generations of Broadway artists, including Tommy Tune…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, September 4, 2014
1895 Actor E. H. Sothern scores a personal triumph in the adventure melodrama The Prisoner of Zenda.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, October 13, 2013
1903 Victor Herbert's Babes in Toyland opens on Broadway, introducing the songs "I Can't Do the Sum," "Go To Sleep," "Toyland" and "The March of th…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, October 12, 2013
1914 Broadway premiere of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Eliza Doolittle. The drama will serve as the basis of the 1956 musical My Fair Lady.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, September 20, 2013
1886 Birthday of writer/director John Murray Anderson (1886-1954), whose work for revues Ziegfeld Follies, Greenwich Village Follies and John Murray Anderson's Almanac helped launch and furt…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, September 5, 2013
1881 Birthday of B. Iden Payne (1881-1976) a producer and playwright, who, as a professor at the University of Texas, inspired three generations of Broadway artists, including Tommy Tune and…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, July 30, 2013
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 19, 2013
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 12:00AM 
