Sunday, June 17, 2012
1955 American producer and playwright John Golden dies at age 81. First an actor and then a writer, Golden eventually found success as the producer of such plays as The First Year and Sevent…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, June 16, 2012
1888 Birthday of Broadway comedian Bobby Clark (1888-1960), best known for his drawn-on eyeglasses and slapstick comedy style, often in tandem with sidekick Paul McCullough. Clark's resu…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, June 15, 2012
1894 Birthday of Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981), orchestrator of Broadway classics including the original Sunny; Show Boat; Anything Goes; Oklahoma!; Annie Get Your Gun; Kiss Me, Kate; T…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, June 14, 2012
1929 Birthday of Broadway composer Cy Coleman, (1929-2004) whose multidextrous scores for shows like Sweet Charity, I Love My Wife, On the Twentieth Century, The Will Rogers Follies, The Lif…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, June 13, 2012
1963 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 12:00AMMonday, June 11, 2012
1955 The American actor-manager Walter Hampden dies in Hollywood at age 75. In 1925 he leased the Colonial Theatre and played in revivals of Ibsen and Shakespeare. Cyrano de Bergerac was his…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, June 10, 2012
1922 Birthday of Frances Ethel Gumm, better known as Judy Garland (1922-1969), star of numerous Hollywood film musicals including The Wizard of Oz. Her Broadway experience consisted of three…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, June 9, 2012
1891 Birthday of composer Cole Porter (1891-1964), whose witty, urbane songs will grace five decades of musicals, including Anything Goes, Can-Can, Gay Divorce, Silk Stockings and his greate…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, June 8, 2012
1925 Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart make their lyric and songwriting debut in The Garrick Gaieties at Broadway's Garrick Theatre. In the cast are Sterling Holloway, Sanford Meisner, Phi…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, June 7, 2012
1909 Birthday of Broadway star Jessica Tandy (1909-1994), who created many landmark roles including Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Agnes in A Delicate Balance and Fonsia in The …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, June 6, 2012
1954 Playwright and actor Harvey Fierstein is born today. Fierstein will win Tony Awards for writing and performing in his play Torch Song Trilogy, as well as for his book for the musical La…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, June 5, 2012
1939 Actor James Barton, a star of the Broadway hit Tobacco Road, returns to the show today after having been fired the previous February after quarreling with his co-stars backstage. Box of…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, June 4, 2012
1968 Stage and screen actress Dorothy Gish dies today in Rapallo, Italy. Her first New York stage appearance was in 1903 in East Lynne. She began her film career in 1912, but resumed her sta…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, June 2, 2012
1954 Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's Carousel is revived for a ten-week run at the New York City Center. In the cast are Barbara Cook and Jo Sullivan.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, June 1, 2012
1914 The Ziegfeld Follies of 1914 stars Ed Wynn. Leon Errol dances and co-directs with Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. There will be 112 performances at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, May 31, 2012
1946 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 the musi…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, May 30, 2012
1868 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 doze…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, May 29, 2012
1951 Performer Fanny Brice dies today in Hollywood at age 60. She started in showbiz by winning a series of amateur nights at vaudeville theatres in Brooklyn, then graduated to Burlesque as …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, May 28, 2012
1940 Victor Moore, William Gaxton and Vera Zorina star in the Irving Berlin musical Louisiana Purchase, which runs 444 performances at the Imperial Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, May 26, 2012
1913 One hundred and twelve actors gather at the Pabst Grand Circle Hotel near Columbus Circle in New York City and vote to form Actors’ Equity Association, the union representing Amer…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, May 24, 2012
1925 Godfrey Tearle is Hamlet in the Fellowship Players production at the Prince of Wales Theatre. The Fellowship offers Sunday performances so these employed professionals have the chance t…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, May 23, 2012
1904 The Southerners, with a score by black composer Will Marion Cook, is the first time an entire black chorus is used in a show with a white cast. Lead Eddie Leonard appears in blackface i…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, May 19, 2012
1924 The four Marx Brothers star in I'll Say She Is at the Casino Theatre in New York. This revue, with a book by Will B. Johnstone and music by Tom Johnstone, takes the boys through mur…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, May 18, 2012
1923 Sweet Nell of Old Drury runs beyond the season at the 48th Street Theatre in New York. Alfred Lunt stars as Charles II and Laurette Taylor is his mistress Nell Gwynne. Lynn Fontanne and…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, May 16, 2012
1946 "No you can't get a man with a gun," but when you're Ethel Merman you can sure try. She's the star of Rodgers & Hammerstein's production of Annie Get Your …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, May 15, 2012
1922 Father and son playwriting team J.C. and Elliott Nugent come up with Kempy. They also star in this comedy of mixed-up lovers, staged by Augustin Duncan. Performances will run at Broadwa…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, May 14, 2012
1931 Playwright, producer David Belasco dies today in New York City. He began his theatrical life as a child actor in California and started writing plays in his twenties. He adapted the Joh…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, May 13, 2012
1907 Writer-playwright Daphne du Maurier is born to actor Gerald and actress Muriel du Maurier. Daphne will later adapt her novel Rebecca into a play.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, May 12, 2012
1905 Theatrical producer Sam S. Shubert dies today in a train accident. His brothers Lee and J.J. will honor him by naming many of the theaters they are to build after him, including their f…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, May 10, 2012
1838 John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865), perhaps the most infamous actor in American history, is born today. The son of actor Junius Brutus Booth, and brother of actors Junius Brutus Booth Jr. an…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, May 7, 2012
1915 Among the dead after the sinking of the Lusitania are producer-manager Charles Frohman and playwright Charles Klein. Frohman's first success was Shenandoah. In 1893 he opened the Em…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM 
