Sunday, August 7, 2011
1919 Actors' Equity calls the longest strike in American theatre history. Francis Bacon's Lightin' and 12 other Broadway shows go dark as the fledgling union's struggle for r…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, August 6, 2011
1880 Broadway director-producer Phillip Moeller is born today in New York. Among his greatest theatrical achievements are productions of They Knew What They Wanted, Elizabeth the Queen, Mour…
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 12:00AMThursday, August 4, 2011
1981 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 12:00AMWednesday, August 3, 2011
1921 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 12:00AMTuesday, 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 12:00AMThursday, July 28, 2011
1920 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 12:00AMWednesday, 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 12:00AMTuesday, July 26, 2011
1856 A Dramatic genius is born today in the person of George Bernard Shaw. Among Shaw's many playwriting credits will be Pygmalion, Man and Superman and Saint Joan. The former play, a co…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, July 24, 2011
1920 Producer Alexander H. Cohen, known for bringing quality plays to Broadway for six decades, is born today. Lastly represented on Broadway by the Noel Coward play, Waiting in the Wings, s…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, July 23, 2011
1938 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 12:00AMFriday, July 22, 2011
1912 The Shubert Brothers present the first of their annual Passing Show installments tonight. Passing Show of 1912 features Charlotte Greenwood, Trixie Friganza, and Eugene and Willie Howar…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, July 21, 2011
1951 Birthday of actress Lilias White, who will be featured in revivals of musicals including How to Succeed in Business and Once on This Island, and who will win the Tony Award for her perf…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, July 20, 2011
1961 Stop The World - I Want To Get Off opens tonight at the Queen's Theatre on London's West End. The musical, which follows the life of one man from birth to death, will run 485 p…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, July 19, 2011
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 12:00AMMonday, July 18, 2011
1928 Following the birth of "talkie" films, Variety prints an article focusing on the amount of legit theatre talent that is being sought for this new medium. Among those stage act…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, July 17, 2011
1953 Actress Maude Adams dies today. Born in 1873, Adams, at the age of 32, played the title role in James M. Barrie's Peter Pan when it had its American premiere at the Empire Theatre i…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:01AMSaturday, July 16, 2011
1924 Broadway premiere of George Dibdin-Pitt's Sweeney Todd, one of numerous adaptations of the penny-dreadful tale of murder and cannibalism that would later be adapted as a musical of …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, July 14, 2011
1918 Birthday of playwright Arthur Laurents, who will write numerous plays including The Time of the Cuckoo and Invitation to a March, but who is best known as librettist for musical classic…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, July 13, 2011
1940 Actor Patrick Stewart is born today. Stewart, a Shakespearean-trained actor, will appear on Broadway in his solo production of A Christmas Carol, in the Public Theater production of …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, July 12, 2011
1895 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 12:00AMMonday, July 11, 2011
1915 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 12:00AMSunday, July 10, 2011
1931 "It's Today" -- that Jerry Herman is born. Herman will become one of Broadway's great musical theatre composers. Among his esteemed credits are the hits Hello, Dolly!,…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, July 9, 2011
1930 In today's Variety, a review of a new vaudeville show at the Eighty Sixth Street Theatre singles out a newcomer from the world of cabaret. Reads the review: "She is a good look…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, July 7, 2011
1970 American actress Marjorie Rambeau dies today at age 81. Most of her career was spent performing in stock companies, with credits included productions at the Burbank and Belasco Theatres…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, July 6, 2011
1939 A young Hollywood hopeful is forced to watch her own career fizzle as her boyfriend's blossoms in Lew Brown's new musical, Yokel Boy. Lois January and Buddy Ebsen star in the ne…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, July 5, 2011
1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the American National Theatre and Academy bill today, calling for a self-supporting national theatre. ANTA will get off to a slow start but will ev…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM 
