Thursday, June 2, 2011
1954 Rodgers and Hammerstein'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 12:00AMWednesday, June 1, 2011
1914 The Ziegfeld Follies of 1914 stars Ed Wynn. Leon Errol dances and co-directs with Ziegfeld. There will be 112 performances at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, May 31, 2011
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 mus…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, May 30, 2011
1868 Birthday of producer/director/manager Charles Dillingham (1868-1934), whose productions included The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, Sunny, The Little Minister, Bulldog Drummond, The Red Mill and…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, May 29, 2011
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 12:00AMSaturday, May 28, 2011
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 12:00AMThursday, May 26, 2011
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 12:00AMTuesday, May 24, 2011
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 12:00AMMonday, May 23, 2011
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 12:00AMThursday, May 19, 2011
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 12:00AMWednesday, May 18, 2011
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 12:00AMMonday, May 16, 2011
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 12:00AMSunday, May 15, 2011
1922 Father and son playwriting team J.C. and Elliot Nugent come up with Kempy. They also star in this comedy of mixed-up lovers, staged by Augustin Duncan. Performances will run at Broadway…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, May 14, 2011
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 12:00AMFriday, May 13, 2011
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 12:00AMThursday, May 12, 2011
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 12:00AMTuesday, May 10, 2011
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 12:00AMSaturday, May 7, 2011
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 12:00AMFriday, May 6, 2011
1912 Richard Le Gallienne's Orestes stars Edyth Olive and Rathmel Wilson. It plays at London's Boudoir Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, May 4, 2011
1859 Birthday of A.L. "Abe" Erlanger (1859-1930), who, as half of the team of Klaw and Erlanger, produced dozens of Broadway shows during the first three decades of the 20th centur…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, May 3, 2011
1919 Birthday of Betty Comden, Broadway lyricist and librettist, mainly in collaboration with Adolph Green. Her works include On the Town, Wonderful Town, Peter Pan, On the 20th Century, The…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, May 1, 2011
1922 Comedy team Potash and Perlmutter are Partners Again. The show plays beyond the season at the Selwyn Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMWednesday, April 27, 2011
1903 The Cohan family is Running for Office. Son George M. wrote the book and the music at the 14th Street Theatre. It will run for six weeks.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, April 26, 2011
1926 Sex. It's a comedy. Mae West plays a Canadian woman with no time for those mountees; it's the British navy for her. It runs through one season, but the following it is raided as…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, April 25, 2011
1927 When a woman loves sailors so much she follows them all around the world, it's time to Hit the Deck. Vincent Youmans provides the score for Herbert Fields' book adapted from the…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSunday, April 24, 2011
1905 Sir Henry Irving's production of The Merchant of Venice was to have opened the annual Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-upon-Avon. But Irving was taken ill and Frank Benson and his …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMSaturday, April 23, 2011
1564 Okay, no one's actually certain that April 23, 1564 was William Shakespeare's birthday, but that's the accepted date. Over the next 52 years, the Bard would pen such works a…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMFriday, April 22, 2011
1895 Broadway debut of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Henry Miller as Jack Worthing.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMThursday, April 21, 2011
1925 Tallulah Bankhead and Edna Best are Fallen Angels at London's Globe Theatre. Noel Coward's comedy describes two wives who get drunk while trying to get even with their husbands …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMTuesday, April 19, 2011
1946 Actor Tim Curry is born in Cheshire, England. He will create memorable Broadway roles including Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, Mozart in Amadeus, Dada artist Tristan Tzara in…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AMMonday, April 18, 2011
1936 In Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead the task becomes impossible as the six dead soldiers refuse the grave. This one-act protest against the war will run three months at the Ethel Barrymor…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM 
