1836 Birthday of satirist William S. Gilbert, later to achieve immortality as the lyricist half of the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta-writing team that produced The Mikado, The Pira…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1901 Birthday of actor/director/producer/teacher/acting coach Lee Strasberg (1901-1982) in Austria-Hungary. As a founder of the Group Theatre and Artistic Director of the Actors Stud…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1889 Playwright and director George S. Kaufman (1889-1961) is born today in Pittsburgh. A former newsman, Kaufman will make his mark with the comedy Dulcy in 1921, and will go on to writ…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1875 British comic operetta titans W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan make their U.S. debut today with Trial by Jury at the Eagle Variety Theatre, where it runs 8 performances.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1905 Blanche Bates is Minnie, sweetheart of the mines in Girl of the Golden West. She tends a saloon, fugitive lover and pursuing sheriff. Writer, director, producer David Belasco was no str…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1833 Birthday of master actor Edwin Booth (1833-1893), a major interpreter of Shakespeare and brother to actor Junius Brutus Booth and presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. Broadway&#…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1874 Birthday of pioneering African-American performer-composer Bert Williams (1874-1922), who wrote music for Broadway's In Dahomey (1903) and Abyssinia (1906), but achieved…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1872 Birthday of Maude Adams (1872-1953), Broadway's first Peter Pan, who originated the role in 1904, and returned at least three times through 1915.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1913 Birthday of June Hovik, better known as June Havoc, even better known as namesake of Baby June, the character based on her in the musical Gypsy. The show pretty accurately sums up her c…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1904 The timeless anthem "Give My Regards to Broadway" is first sung tonight on the Broadway stage tonight at the opening of George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones at the Libert…
SOURCE: Playbill at 11:00PM1854 Birthday of John Philip Sousa (1854-1932), composer of countless marches, who also found time to write Broadway musicals including Chris and the Wonderful Lamp (1900), The Free Lanc…
SOURCE: Playbill at 11:00PM1895 Birthday of Charles MacArthur (1895-1956), newsman-turned-playwright, whose wisecracking oeuvre includes The Front Page, Twentieth Century (the play on which the musical On …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1787 Birthday of British actor Edmund Kean (1787-1833), considered one of the finest actors of the early 18th century. Among his greatest roles was Shakespeare's Richard III. He will…
SOURCE: Playbill at 11:00PM1916 A new play by a new playwright opens at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York's Greenwich Village, far from Broadway and Times Square, but the play and the author will soon revolut…
SOURCE: Playbill at 11:00PM1903 Daniel Frohman opens the New Lyceum Theatre on Manhattan's West 45th Street with E. H. Sothern in The Proud Prince. Designed by Herts & Tallant, the theatre was later rechri…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1920 Opening night for Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, starring Charles S. Gilpin as a onetime railway porter who goes to Africa and rises to become the corrupt head of a new e…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:10AM1896 Birthday of Ethel Waters (1896-1977), Broadway star of musicals and plays including The Member of the Wedding, As Thousands Cheer, Cabin in the Sky and Lew Leslie's Blackbirds.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1896 Birthday of Ruth Gordon, later to star on Broadway in dozens of plays, including Ethan Frome, The Country Wife and her own Years Ago; also in Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (sour…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1882 Birth of French playwright Jean Giraudoux, author of The Madwoman of Chaillot, Ondine, Intermezzo, Tiger at the Gates and Amphitryon 38. He lives to 1944.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1928 Six-time Tony-winning costume designer Florence Klotz is born today. Her designs will be worn by the original casts of Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, On the T…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1904 The New York City subway system makes its maiden run today. The first line runs right through Times Square, making it much easier for audiences from the far reaches of Manhattan to get …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1927 Birthday of Barbara Cook, sylphlike ingenue of the 1950s who created lead roles in Flahooley, Candide, The Grass Harp and The Music Man (as the original Marian the Librarian), and later…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1904 Birthday of Moss Hart, Broadway playwright who will write or cowrite The Man Who Came to Dinner, Once in a Lifetime, As Thousands Cheer, You Can't Take it With You and Lady in the …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:11AM1844 Actress Sarah Bernhardt born today. "The Divine Sarah" will create many memorable roles in French and English, notably in Alexandre Dumas, fils' classic La Dame aux Cameli…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1903 Birthday of Jerome Lester Horwitz (1903-1952), better known by his stage name Curley Howard, who will team up with his brother Harry Moses Horwitz (a.k.a. Moe) and Larry Fine to for…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1933 Trying to follow-up the success of their Pulitzer-winning musical Of Thee I Sing, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind bring back President John W…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1882 Birthday of Bela Lugosi, Hungarian-born actor who plays a variety of character roles before landing the part that will make him an icon, the title role in Dracula, first on Broa…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1907 Top 'o the World, a musical extravaganza, opens on Broadway to a then-impressive 156-performance run.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1888 Broadway premiere of the W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan operetta The Yeomen of the Guard.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1854 Happy Birthday Oscar Wilde, born today in Dublin. He will go on to write An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest and other glittering comedies, before being laid low in a slan…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1881 Birth of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse — P.G. Wodehouse to theatre lovers — in England. He will go on to write the "Jeeves" stories as well as many Broadway musicals includin…
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