1787 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 be …
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1916 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 12:00AM1903 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 rechristen…
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 empire ther…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1896 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 Twentieth…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1903 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 12:00AM1914 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 12:00AM1919 Frank McGlyn is Abraham Lincoln in John Drinkwater's drama. The story follows Lincoln's life from 1860 to his assassination in 1865. There will be 193 performances at the Cort T…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1885 Birthday of Brock Pemberton (1885-1950), producer of many Broadway plays and comedies during a 30-year career, including the original Harvey, Miss Lulu Bett, Six Characters in Search of…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1902 There will be two debuts in Everyman. Edith Wynne Matthison makes her American debut, and Charles Rann Kennedy makes his stage debut.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1893 Oscar Wilde gets his second Broadway production in a year with the U.S. premiere of his play A Woman of No Importance at Miner's Fifth Avenue Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1901 Sadie Martinot, Guy Bates Post, and Junius Brutus Booth play The Marriage Game. This drama, adapted by Clyde Fitch from Emile Augier's Le Marriage d'Olympe, highlights what ruin…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1902 Birthday of actress Margaret Hamilton, who will appear on Broadway in plays including The Farmer Takes a Wife, The Dark Tower, Goldilocks and a revival of Our Town, but who will forever…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1903 Mam'selle Napoleon is Anna Held in this musical at the Knickerbocker Theatre. Produced by Held's husband Florenz Ziegfeld, with a score by Gustav Luders, this show will have a 4…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1879 Composer Rudolf Friml (1879-1972) is born in Prague. He will emigrate to the U.S. and become one of the top Broadway operetta composers of the 1910s and 1920s. His works will include Th…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1888 One of Frances Hodgson Burnett's greatest successes opens today: Little Lord Fauntleroy starry Tommy Russell. The story of a American boy who discovers he's the heir to a Britis…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1849 Birthday of author Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924), author of several Broadway plays in the early the 20th century, including Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Little Princess, The Pretty…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1920 In Rollo's Wild Oat, the title character rents a theatre and hires actors so he can star in Hamlet. Roland Young has the lead in this Clare Kummer play.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1937 Ethel Barrymore and Dudley Digges star in The Ghost of Yankee Doodle. Written by Sidney Howard, the play deals with a woman pacifist whose industrialist family stands to profit from sel…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1694 Birthday of French author François Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire (1694-1778) whose satirical novel "Candide" served as source material for the 1956 Leonard Ber…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1922 The Lucky One is the brother who doesn't get the girl in this A. A. Milne play. Staged at the Theatre Guild by Theodore Komisarjevsky with a cast including Dennis King, Romney Brent…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1906 George Arliss and Mrs. Fiske star in The New York Idea, Langdon Mitchell's play which runs 66 performances at the Lyric Theatre.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1836 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 Pirates of P…
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 Studio, he w…
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 write do…
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's…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM
