1937 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 12:00AM1874 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 even greate…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1818 Playwright and novelist Ivan Turgenev is born in Russia. His most notable play is A Month in the Country, but he will make a bit of history in 2002 when his 150-year-old play Fortune's …
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 12:00AM1854 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 Lance (1…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1844 William Harrigan, half of the iconic 1880s writing and performing team of Harrigan and Hart, is born today. He and Tony Hart will create the popular Mulligan Guards characters reflectin…
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 Dark,…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1844 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 12:00AM1933 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 Wintergre…
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 Broadway…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM1888 Broadway premiere of the W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan operetta The Yeomen of the Guard.
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 including …
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 07:00PM1905 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 12:00AM1928 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 12:00AM1933 Trying to follow-up the success of their Pulitzer-winning musical Of Thee I Sing, George and Ira Gershwin, George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind bring back President John Wintergreen and…
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM
