Today's Birthdays 3/12

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 3/11/09 at 11:43pm

Vaslav Nijinsky 3/12/1890 - 4/8/1950 Russian ballet dancer, source mat'l - Nijinksy

George White 03/12/1892 - Nov 11, 1968 Producer, Writer, Lyricist, Composer, Director, Performer, Theatre Owner/Operator - George White Scandles series; Runnin' Wild (Elizabeth Welsh, George Stephens)

Roger L. Stevens 3/12/1910 - 2/2/1998 producer: West Side Story, Bus Stop, A Man for All Seasons, Tea and Sympathy, Deathtrap, First Monday in October, Mary, Mary; founding chairman: National Council on the Arts, the Kennedy Center

Gordon MacRae 03/12/1921 - 1/24/1986 performer - father of Heather MacRae, husband of Sheila MacRae (1941 - 1967) divorced - Junior Miss [replacement] (Paula Laurence); Three to Make Ready (Ray Bolger, Arthur Godfrey, Bibi Osterwald); I Do! I Do! [replacement]; film's Oklahoma!, Carousel, The Desert Song

Jack Kerouac 3/12/1922 - 10/21/1969 American poet, novelist and spokesman for the Beat movement; On the Road, The Town and the City, The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, Doctor Sax, Maggie Cassidy, Lonesome Traveler, Big Sur, Desolation Angels, Visions of Cody, source mat'l

Hildy Parks 03/12/1926 - Oct 7, 2004 Producer, Writer, Performer, Production Crew; mother of Christopher Cohen, Barbara Cohen; wife of Alexander H. Cohen, Jackie Cooper (1950 - 1951) divorced - orig. Bathsheba (James Mason, Gloria Swanson, Thomas Chalmers); Summer and Smoke (Ray Walston, Anne Jackson); Baker Street; Little Murders (Barbara Cook); Halfway Up the Tree (Anthony Quayle, Sam Waterston, William Larsen, Eileen Herlie, writtern/dir Peter Ustinov); 1969 I Remember Mama; A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine; 84 Charing Cross Road (Ellen Burstyn, Joseph Maher); Edmund Kean; Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Bill Irwin, Patti LuPone, Jonathan Pryce); Accomplice (Jason Alexander, Natalia Nogulich, Michael McKean, written by Rupert Holmes); Taking Sides (Ed Harris, Daniel Massey, Elizabeth Marvel); The Herbal Bed

Edward Albee 03/12/1928 writer, Grandson of Edward Franklin Albee - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Malcolm (Alice Drummond, Estelle Parsons, Henderson Forsythe,Wyman Pendleton, Standby-Doris Roberts); Breakfast at Tiffany's [never officially opened]; Lolita (Donald Sutherland, Blanche Baker, Shirley Stoler); The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia? and Pulitzer-winners, A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women.

Barbara Feldon (Barbara Hall) 03/12/1932 performer; PAST TENSE (Laurance Luckinbill) - tv's & film's Fitzwilly (Dick Van Dyke); Smile; Get Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Liza Minnelli 03/12/1946 daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli; goddaughter of Kay Thompson & Ira Gershwin; half-sister of Lorna & Joey Luft; wife of Jack Haley, Jr. (September 15, 1974 - 1979) divorced, Peter Allen (March 3, 1967 - 1972) divorced, Mark Gero (December 4, 1979 - 1992) divorced, wife of David Gest (March 16, 2002 - present) separated; performer - Flora the Red Menace, The Rink, The Act and Minnelli on Minnelli; Liza's at the Palace....; Academy Award-winning actress: Cabaret [1972]; The Sterile Cuckoo [my fav Liza movie!], Arthur; tv's Liza with a ‘Z’!; Arrested Development

Courtney B. Vance 03/12/1960 Husband of Angela Bassett (1997 - present) - Fences (James Earl Jones, Mary Alice); 6 Degrees of Separation

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

An Ideal Husband 03/12/1895

1947 The Chocolate Soldier revival

Golden Boy 03/12/1952 - Lee J. Cobb, John Garfield, Bette Grayson,Jack Warden, Jack Klugman

1964 But For Whom Charlie stars Ralph Meeker at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre. S.N. Behrman's comedy, about a man trying to pry himself away from a domineering father, will run 47 performances.

1987 Jean Valjean begins his years of hiding from Javert as Les Miserables opens on Broadway. Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg based their book on the novel by Victor Hugo. Music is provided by Schonberg and lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer. Trevor Nunn stages. Colm Wilkinson and Terrence Mann star as the arch enemies.

2006 Ring of Fire

ON THIS DAY IN:

1930 Indian political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi began a 200-mile march to protest a British tax on salt.

1945 Jewish Holocost victim who kept diaries that live today, Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen.

1951 - “Mr. Wiiiiillllssssson!” The comic strip, Dennis the Menace, appeared for the first time in 16 newspapers across the U.S. The strip became an international favorite in thousands of newspapers and spawned a CBS-TV program that starred Jay North as Dennis. The series lasted for several seasons and is still seen in syndicated re-runs. A somewhat popular movie starring Walter Matthau as Mr. Wilson and Christopher Lloyd as the bad guy was released in 1993.

1971 In the wings after his major number in 70, Girls, 70 comedian David Burns dies of a heart attack.

2003 Lynne Thigpen, the respected actress with the rich, strong voice who won a Tony Award for An American Daughter on Broadway, dies today in her Los Angeles home at age 54. She was widely known for starring in CBS TV's drama, "The District," and the PBS educational series, "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?"

(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com)

Milla