Today's Birthday 11/29

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 11/29/08 at 1:54pm

Gaetano Donizetti 11/29/1797 - 4/8/1848 Italian opera composer - Anna Bolena; L'elisir d'amore; Lucrezia Borgia; Maria Stuarda; The Daughter of the Regiment; Lucia di Lammermoor; Don Pasquale. How wonderful to remember Luciano Pavarotti singing "Una furtiva lagrima" from the opera "L'elixir d'amore"

Louisa May Alcott 11/29/1832 - 3/6/1888 the American author of the classic "Little Women", source mat'l - Little Women (Carson Davenport) & 2004 musical version

C.S. Lewis 11/29/1898 - 11/22/1963 English writer and scholar, source mat'l - Narnia

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. 11/29/1908 - 4/4/1971 American minister and civil-rights leader; congressman from New York (1945-70)

Billy Strayhorn 11/29/1915 - 5/31/1967 Orchestrator, Composer, Lyricist - Beggar's Holiday; Bubbling Brown Sugar; Sophisticated Ladies

Michael Kermoyan 11/29/1921 - Sep 21, 1994 performer - Whoop Up; Happy Town (Rita Golden); orig Camelot; The Happiest Girl in the World; Tovarich; Something More! (Barbara Cook, Paula Kelly); Anya (Constance Towers); The Guide

Dagmar 11/29/1921 - Oct 9, 2001 performer - Laffing Room Only (Betty Garrett, Dolores (Dodi) Goodman, Buddy Rogers); Burlesque (Bert Lahr, Bobby Barry)

Laurie Main 11/29/1929 performer - First Impressions (Polly Bergen, Hermione Gingold, Stuart Damon); Jolly's Progress (Eartha Kitt, Wendall Cory); Lord Pengo (Charles Boyer, Brian Bedford, Agnes Moorehead); 13 Rue de l'Amour (Louis Jourdan)

Diane Ladd 11/29/1932 performer, mother of Laura Dern, wife of Bruce Dern (1960 - 1969) divorced - Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights (Louis Gossett, Cicely Tyson); A Texas Trilogy: Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander; film's, etc. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Rambling Rose, The Cemetery Club, Chinatown, Father Hood, Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, The Grace Kelly Story, Desperate Lives, I Married a Centerfold, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Alice

Frank Galati 11/29/1943 Writer, Director - Grapes of Wrath (Gary Sinise); 1994 The Glass Menagerie; Ragtime; Seussical (Was replaced in previews)

Hinton Battle 11/29/1956 performer - Something Different (Linda Lavin, Claudia McNeil); The Wiz; Sophisticated Ladies; The Tap Dance Kid; Miss Saigon; Chicago [replacement]

Andrew McCarthy 11/29/1962 performer - The Boys of Winter (Ving Rhames, Matt Dillon, Wesley Snipes, Doug Hara)

Kim Delaney 11/29/1961 performer - tv's, etc. Emmy Award-winning actress: NYPD Blue [1997]; Philly, All My Children, The Delta Force, Perry Mason: The Case of the Sinister Spirit, The Drifter, Darkman II: The Return of Durant, Mission to Mars

Don Cheadle 11/29/1964 performer - tv's & film's Hotel Rwanda; The Rat Pack; Ocean's 11, 12 & 13; The Bernie Mac Show; Boogie Nights; Picket Fences; The Golden Palace; Fame

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1825 - Rossini’s Barber of Seville was presented in New York City. It was the first Italian opera to be presented in the United States.

1932 Fred Astaire has his final Broadway opening night in Cole Porter's Gay Divorce, which bows at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and lasts 248 performances. When it is filmed, the Hollywood Hayes Office rules that divorce can not be gay (as in cheerful)... so the title is changed to Gay Divorcee.

1939 Swingin' the Dream, with a cast including Louis Armstrong, Jackie "Moms" Mabley, and Butterfly McQueen opens at the Center Theatre in New York. Erik Charell directs his and Gilbert Seldes' musical, a swing version of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

1948 - The first opera to be televised was broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Othello, by Verdi, was presented over WJZ-TV in New York

1956 Bells Are Ringing, starring Judy Holliday and Sidney Chaplin, opens at the Shubert Theatre. This production is also rung by the likes of Comden and Green supplying the book,Jule Styne the score, Bob Fosse the choreography, and Jerome Robbins pulling the strings. It will run 924 performances.

1962 Harold with Anthony Perkins, John Fiedler

1965 Anya with Constance Towers, Steven Boockvor, Michael Kermoyan, Irra Petina, John Michael King, Ed Steffe, George S. Irving

1967 Everything in the Garden with Barbara Bel Geddes, M'el Dowd, Barry Nelson, Richard Thomas

1992 The Seagull with Tyne Daly, Tony Roberts, Danny Burstein, Jon Voight, Laura Linney

ON THIS DAY IN:

1924 Italian composer Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels

1981 Actress Natalie Wood drowned in a boating accident off Santa Catalina Island, Calif., at age 43.

1986 Actor Cary Grant died at age 82. Grant, one of the most debonair of Hollywood’s leading men, left us with many great cinematic performances: Night and Day, Arsenic and Old Lace, She Done Him Wrong, The Awful Truth, The Philadelphia Story, To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest, some more of my favs Mr. Lucky, Penny Serenade, My Favorite Wife

2001 Rock musician George Harrison of the Beatles died in Los Angeles following a battle with cancer; he was 58.

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

Milla