Today's Birthdays 1/16
Today's Birthdays 1/16
#0Today's Birthdays 1/16
Posted: 1/15/06 at 10:16pm
George Kelly 1/16/1887 - 6/18/1974 American playwright/actor, Uncle of Grace Kelly - The Show Off; Craig's Wife
Irene Bordoni 01/16/1895 - Mar 19, 1953 performer - Miss Information; Hitchy-Koo [1917 & 1918]; Naughty Cinderella (Nat Pendleton); Mozart [Bordoni as Mozart](Lucile Watson); Louisiana Purchase (Ralph Blane, Victor Moore, Vera Zorina)
Ethel Merman 1/16/1908 (NYT said 1909) - 2/15/1984 wife of Robert Six (1953 - 1960) divorced, Robert Levitt (? - 1952) divorced, Ernest Borgnine (1964 - 1964) divorced after being married for 32 days, performer - origs Girl Crazy; Anything Goes; Red, Hot and Blue; Stars in Your Eyes (Richard Carlson, Jimmy Durante, Tamara Toumanova, Mildred Natwick, Jerome Robbins [in the ensemble]); Du Barry Was a Lady; Panama Hattie; Something for the Boys (Dolores [Dodi]Goodman [in the ensemble], Paula Laurence); Annie Get Your Gun; Call Me Madam; Happy Hunting; Gypsy; Hello, Dolly!; Together on Broadway (Mary Martin & Ethel Merman); film's Call Me Madam [1951]; It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, There’s No Business Like Show Business, Alexander’s Ragtime Band
Elliott Reid 01/16/1920 - performer - 1938 The Shoemakers' Holiday [dir/prod by Orson Welles, prod John Houseman, incidental music by Lehman Engel](Joseph Cotton, George Coulouris, Vincent Price); Two Blind Mice (Melvyn Douglas, Jan Sterling); The Live Wire (Peggy Cass, Jack Gilford, Pat Harrington); 2 On The Aisle (Leila Martin, Dolores Grey, Margery Beddow, Bert Lahr); From A to Z (Stuart Damon, Hermione Gingold, Alvin Epstein, Virginia Vestoff)
Katy Jurado 01/16/1924 - Jul 5, 2002 Wife of Ernest Borgnine (1959 - 1963) divorced, performer - The Best House in Naples (Leila Martin, Rino Negri)
Marilyn Horne 1/16/1929 (NYT said 1933) 1 of the greatest mezzo-soprano Opera singers & 1 of my all-time favs. She sang in just about every range & color: soprano, mezzo, dramatic colouratura mezzo & colouratura contralto (i.e. Mimi, Amelia (Ballo), Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Adalgisa (Norma), Rinaldo, Carmen, Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Princess Eboli, Carmen & the voice of Carmen in Carmen Jones on film
Debbie Allen 01/16/1950 Sister of Phylicia Rashad, performer, choreographer - choreographed Carrie (Scott Wise, Mark Santoro, Betty Buckley, Charlotte d'Amboise); Raisin; Truckload [never officially opened](Louis St. Louis); Ain't Misbehavin'; 1980 West Side Story (Brent Barrett, Harolyn Blackwell, Stephen Bogardus, Jossie de Guzman, Ken Marshall); 1986 Sweet Charity; tv & film's Fame, Roots: The Next Generation, Ragtime, The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh
Liz Larsen 01/16/1959 performer, wife of Sal Viviano - Hairspray [replacement]; Starmites; 1992 Most Happy Fella; The Smell of the Kill (Claudia Shear, Jessica Stone)
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1958 Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft are Two for the Seesaw at the Booth Theatre. This comedy about a married man and the younger woman who helps him 'find' himself will run 750 performances. William Gibson penned the script.
1961 The Conquering Hero with Tom Poston, Lee Barry, John McMartin Margery Beddow
1964 Say Hello, Dolly!. Carol Channing stars as the musical Mrs. Dolly Gallagher Levi at the St. James Theatre. Adapted by Michael Stewart from Thornton Wilder's play, The Matchmaker has music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. Gower Champion directs and choreographs. There will be 2,844 performances, which will make it, briefly, the longest-running Broadway musical ever. And, it returned to Broadway in the 1990s, again starring Carol Channing.
1967 Zoe Caldwell plays a teacher who instructs her students in how to have peak moments in their lives, in Jay Allen's drama, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which opens today at Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre, and contineud for 379 performances.
1992 Two Shakespearean Actors with Tom Aldredge, Brian Bedford, Judy Kuhn, Katie Finneran, Victor Garber, Željko Ivanek & Laura Innes
2000 Smokey Joe's Cafe, the longest-running revue in Broadway history (2,036 performances), closes today. The musical features words and music by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
ON THIS DAY IN:
1547 Ivan the Terrible was crowned Czar of Russia.
1942 Actress Carole Lombard died in a plane crash near Las Vegas at age 33. She was returning from a tour to promote war bonds.
2003 The space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven blasted off from Cape Canaveral. (The shuttle broke up during its return descent on Feb. 1, killing everyone on board.)
(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com)
Milla
Updated On: 1/15/06 at 10:16 PM
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