Today's Birthdays 1/7 - Merry Russian Christmas!

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 10:09pm

Francis Poulenc 1/7/1899 - 1/30/1963 French composer; In the Twenties, Poulenc was part of Les Six, an informal confederation of French composers who wanted to divorce both Impressionism nd Germanicism from French music and create an amalgam from Igor Stravinsky, Eric Satie, and popular forms (Poulenc loved French vaudeville, especially Maurice Chevalier); Artistically, Les Six allied themselves with Cubism. In literature, they found themselves with the French surrealists Cocteau, Eluard, and Apollinaire. Works include surrealist opera Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Dialogues of the Carmelites, a classic ballet for Diaghilev, Les Biches, about flirtatious girls and numerous chansons (my fav song cycles are Fiançailles pour rire, Banalités and Don Quixote)

Vincent Gardenia (Vincenzio Scognamiglio) 01/07/1922 - 12/9/1992 performer - The Visit; Tony Award-winning actor: The Prisoner of Second Avenue; Ballroom; tv's& film's Emmy Award-winner [1990]: Age-Old Friends [HBO]; L.A. Law, Breaking Away, All in the Family, The Super, Skin Deep, Moonstruck, Little Shop of Horrors, Death Wish series, Bang the Drum Slowly, The Hustler

Harvey Jacobs 1/7/1930 writer - Don't Step on My Olive Branch; tv's Monsters (David McCallum, John Saxon, Drew Eliot, Laraine Newman, Peggy Cass, Frank Gorshin, Chris Noth, Rob Morrow, Imogene Coca, Darren McGavin, Kaye Ballard, Fritz Weaver, Steve Buscemi, Anne Meara, Amy & Jerry Stiller, Carole Shelley, Farley Granger, Tony Shalhoub, Alice Playten)

Joe Ponazecki 01/07/1934 performer - 1959 Much Ado About Nothing (John Gielgud, Nancy Marchand, Jean Marsh); Send Me No Flowers; orig Fiddler On The Roof; 1970 Harvey (Jimmy Stewart, Helen Hayes, Peggy Pope); 1972 THe Country Girl (George Grizzard, Jason Robards, Maureen Stapleton); Same Time, Next Year; 1981 Little Foxes

Harvey Evans 01/07/1941 great guy & swell performer - New Girl in Town; Redhead; Anyone Can Whistle; George M; 1970 The Boyfriend; orig Follies; Sextet (Dixie Carter); Barnum; Sunset Boulevard; 2002 Oklahoma!; tv's & film's The Pajama Game; The Girl Most Likely; West Side Story; The Judy Garland Show; Dames At Sea; Applause; Cheers; Enchanted

Anthony Shaw 01/07/1952 performer; son of Angela Lansbury and Peter Shaw. Brother of Deirdre Angela Shaw. Half-brother of David Shaw. Grandson of Moyna MacGill. Nephew of Edgar Lansbury and Bruce Lansbury. Cousin of David Lansbury, Felicia Lansbury and Tamara Ustinov. - A Little Family Business (Angela Lansbury, John McMartin, Hallie Foote); tv's & film's A Bridge Too Far; The Spy Who Loved Me; The Martian Chronicles; World War III; Murder She Wrote; Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris; The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

David Caruso 1/7/1956 performer - tvs' & film's CSI: MIAMI; An Officer and a Gentleman; H.E.L.P.; NYPD Blue

Linda Kozlowski 1/7/1958 performer, wife of actor Paul Hogan, Juilliard graduate - 1984 Death of a Salesman (Dustin Hoffman, John Malkovich, Louis Zorich); film's Crocodile Dundee series; Backstreet Justice, Village of the Damned, Shaughnessy

Nicolas Cage (Nicholas Coppola) 1/7/1964 performer, nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire - film's The Best of Times, National Treasure, Leaving Las Vegas, Vampire’s Kiss, Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, Peggy Sue Got Married, Windtalkers; National Treasure I & II

Josh Blake 01/07/1975 performer - The Human Comedy (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio); Rags (Teresa Stratas, Larry Kert, Andy Gale, Lonny Price); tv's & film's Once a Hero; ALF; Chicken Soup for the Soul; Spyder Games; Going Down; Recipe for Disaster

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1924 Passengers on a mysterious shipboard journey turn out to be the dead coasting toward the afterlife in Sutton Vane's drama Outward Bound, which opens a 144-performance run at the Ritz Theatre today, with Alfred Lunt, Leslie Howard and Margalo Gillmore.

1935 The Petrified Forest with Humphrey Bogart, Leslie Howard

1935 Also today, Judith Anderson and Helen Menken star in the opening night of The Old Maid, Zoe Akins' adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel about two sisters in love with the same man during the Civil War. It wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama and runs 305 performances at the Empire Theatre.

1943 Cole Porter wartime soldiers-and-dancing-girls musical Something for the Boys stars Ethel Merman and Betty Garrett. It runs 422 performances at the Alvin Theatre. Songs include "Hey, Good Looking" and "By the Mississinewa." It was subsequently made into a film for Carmen Miranda.

1951 The House of Bernarda Alba with Katina Paxinou, Kim Stanley & Tamara Daykarhanova

1958 Tennessee Williams' Garden District consists of two one-acts: Suddenly Last Summer and Something Unspoken. They are produced Off-Broadway at the York Theatre for a limited run. The duet will be revived, to mixed notices, at Circle in the Square in 1995.

1973 Look Away with Maya Angelou, Geraldine Page

1975 John Cullum stars in the musical Shenandoah, based on the Civil War film of the same name. It opens today at the Alvin Theatre and runs 1050 performances.

1985 Yul Brynner returns to Broadway for the final time in a revival of The King and I at the Broadway Theater. He stars opposite Mary Beth Peil. Brynner will receive an honorary Tony Award in 1985, celebrating his 4,525 performances in Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1951 masterpiece.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1937 Lotte Lenya makes her New York City debut at the Manhattan Opera House. She plays Miriam in Franz Werfel's The Eternal Road, with music by her husband, Kurt Weill.

1955 Singer Marian Anderson made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She appeared as Ulrica in Verdi’s The Masked Ball.

1996 - A blizzard paralyzed the Eastern U.S. The storm moved slowly, taking five days to reach New England from the Gulf of Mexico. The National Weather Service called it a storm of “historic proportions” with more than two feet of snow in the Baltimore and Washington, DC area. The mountains of Virginia and West Virginia got up to three feet. More than 100 deaths were blamed on the storm -- the majority from heart attacks.

2004 In its latest salvo against the increased use of non-union national touring companies, Actors' Equity Association files unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations against Clear Channel corporation. Complaints will follow against Dodgers Theatricals Jan. 16 and the Nederlander Organization Feb. 3. The three targeted companies are among the biggest and most prolific producers on Broadway and the road. Equity charges that each has violated the Production Contract—the pact that rules Equity's work in Broadway and touring shows—by engaging the services of NETworks, Troika and Big League Theatricals, all of which produce non-Equity producers.

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

Milla