Today's Birthdays 10/31

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 10/31/03 at 11:53am

Jan Vermeer 10/31/1632 - 12/15/1675 Dutch painter - I loved the last Met Vermeer exhibit, went 3 Xs

Ethel Waters 10/31/1896 - 9/1/1977 American jazz and blues singer and film actress - Lew Leslie's Blackbirds; As Thousands Cheer; At Home Abroad; 1939 Mamba's Daughters (Jose Ferrer); Cabin in the Sky (Todd Duncan, Katherine Dunham, Rex Ingram, Dooley Wilson, by Vernon Duke & John La Touche, choreo by Geo. Balanchine); The Member of the Wedding (Julie Harris, Brandon de Wilde)

Dale Evans 10/31/1912 - Feb 7, 2001 wife of King of the Cowboys, Roy Rogers (1947 - 199 his death, performer, songwriter: Happy Trails to You; The Roy Rogers Show, Roy Rogers movies

Barbara Bel Geddes 10/31/1922 - daughter of Norman Bel Geddes, performer - The Moon Is Blue (Barry Nelson, Donald Cook, staged by Otto Preminger); Cat On A Hot Tin Roof; Silent Night, Lonely Night (Henry Fonda, Lois Nettleton); Mary, Mary (Betsy Von Furstenberg, Michael Rennie, Barry Nelson, John Cromwell, written by Jean Kerr); Finishing Touches (Robert Lansing); tv's & film's Emmy Award-winning actress: Dallas [1979-80]; Vertigo, I Remember Mama

Melina Mercouri 10/31/1925 - Mar 6, 1994 wife of Jules Dassin (1966 - 1994) her death, performer - Illya Darling; 1972 Lysistrata (Avril Gentles, Priscilla Lopez); film's Never on Sunday, Once is Not Enough, Topkapi; Greece’s Minister of Culture [1981-1989, 1993-1994]

Lee Grant 10/31/1927 - mother of Dinah Manoff, wife of Joseph Feury (1962 - present), wife of Arnold Manoff (divorced), performer, dir. - Detective Story (Ralph Bellamy, Joan Copeland, Maureen Stapleton, Les Tremayne); All You Need Is One Good Break (Gene Saks); 1950 Arms and the Man (Sam Wannamaker, Francis Lederer); A Hole in the Head (Paul Douglas, David Burns, Kay Medford, dir. by Garson Kanin); The Captains and the Kings (Charles Ruggles, Joseph Campanella, Peter Graves, Conrad Nagel, Gavin MacLeod); The Prisoner of Second Avenue (Peter Falk, Vincent Gardenia, dir. Mike Nichols); tv's & film's Academy Award-winning actress: Shampoo [1975]; Emmy Award-winning actress: Peyton Place [1965-66], World Premiere Monday Night at the Movies: The Neon Ceiling [1970-71]; Airport ’77, Voyage of the Damned, Valley of the Dolls, Mod Squad, In the Heat of the Night, The Balcony, The Detective Story

Ron Rifkin 10/31/1939 performer - The Goodbye People (Herschel Bernardi); The 10th Man (Phoebe Cates, Jack Weston); Broken Glass (Amy Irving, Frances Conroy); 1995 A Month in the Country (Rocco Sisto [great in Harlequin Studies at Signature], Helen Mirren, F. Murray Abraham, Byron Jennings [can't believe I missed this prod'n]); 1998 Cabaret

David Ogden Stiers 10/31/1942 - performer - David Ogden Stiers began his career in San Francisco at the Actors' Workshop and went on to work with John Houseman's Acting Company in New York. Used to see him hangin' out at Juilliard all the time, is he teaching there now? - the following 4 plays in 1973 w/Patti LuPone, Kevin Kline: 3 Sisters; The Beggar's Opera; Measure for Measure; Scapin; 1974 Ulysses in Nighttown (Margery Beddow, Zero Mostel, Tommy Lee Jones, Swen Swenson, DOS's Bway debut); The Magic Show (Robert LuPone, David Henning, Anita Morris); tv's & film's The Accidental Tourist, Harry’s War, Oh, God!, M*A*S*H, North and South, Doc

Sally Kirkland 10/31/1944 performer - film's Eye of the Stranger, Prime Time Murder, Heat Wave, Anna, Fatal Games, Private Benjamin, A Star is Born, The Way We Were, Cinderella Liberty, Blue

John Candy 10/31/1950 - 3/4/1994 - performer, comedian - tv's & film's Second City, The Blues Brothers, Home Alone, JFK, Little Shop of Horrors, National Lampoon’s Vacation, 1941, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Spaceballs, Splash, Stripes, Uncle Buck, Who’s Harry Crumb?; Emmy Award-winning writer: SCTV Network: The Energy Ball/Sweeps Week [1982-83]

Brian Stokes Mitchell 10/31/1958 performer, Husband of Allyson Tucker (1995 - present) - Oh, Kay! (Tamara Tunie, Gregg Burge (sweet guy)); Ragtime; 1999 Kiss Me, Kate; 2002 Man of La Mancha, Broadway's top romantic leading man in musicals of the late 1990s onward. He will be named one of the "Sexiest Men Alive" by People magazine.

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1949 Broadway premiere of Marc Blitzstein's opera Regina, based on Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. It runs 56 performances at the 46th Street Theatre.

1956 Rosalind Russell stars in the title role of Patrick Dennis' Auntie Mame, which opens tonight at the Broadhurst Theatre and runs for 639 performances. The saga of a boy sent to live with his devil-may-care aunt will later serve as the basis for the musical Mame.

1957 Ricardo Montalban and Lena Horne play sultry lovers in the musical Jamaica by E.Y. "Yip" Harburg and Harold Arlen.

1967 Although Eugene O'Neill never wanted his 1939 play, More Stately Mansions, to be produced, it opened tonight on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre. The cast, which included Colleen Dewhurst, Ingrid Bergman and Arthur Hill, was directed by Jose Quintero. A controversial revival of this show was done in October 1997 at New York Theatre Workshop by Dutch director Ivo Van Hove.

1972 Simon Gray's play about a professor losing his wife, homosexual male lover, and sobriety, Butley, opens tonight at the Morosco Theatre. Alan Bates wins a Tony Award for his starring role in this James Hammerstein-directed production.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1903 - The Cleveland Theatre in Chicago welcomed the youngest member of the Barrymore family to the acting fold. Young John Barrymore made his stage debut in Magda.

1926 - Harry Houdini died on this day in 1926, of peritonitis. Magicians and mediums throughout the world still gather on this night, Halloween, to honor the Great Houdini.

1953 - NBC televised Carmen on Opera Theatre -- in living color. It was the first major opera televised in anything other than black and white.

1988 John Houseman, star of theatre, radio, film and television, dies today at age 86. One of the founding participants in the Voice of America radio for World War II, which became in famous for the "War of the Worlds" broadcast with Orson Welles. Houseman used his body to keep out programmers trying to shut the broadcast down. Houseman is also well known for the Academy Award he won for playing Professor Kingsfield in the film "Paper Chase" in 1973, a role he repeated in the TV series.

1991 Joseph Papp dies after a battle with cancer today. A producer and activist, Papp started the Public Theatre (now the Joseph Papp Public Theatre), through which he nurtured unknowns such as David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Thomas Babe, David Hare, George C. Wolfe, Elizabeth Swados, Andre Serban, Robert Alan Ackerman, Wallace Shawn and Carson Kievman. Major productions include Hair and A Chorus Line. He was 70.

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

Milla Updated On: 10/31/03 at 11:53 AM