Today's Birthdays 11/25 Happy Thanksgiving!

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 11/25/04 at 2:57pm

Lope de Vega 11/25/1562 - 8/27/1635 Spanish dramatist - Le Chien du Jardinier / Les Adieux (Madeleine Renaud, Jean-Pierre Granval, Jean-Louis Barrault)

Carry Nation 11/25/1846 - 6/9/1911 American temperance advocate, source mat'l

Virgil Thomson 11/25/1896 - 9/30/1989 American conducter and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer: Louisiana Story; music critic: New York Herald-Tribune [1940 to 1954]

Helen Gahagan 11/25/1900 - Jun 28, 1980 performer; grandmother of Illeanna Douglas; wife of Melvyn Douglas (1931 - 1980) her death; Actress and opera singer (1922-3; on Democratic National committee for California (1940-44); Congress (1945-51); lost to Nixon in run for Senate in 1950 - Dreams For Sale (William Holden); orig The Enchanted April; Tonight or Never (Melvyn Douglas); Mother Lode (Tex Ritter, Beulah Bondi, Melvyn Douglas)

Ricardo Montalban 11/25/1920 performer - Seventh Heaven (Gloria DeHaven, Bea Arthur, Chita Rivera); Jamaica; 1973 Don Juan in Hell (Paul Henreid, Agnes Moorehead, Edward Mulhare); Emmy Award-winning actor: How the West was Won-Part II [2/19/78]; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Fantasy Island, Heaven Help Us, Sayonara, Cheyenne Autumn, The Singing Nun, Sweet Charity, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad, my favs orig Khan Star Trek tv episode & film w/Jane Powell, Two Weeks With Love; TV commercials: Chrysler Cordova

Kathryn Grant Crosby 11/25/1933 performer, wife of singer Bing Crosby - Bing Crosby on Broadway; State Fair; tv's & film's Rear Window, Unchained, The Phenix City Story, The Guns of Fort Petticoat, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Anatomy of a Murder, 1001 Arabian Nights, The Initiation of Sarah, A Bing Crosby Christmas; lovely woman, she was at the O'Neill Ctr in CT. the summer I was there.

Mark Fleischman 11/25/1935 performer - A Distant Bell (Martha Scott); 1975 The Royal Family; The World of Sholem Aleichem (Jack Gilford, Andy Gale)

James Cresson 11/25/1935 producer, performer - originals: Take Me Along (Jackie Gleason, Una Merkel, Robert Morse, Eileen Herlie, Walter Pidgeon, Valerie Harper); Hot Spot; Flora, The Red Menace; Chicago; Norman Conquests I, II, III; On The 20th Century

Joan MacIntosh 11/25/1945 performer - The Curse of an Aching Heart (Faye Dunaway, Kurt Knudsen); Orpheus Descending (Tammy Grimes, Vanessa Redgrave); 1992 The Seagull; 1993 Abe Lincoln in Illinois

John Larroquette 11/25/1947 performer - tv's & film's Emmy Award-winning actor: Night Court [1984-85, 1985-86, 1986-87, 1987-88]; The John Larroquette Show, Doctors’ Hospital, Richie Rich, Altered States, Stripes, Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock

Roberto Athayde 11/25/1949 - Writer, Director - orig & 1990 revival Miss Margarida's Way (Estelle Parsons)

John F. Kennedy Jr. 11/25/1960 - 7/16/1999 - to me he'll always be ‘John-John’; attorney; cofounder/editor: George magazine; son of U.S. President John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy; killed in plane crash [w/wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister Lauren Bessette]

Kevin Chamberlin 11/25/1963 performer - My Favorite Year; 1993 Abe Lincoln in Illinois; Triumph of Love; Dirty Blonde (Claudia Shear); Seussical

Christina Applegate 11/25/1971 performer - 2005 Sweet Charity

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1882 U.S. premiere of Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta Iolanthe, about fairies and other supernatural folk to get involved with Parliamentary peers.

1907 Caesar and Cleopatra, opens at London's Savoy Theatre. This George Bernard Shaw 'history' play had its premiere at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, in September of this year. The players in this production include Johnstone Forbes-Robertson, Gertrude Elliott, Philip Tonge, and Elizabeth Watson.

1913 Could George Abott have realized his appearance in The Misleading Lady would begin a 76 year career in the theatre? Charles Goddard and Paul Dickey are the authors of this play about a woman who tricks a man into marriage just for a joke. Lewis Stone is the star directed by Holbrook Blinn.

1929 The Game of Love and Death by Romain Rolland stars Claude Rains,Alice Brady, Otto Kruger, and debuting Henry Fonda in a walk-on. Presented by the Theatre Guild and directed Rouben Mamoulian.

1952 The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie is set tonight at the Ambassadors' Theatre in London. The cast, trapped in a lonely snow-bound manor, is led by Richard Attenborough and his off-stage wife Sheila Sim.

1959 A musical written as a resort show proves to be a Broadway hit: Once Upon a Mattress based on the fairytale of "The Princess and the Pea." It has some high-power creators: composer Mary Rodgers, daughter of Richard Rodgers, gets a 460-performance hit and a Tony nomination as Best Musical her first time out. It also marks the Broadway debut of comedienne Carol Burnett, who also earns a Tony nomination, and a four-decade-plus career.

1973 The Visit - John McMartin, Rachel Roberts

2000 Few regional theatre openings this season have had the buzz that’s hovering over The Spitfire Grill, a new musical premiering at New Jersey’s George Street Playhouse, Nov. 25-Dec. 24, opening Nov. 29. Based on Lee David Zlotoff's movie, Grill is directed by artistic director David Saint (Down the Garden Paths). The title is the name of a restaurant, where the no- nonsense owner, Hannah, and a former women's prison inmate, Percy (Garrett Long), trying to start over develop a friendship — and a contest. Grill is a collaboration by Fred Alley and James Valcq, with Valcq doing the music, Alley penning the lyrics, and the duo adapting the book. The show will move to Off-Broadway in 2001.

2001 Dracula, Frank Wildhorn's musical based on the horror classic, concludes a successful tryout at La Jolla Playhouse in California, with producers promising a Broadway opening in fall 2002. But Jim Steinman's bloodsucking tale Dance of the Vampires, winds up beating it to the Great White Way. In the matter of, he who laughs last....FW's Dracula Gets Workshopped Dec. 10-16 & opens on Broadway 8/19/2004. Maybe it's time to put the old vamp to rest for awhile.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1945 - A spoof of the Gilbert and Sullivan classic, H.M.S. Pinafore, was broadcast on radio on The Fred Allen Show. The spoof was titled, The Brooklyn Pinafore. Joining actress Shirley Booth in the skit was baseball great Leo ‘The Lip’ Durocher

1947 Movie studio executives meeting in New York agreed to blacklist the "Hollywood 10," who were cited a day earlier and jailed for contempt of Congress for failing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

2002 It took her 50 yrs. but by golly, she made it: Queen Elizabeth II attends the 50th anniversary performance of The Mousetrap in London's West End. It's the first time the monarch has seen the thriller, which opened the same year she ascended the throne, and both are still reigning.

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

Milla