Today's Birthdays 11/6

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 11/5/04 at 10:19pm

John Philip Sousa 11/6/1854 - 3/6/1932 Composer, Lyricist - ‘The March King’: composer, bandleader: Stars and Stripes Forever, Semper Fidelis, El Capitan, King Cotton, The Thunderer, Washington Post March; Chris and the Wonderful Lamp; 1982 Dancin'; Tintypes; Teddy & Alice

Gus Kahn 11/06/1886 - Oct 8, 1941 Lyricist, Composer, source mat'l - Whoopee!; A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine; Mr. Wonderful (Sammy Davis, Sr., Sammy Davis, Jr., Chita Rivera); film's I'll See You In My Dreams

Ole Olsen 11/06/1892 - Jan 26, 1963 born a yr. after Cole Porter in Peru, Indiana [imagine that!]; Producer, Writer, Director, Performer, Part of the comedy team "Olsen & Johnson" with Chic Johnson - Hellzapoppin’; All Over Town, Country Gentlemen; Pardon Our French; TV host: Fireball Fun-for-All [w/Johnson]

Francis Lederer 11/06/1899 - May 25, 2000 performer, Gorgeous! - Autumn Crocus; 1950 Arms & the Man (Anne Jackson, Sam Wanamaker); my fav film's The Diary of a Chambermaid (Paulette Goddard); Midnight (Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore)

Juanita Hall 11/06/1901 - Feb 28, 1968 performer - The Green Pastures (Rex Ingram); St. Louis Woman (Pearl Bailey); South Pacific; House of Flowers; The Ponder Heart (David Wayne, Will Geer)

Peter Matz 11/06/1928 - Aug 9, 2002 Arranger, Composer, Musical Director, Orchestrator, Musical Staff; husband of Marilyn Matz (a wonderful singer) til he died - House of Flowers; Whoop-Up; Beg, Borrow or Steal (Claiborn Carey [Cloris Leachman's sis], Eddie Bracken, Betty Garrett, Estelle Parsons); Vintage '60 (Bret Convey, Mickey Deems, Michele Lee); Grand Hotel; Anna Karenina; The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public; Minnelli on Minnelli

Mike Nichols (Michael Igor Peschkowsky) Nov 6, 1931 Berlin, GERMANY Producer, Presenter, Writer, Director, Performer; husband of Diane Sawyer - An Evening With Nichols and May; Barefoot in the Park; Luv (Alan Arkin, Anne Jackson, Eli Wallach); The Odd Couple; The Apple Tree (Alan Alda, Larry Blyden, Robert Klein, May Louise, Barbara Harris [who's alive & living in Arizona]); 1967 The Little Foxes (Anne Bancroft, Richard A. Dysart, Margaret Leighton, E. G. Marshall, Austin Pendleton, Geo. C. Scott); Plaza Suite; 1973 Uncle Vanya; Streamers (Paul Rudd); The Gin Game; Lunch Hour (Sam Waterston, Gilda Radner); Fools (John Rubinstein); The Real Thing; Social Security (Olympia Dukakis, Ron Silver, Marlo Thomas, Joanna Gleason, Stephan Schnabel, Kenneth Welsh); Death & the Maiden (Gene Hackman, Glenn Close, Richard Dreyfuss); Academy Award-winning director: The Graduate [1967]; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Silkwood, Postcards from the Edge, The Day of the Dolphin; comedian: [w/Elaine May]

Sally Field 11/6/1946 performer - The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? [replacement]; Academy Award-winning actress: Norma Rae [1979], Places in the Heart [1984]; Gidget series, Steel Magnolias, Mrs. Doubtfire, Smokey and the Bandit series, Hooper, Forrest Gump, Absence of Malice; Emmy Award-winner: The Big Event/NBC World Premiere Movie: Sybil [1977]; The Flying Nun, Gidget, The Girl with Something Extra, Alias Smith and Jones

Eddie Korbich 11/06/1960 what a terrific performer - Wicked [replacement]; 1989 Sweeney Todd; 1994 Carousel; Seussical; 1 my fav Off-Bway shows Eating Raoul (Adrian Zmed, Cindy Benson)

Michael Cerveris 11/06/1960 performer - 2004 Assassins; The Who's Tommy (Jonathan Dokuchitz, Tracy Nicole Chapman, Norm Lewis, Alice Ripley); Titanic; 2004 Broadway Unplugged; Off-Broadway: Hedwig in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"

Ethan Hawke 11/06/1970 performer, Husband of Uma Thurman - 1993 The Seagull (Tyne Daily, Tony Roberts, Jon Voight); film's Search and Destroy, Reality Bites, Alive, Waterland, A Midnight Clear, White Fang, Dead Poets Society, Dad, Explorers

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1882 - 'The Jersey Lily of England' made her American debut. Lily Langtry starred in An Unequal Match which opened in New York City.

1899 Opening night at the Garrick Theatre for the melodrama Sherlock Holmes written by and starring William Gillette, based on the Arthur Conan Doyle stories about a brilliantly analytical detective. Gillette will revive and tour the play almost constantly over the next three decades. In all, the play will produced on Broadway eight times, most recently in 1974 with John Wood in Gillette's signature role. [Since I'm such a big Sherlock Holmes fan, I'm very happy that this was my very 1st Broadway Show!]Later, Gillette would be razor sharp in the same part on the radio.

1905 Peter Pan flies over Broadway for the first time, in a production by James M. Barrie at the Empire Theatre, starring Maude Adams as the original Peter Pan. The play will be revived on Broadway seven times over the next 50 years, then be adapted twice as a musical (first by Leonard Bernstein, then by Moose Charlap and Jule Styne), earning it more productions, most recently in 1999 with Cathy Rigby as Peter.

1911 Henrik Ibsen's The Lady From the Sea gets its American premiere.

1931 Elmer Rice's drama Counsellor-at-Law opens on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre, with Paul Muni and Constance McKay. It stays for 292 performances.

1988 An all-star cast comprises the revival of Waiting For Godot at the Lincoln Center Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, which opens tonight. This Samuel Beckett staple was directed by Mike Nichols and starred Robin Williams and Steve Martin, along with F. Murray Abraham and Bill Irwin, but only had a limited run of 25 performances.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1893 Composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg, Russia, at age 53.

1955 - The first motion picture premiere was seen coast to coast as TV viewers watched Rex Harrison and Margaret Leighton star in The Constant Husband.

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

Milla