Today's Birthdays 12/1

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 12/1/04 at 6:02pm

Rex Stout 12/1/1886 - 10/27/1975 mystery writer: Nero Wolfe series, source mat'l

Cyril Richard 12/1/1897 - 12/18/1977 performer - Puzzles of 1925 (Helen Broderick [mother of Broderick Crawford], Walter Pidgeon); Jane (Edna Best); Peter Pan; A Visit to a Small Planet; The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd; Sugar (Elaine Joyce, Tony Roberts, Robert Morse); Tony Award-winning actor: Peter Pan [1955]; films: Hans Brinker, Half a Sixpence, Peter Pan, Blackmail; Kraft Television Theatre, Goodyear TV Playhouse

Mary Martin 12/1/1913 - 11/3/1990 performer; mother of actor Larry Hagman & Heller Halliday, wife of Ben Hagman (1929 - 1935) divorced, wife of Richard Halliday (1940 - 1973) his death - Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress, singer: Peter Pan [1955]; South Pacific, I Do! I Do!, Sound of Music, Night and Day, Star Spangled Rhythm, Birth of the Blues, Rhythm on the River

Dick Shawn 12/1/1923 - 4/17/1987 performer - The Egg; Peterpat; I'm Solomon (Ken Richards, Karen Morrow, Nick Dante); A Musical Jubilee (Lillian Gish, Tammy Grimes, Larry Kert, Pat Munsel, Jeanne Lehman); tv's & film's Bewitched, Rented Lips, Maid to Order, Check is in the Mail, The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud, Love at First Bite, The Producers, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Keith Michell 12/01/1928 performer - Irma La Douce; The Rehearsal; Abelard and Heloise (Dianna Rigg) [wish I'd seen this]

Woody Allen 12/01/1935 writer, director, performer - From A to Z (Hermione Gingold, Alvin Epstein); Don't Drink the Water (Kay Medford, Anita Gillette, Donna Mills); Play It Again, Sam; The Floating Light Bulb; Academy Award-winning writer and director: Annie Hall [1977]; Radio Days, Alice; Academy Award-winning writer: Hannah and Her Sisters [1986]; actor, writer, director: Sleeper, Husbands and Wives, Annie Hall, Mighty Aphrodite, Manhattan Murder Mystery, New York Stories, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan, Bananas; actor, writer: Play It Again, Sam, What’s New Pussycat?; actor: Scenes from a Mall, Casino Royale; comedy writer; Your Show of Shows, The Pat Boone-Chevy Showroom

Bette Midler 12/01/1945 performer - replacement in orig. Fiddler on the Roof; Bette Midler; Bette Midler's Clams on the Half Shell Revue (vocal arr's Marc Shaiman, special mat'l Bruce Vilanch); Short Talks on the Universe - I Hate My Purse [Original, Play, One Act, Monologue]; Grammy Award-winning singer: LP: The Divine Miss M [1972], You are the Wind Beneath My Wings [1989]; Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, The Rose; Emmy Award-winning entertainer: Bette Midler-Old Red Hair is Back [1977-1978], The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson [5/21/1992]; actress: From a Distance, Beaches, For the Boys, Down and Out in Beverly Hill Business, Ruthless People, Hawaii, Fiddler on the Roof, Tommy, The Edge of Night

Treat Williams 12/01/1951 performer - Over Here!; Once in a Lifetime (Jayne Meadows, John Lithgow, Julia Duffy, Michael Jeter, Jerry Zaks); 2001 Follies; film's, etc. The Phantom, The Late Shift, Mulholland Falls, Final Verdict, J. Edgar Hoover, The Men’s Club, The Little Mermaid, Flashpoint, The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, Prince of the City, Hair, The Eagle Has Landed, Eddie Dodd, Good Advice

Ann Brown 12/01/1960 performer - 1996 Once Upon a Mattress; 1998 The Sound of Music; 2000 The Music Man

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1879 - Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta, H.M.S. Pinafore, opened. Arthur Sullivan conducted the orchestra while William Gilbert played the role of a sailor in the chorus and in the Queen’s Nay-vee.

1924 - Lady Be Good opened in New York City. George Gershwin wrote the music while Fred and Adele Astaire were well-received by the show’s audience for their dancing talents.

1930 Incidents from Emily Dickinson's life are the subject of Alison's House. Presented by New York's Civic Repertory Theatre, the play, written by Susan Glaspell, will later win a Pulitzer Prize.

1968 - Promises, Promises opened on Broadway. The play ran for 1,281 performances, earning $35,000 in profits each week of 1969. Dionne Warwick had a hit version of the title song.

1987 The Ritz (now the Walter Kerr) Theatre plays host to Penn Jillette and Ray Teller, whose Penn & Teller opens tonight and will go on to run for 130 performances.

1999 Liza Minnelli returns to Broadway with a salute to her father, film director Vincente Minnelli. Minnelli on Minnelli is presented at the Palace Theatre, where her mother, Judy Garland, had triumphed in solo concerts.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1919 Lady Astor was sworn in as the first female member of the British Parliament.

1955 After losing an eye in an operation three months earlier, Paul Muni returns to the cast of Inherit the Wind at the National Theatre. He is greeted by the audience and cast members with a standing ovation.

1955 Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, defied the law by refusing to give up her seat to a white man aboard a Montgomery, Ala., city bus. Parks was arrested, sparking a year-long boycott of the buses by blacks.

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

Milla