Today's Birthdays 12/12
Today's Birthdays 12/12
#1Today's Birthdays 12/12
Posted: 12/11/06 at 11:00pm
Gustave Flaubert 12/12/1821 - 5/8/1889 French novelist - Madame Bovary
Edward G. Robinson 12/12/1893 - 1/26/1973 performer - The Firebrand (Joseph Schildkraut, Frank Morgan); The Brothers Karamazov (Lunt & Fontanne, Morris Carnovsky); Middle of the Night (Gena Rowlands, Anne Jackson); tv's & film's Soylent Green, MacKenna’s Gold, The Prize, Key Largo, Double Indemnity, Kid Galahad, Barbary Coast, Little Caesar, Scarlet Street
Karen Morley 12/12/1909 - Mar 8, 2003 In 1947, she testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and refused to answer questions about her possible enrollment in the Communist Party; performer - The Walrus and the Carpenter (Frances Heflin); 1942 Hedda Gabler (Katina Paxinou)
Frank Sinatra 12/12/1915 - 5/14/1998 Husband of Nancy, Mia Farrow (1966 - 1968 divorced; Barbara Marx; performer who elevated popular song into an art. Legend has it that he was born without making a sound or opening his eyes. In fact, he didn’t even sing a note until his grandmother held him under some cold running water. - Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie; tv's & film's On the Town, Guys and Dolls, Ocean’s Eleven, Not as a Stranger, The Manchurian Candidate, None But the Brave, Young at Heart, The Tender Trap, High Society, Pal Joey and The Joker is Wild. Hollywood rewarded him with a Special Oscar for The House I Live In, a short he made to promote racial and religious tolerance; an Oscar nomination for The Man with the Golden Arm, and the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his performance in From Here to Eternity; plus the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1970. Won the Emmy in 1965 for Outstanding Musical Special, Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music. President Ronald Reagan, presented Francis Albert Sinatra with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985.
Alan Schneider 12/12/1917 - 5/3/1984 director; Directed the American premiere of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" - Anastasia; 1955 The Skin of Our Teeth (Mary Martin, Alice Fay; Frances Sternhagen); Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Tiny Alice; orig A Delicate Balance; You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running; I Never Sang for My Father; La Strada (Bernadette Peters, Larry Kert); A Texas Trilogy I, II, III; The Lady from Dubuque (Irene Worth)
Honor Blackman 12/12/1927 performer; She allegedly declined a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) honour in 2002. - tv's & film's Conspirator, Jason and the Argonauts, Goldfinger; Columbo: Dagger of the Mind
John Osborne 12/12/1929 - 12/24/1994 English playwright - Academy Award-winning playwright: Tom Jones [1963]; The Entertainer (Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright); Look Back in Anger (Alan Bates); Tony Award-winner: Luther [1964]
Connie Francis 12/12/1938 performer, singer - Stupid Cupid, Where the Boys Are, Lipstick on Your Collar, I’ll Follow the Boys, My Happiness, Who’s Sorry Now, Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool; film's Where The Boys Are; Looking for Love
Kenneth Cranham 12/12/1944 performer - Loot (Norman Barrs); 1994 An Inspector Calls (Rosemary Harris, Philip Bosco); tv's & film's Rome; 2003 Pollyanna; Dalziel and Pascoe: Home Truths; Robin and Marian
Cathy Rigby 12/12/1952 gymnast: 1968 & 1972 U.S. Olympic Team, World Champion silver medalist [1970]; performer - revivals Peter Pan; Suessical [replacement]; TV commercials; The Great Wallendas and Peter Pan
Philip Hernández 12/12/1959 performer - Kiss of the Spider Woman (Chita); The Capeman (Ruben Blades, Marc Anthony, Luba Mason)
Burke Moses 12/12/1964 performer - The Frogs; Beauty and the Beast; O/B The Fantasticks; tv's The Nanny; All My Children
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1905 La Dame aux Camelias with Sarah Bernhardt
1921 The Chocolate Soldier
1932 Eva Le Gallienne stages a landmark adaptation of Alice in Wonderland at the Civic Repertory Theatre with Josephine Hutchinson, Burgess Meredith, Joseph Schildkraut, and Le Gallienne herself as the White Queen. Lavishly designed by Irene Sharaff based on Tenniel's illustrations, the production runs 127 performances.
1932 Also today, a loving (that's very loving) artist has her life story recorded in S.N. Behrman's Biography, starring Ina Claire. Laurence Olivier is also in the cast. This Theatre Guild production will run for 283 performances.
1958 The Gazebo with Walter Slezak, Jayne Meadows
1966 - BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, the new musical starring Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain, begins previews tonight in Philadelphia under the title HOLLY GOLIGHTLY. Produced by David Merrick, with book (based on the Truman Capote short novel), direction by Abe Burrows and a score by Bob Merrill, it will close at the Majestic Theatre in New York during previews (with a new title, a new book by Edward Albee, and new direction by Joseph Anthony), losing $425,000.
1972 Julie Harris plays the emotionally fragile First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in James Prideaux's The Last of Mrs. Lincoln. It will run 63 performances at the ANTA Theatre, and earn Harris the fourth of her five Tony Awards as Best Actress in a Play.
1985 The long-running off-Broadway hit, Nunsense, opens tonight at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Nuns and priests comprise a large part of the audience tonight as this Dan Goggin-directed (and composed) musical makes its debut. Sister Mary Amnesia is played by Semina De Laurentis. This production will run a whopping 3,672 performances.
1994 Slavs! opens at New York Theatre Workshop tonight. This Tony Kushner play is the self-proclaimed "coda" to his Broadway successes, Angels in America I & II. This production starred Marisa Tomei and Joseph Wiseman and ran 64 performances.
2002 Nora Ephron's playwriting debut, Imaginary Friends, opens on Broadway Dec. 12 at the Barrymore Theatre. The production began previews Nov. 25 following its world premiere engagement at San Diego's The Globe Theatre in September. The play with music — by Marvin Hamlisch and Craig Carnelia — stars Cherry Jones and Swoosie Kurtz, respectively, as personal and literary rivals Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman.
ON THIS DAY IN:
1917 Father Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town outside Omaha, Neb.
1968 Tallulah Bankhead passed away on this day at age 66.
1997 Livent producer Garth Drabinsky invites a host of performers, designers, and writers to the official christening of the new Ford Center for the Performing Arts tonight. Ragtime begins previews at the theatre on Dec. 26.
1999 "Catch-22" author Joseph Heller died at age 76
2001 Manhattan Theatre Company "breaks ground" inside the dilapidated Biltmore Theatre for a refurbishment of the venerable playhouse as its new Broadway headquarters. Once host to Hair and Barefoot in the Park, the Biltmore has been dark since 1987, landmarked, but mildewed and crumbling, unable to reopen without expensive repairs. MTC promises a fall 2003 reopening.
(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com)
Milla
mistygracie
Swing Joined: 5/9/06
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