Today's Birthdays 12/27

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 12/28/03 at 12:35am

Sydney Greenstreet 12/27/1879 - Jan 18, 1954 performer - The Merchant of Venice (Dame Syble Thorndike); The Good Earth; Roberta; 1935 The Taming of the Shrew (Lunt & Fontanne); Idiot's Delight (Lunt & Fontanne); There Shall Be No Night (Lunt & Fontanne, Monty Cliff); fav films The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca

Marlene Dietrich 12/27/1901 - 5/6/1992 performer - 1967 $ 1968 Marlene Dietrich; fav film's Destry Rides Again; Witness For the Prosecution; Morocco, Kismet, Judgment at Nuremberg, A Foreign Affair

Oscar Levant 12/27/1906 - Aug 14, 1972 Composer, Performer, Conductor - Burlesque; Ripples; The American Way (Fredric March, Florence Eldridge); film's An American in Paris, The Bandwagon, Romance on the High Seas

Anna Russell 12/27/1911 Lyricist, Composer, Performer,Anna Russell's Little Show - operatic parodies: The Ring of the Nibelungs, How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera

Tommy Rall 12/27/1929 performer - Look, Ma, I'm Dancin'!; Call Me Madam; Juno; Milk & Honey; Cafe Crown (Ken Richards, Alan Alda, Sam Levene); Cry for Us All

Martin Milner 12/27/1931 performer - The Ninety Day Mistress (Dyan Cannon, Tony Lo Bianco); fav film Life With Father

Tovah Feldshuh 12/27/1952 performer, cabaret performer - Cyrano (Leigh Beery, Christopher Plummer); Yentl; Lend Me a Tenor; Golda's Balcony; film's & tv's Holocaust, The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal, Brewster’s Millions, Blue Iguana, A Day in October

Joe Mantello 12/27/1962 Partner of Jon Robin Baitz, Director, Performer - Angels in America I & II; Love! Valour! Compassion!; Design for Living; Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune; Take Me Out (Edie Falco, Stanley Tucci); Wicked; Assassins

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1927 The intricate lives of people living on a Show Boat come to life at the Ziegfeld Theatre. Adapted by Oscar Hammerstein II from Edna Ferber's novel, with music composed by Jerome Kern including what will become classics, "Ol' Man River" and "Make Believe." The cast includes Helen Morgan, Norma Terris, Charles Winninger, and Jules Bledsoe.

1941 Clifford Odets' Clash By Night centers on a husband who comes to realize the man to whom he has opened his home is having an affair with his wife. Lee J. Cobb, Joseph Schildkraut, and Tallulah Bankhead fight it out at the Belasco Theatre.

1945 Home of the Brave manages only 69 performances but gains critical and financial recognition. Playwright Arthur Laurents wins $1,000 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for this timely war story, which receives an off-Broadway revival in 1999.

1948 U.S. premiere of Jean Giradoux's fantasy allegory The Madwoman of Chaillot at the Belasco Theatre, starring Martita Hunt as Countess Aurelia. It will run 368 performances and later be adapted as the musical Dear World.

1961 Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green team up for their second musical in a year, Subways Are for Sleeping, which attempted to offer a humorous portrait of homeless people. When it was slammed by the critics, producer David Merrick responded with one of his most memorable p.r. stunts, hiring people with the same names as the critics, and running their (positive) comments in a quote ad. It didn't help; the show ran a comparatively brief 205 performances. However it also introduced actress Phyllis Newman, who became Mrs. Adolph Green.

1965 Broadway is mesmerized and scandalized by Peter Brook's staging of Peter Weiss' long-titled drama, The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, also known as Marat/Sade, one of the first plays on the American stage to offer full frontal nudity. It will win the Tony Award as Best Play, and runs 145 performances at the Martin Beck Theatre.

1970 ''Hello, Dolly!'' closed on Broadway after a run of 2,844 performances

ON THIS DAY IN:

1831 Naturalist Charles Darwin set out on a voyage to the Pacific aboard the HMS Beagle. Darwin's discoveries during the voyage helped formed the basis of his theories on evolution.

1900 Prohibitionist Carry Nation carried out her first public smashing of a bar, at the Carey Hotel in Wichita, Kan.

1932 Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City.

1947 The children's TV program ''Howdy Doody'' debuted on NBC.

2002 The film adaptation of Kander & Ebb's Chicago opens in major markets today. Rob Marshall directed the film version of the 1975 musical, which will go on to win the 2003 Academy Award for Best Picture -- the first musical to do so since Oliver! in 1968.

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

Milla