Today's Birthdays 2/1

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 2/1/04 at 4:06pm

Victor Herbert 2/1/1859 - 3/26/1924 cellist, conductor: Pittsburgh Symphony, Broadway's operetta king, composer of Babes in Toyland, The Red Mill, Mlle. Modiste, Naughty Marietta, Sweethearts and numerous editions of the Ziegfeld Follies.

John Ford 2/1/1895 - 8/31/1973 American motion picture director, Academy Award-winning director: The Informer [1935], The Grapes of Wrath [1940], How Green Was My Valley [1941], The Quiet Man [1952]

Clark Gable 2/1/1901 - 11/16/1960 performer - Machinal; Hawk Island; The Last Mile; Love, Honor and Betray (Alice Brady, George Brent, Glenda Farrell); film's Gone With The Wind; It Happened One Night; Mutiny On The Bounty

Langston Hughes 2/1/1902 - 3/22/1967 Writer, Lyricist, Source Material - Mulatto; Street Scene; The Barrier; Simply Heavenly; Tambourines to Glory; Mule Bone (Robert Earl Jones, Vanessa Williams, Samuel E. Wright)

S.J. (Sidney Joseph) Perelman 2/1/1904 10/17/1979 humorist, writer, Academy Award-winning screenwriter: Around the World in 80 Days [1956]; Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, One Touch of Venus, Strictly from Hunger, Westward Ha!, Around the World in 80 Clichés

Peter Sallis 02/01/1921 performer - Baker Street; Inadmissable Evidence (Nicol Williamson, Jill Townsend)

Renata Tebaldi 2/1/1922 operatic diva, lyrico spinto soprano; 1 of the all-time greats, debuted as Elena in Boito's Mefistofele [1944]; debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in Verdi's Otello [1955]

Garrett Morris 02/01/1937 performer - Hallelujah, Baby! (Leslie Uggams); I'm Solomon; Operation Sidewinder; Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death; What the Wine-Sellers Buy

Leo Burmester 02/01/1944 performer - Lone Star & Pvt. Wars (Powers Boothe); Raggedy Ann; Les Misérables; Buried Child; The Civil War; Thou Shalt Not; Urban Cowboy

Michael Hall 02/01/1971 performer, husband of Amy Spanger - Skylight [u/s](Michael Gambon); replacements 1996 Chicago; 1998 Cabaret

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1896 Puccini's opera ''La Boheme'' premiered in Turin.

1967 The Deer Park Norman Mailer's adaptation of his novel stars Rip Torn, Gene Lindsey and Marsha Mason. Leo Garen directs the 128 performances at Theatre de Lys.

1968 Iris Murdoch and James Saunders adapt Murdoch's novel The Italian Girl for the stage. Richard Pasco and Elizabeth Sellars lead the cast and Val May stages. It will run in London at Wyndham's Theatre for 315 performances.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1919 - “There she is...” The first Miss America was crowned, not in Atlantic City, but in New York City. Good thing, because Edith Hyde was not, the judges found, a Miss. She was a Mrs. Mrs. Tod Robbins, the mother of two children.

1953 - CBS-TV debuted Private Secretary. Ann Sothern played Susie McNamera, private secretary to NY talent agent, Peter Sands (played by Don Porter). Susie, you will remember, kept trying to improve Peter’s professional -- and personal -- life, screwing it up seriously in the process. The show ran during the regular TV seasons on CBS (last show was September 10, 1957) and ran on NBC-TV in the summers of 1953 and 1954. Loved watching reruns of this show!

1954 - A television classic was born on CBS-TV, as The Secret Storm was shown for the first day of what would become a 20-year run on the network.

1979 Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, whose prison sentence for bank robbery had been commuted by President Jimmy Carter, left a federal prison near San Francisco.

2002 Hildegard Knef, 76, the husky-voiced singer and actress who sang the role of Communist official Ninotchka in Cole Porter's Silk Stockings dies in a Berlin hospital, after a long illness. Also today, a settlement is announced between producer Scott Rudin and composer Stephen Sondheim over ownership of his musical Wise Guys, since retitled Bounce that allows its 2003 premiere to go forward.

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

Milla Updated On: 2/1/04 at 04:06 PM