Today's Birthdays 2/18

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 2/18/04 at 11:12pm

Sholom Aleichem 02/18/1859 - May 13, 1916 writer, source mat'l - If I Were You; Fiddler on the Roof; The Old Country, Tevye’s Daughters, Inside Kasrilevke, The Great Fair : Scenes from My Childhood

Billy DeWolfe 02/18/1907 - Mar 5, 1974 performer - John Murray Anderson's Almanac; Ziegfeld Follies of 1957; film's Blue Skys

Jack Palance 02/18/1920 - Streetcar Named Desire [Played the part when Marlon Brando broke his nose and couldn't go on; would have LOVED to have seen this]; A Temporary Island; The Vigil; Darkness at Noon (Claude Rains, Kim Hunter, Lois Nettleton); tv's & film's Academy Award-winning actor: City Slickers [1991]; Requiem for a Heavyweight, Batman, Cyborg 2, Cops and Robbersons, Bronk, Ripley’s Believe It or Not

Bill Cullen 2/18/1920 7/7/1990 - TV host: I’ve Got a Secret, The Price is Right, The Joker’s Wild, Name that Tune

Milos Forman 2/18/1932 director - film's Academy Award-winning director: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest [1975], Amadeus [1984]

Cybill Shepherd 2/18/1950 performer - tv's & film's Cybill, Moonlighting, The Last Picture Show, The Long Hot Summer

John Travolta 02/18/1954 performer - orig Grease [replacement]; Over Here! (Ann Reinking); tv's & film's Welcome Back Kotter, Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Urban Cowboy, Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Primary Colors, The Thin Red Line, Swordfish

Matt Dillon 02/18/1964 performer - The Boys of Winter; tv's & film's My Bodyguard, Drugstore Cowboy, The Outsiders, There's Something About Mary, my fav Wild Things

Molly Ringwald 02/18/1968 performer, daughter of Bob Ringwald (jazz pianist), wife of Valery Lameignere July 28, 1999 - present - Cabaret [replacement]; Enchanted April; film's Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, The Facts of Life, Requiem for Murder

Susan Egan 02/18/1970 performer - Beauty and the Beast; Triumph of Love (Nancy Opel, Betty Buckley, F. Murray Abraham, Roger Bart)

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1915 Blossom Seeley, Nora Bayes and Joe Jackson are Maid in America. Music to the war-oriented show is provided by Sigmund Romberg and Harry Carroll.

1930 Rodgers and Hart collaborate with comedian Ed Wynn on a musical-comedy vehicle called Simple Simon, which runs 135 performances at the Ziegfeld Theatre. The score includes "Ten Cents a Dance."

1948 Mister Roberts, Thomas Heggen's portrait of life aboard a WWII military ship, opens a 1.157-performance run, starring Henry Fonda and David Wayne. It will win the 1948 Tony Award as Best Play.

1954 Audrey Hepburn stars with husband Mel Ferrer in the medieval romance Ondine, directed by Alfred Lunt. It runs 157 performances at the 46th Street Theatre.

1964 It's Any Wednesday or any of the 982 days this comedy will run at the Music Box Theatre. Don Porter stars as a pompous businessman balancing a wife and mistress. Sandy Dennis, Rosemary Murphy, and Gene Hackman are in the cast.

1982 Ed Graczyk's Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean opens at the Martin Beck Theatre. Robert Altman directs stars Sandy Dennis, Cher, Karen Black, Kathy Bates, Marta Heflin and Sudie Bond for the production, which runs 52 performances.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1564 The artist Michelangelo died in Rome.

1865 "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain was published.

1976 Actor-director-producer Eddie Dowling died today at age 82. A vaudeville veteran, in 1945 he produced, directed, and starred as Tom in The Glass Menagerie

2003 Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons troupe christens its new $27 million West 42nd Street mainstage with the first preview of My Life With Albertine, a musical adaptation of Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past."

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

Milla