Today's Birthdays 2/25

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 2/25/04 at 3:24pm

Birthday of legendary Broadway producer and director Jed Harris (2/25/1900 - Nov 15, 1979), who will present The Royal Family, Broadway, Our Town, The Heiress and The Crucible. Also said to be the mode for Oscar Jaffe in Twentieth Century.

Zeppo Marx 02/25/1901 - Nov 29, 1979 performer - Animal Crackers

James Backus 02/25/1913 - Jul 3, 1989 performer - Too Many Heroes; tv's Gilligan's Island

Edward Gorey 02/25/1925 - Apr 15, 2000 writer, designer - Gorey Stories

Lisa Kirk 02/25/1925 - Nov 11, 1990 performer - origs: Allegro; Kiss Me Kate; Mack & Mabel

Larry Gelbart 02/25/1928 performer - origs: The Conquering Hero; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; Sly Fox; & my fav City of Angels

Tom Courtenay 02/25/1937 performer - Otherwise Engaged; The Dresser

Susan Browning 02/25/1941 performer - origs: Love and Kisses; Shelter; Company; Big River

Dana Stackpole 02/25/1966 performer - origs Contact; Movin' Out

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1936 Opening night of James M. Cain's steamy melodrama, The Postman Always Rings Twice, which runs just 72 performances at the Lyceum Theatre, but goes on to become a popular film.

1953 Wouldn't you just guess that My Sister Eileen moved into a Wonderful Town? Based on Ruth McKenny's play, this musical comedy stars Rosalind Russell. The book is by Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov, with a score by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics provided by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. There will be 559 performances.

1969 Al Pacino makes his Broadway debut as a defiant young drug addict in Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, which runs 39 performances at the Belasco Theatre.

1973 With the foundation of Ingmar Bergman's film, "Smiles of a Summer Night," A Little Night Music fills the air of the Shubert Theatre. The latter is provided by Stephen Sondheim along with the lyrics. Glynis Johns, Len Cariou, and Hermione Gingold star in this Hal Prince & Hugh Wheeler show. It will go on to win the Tony Award for best play, and has a run of 600 performances.

1999 One of Harold Pinter's earliest works, The Hothouse, opens tonight at the Atlantic Theatre. A nameless government institution and its sometimes bumbling, sometimes sinister bureaucrats are the subject of this comedic revival. Starring are several of the Atlantic Theater Company members, Kate Blumberg, Larry Bryggman and Jordan Lage, and guest artists Patrick Breen, Stephen Mendillo and Liam O'Brien. Founding company member Karen Kohlhaas stages.

1999 Also tonight, the premiere of a new Tennessee Williams play is definitely an event -- especially when the play has gone unproduced since 1938. After a showing at the Royal National Theatre in London, Not About Nightingales had its American premiere at the Alley Theatre in Houston. Written early in Williams' career, this exposition of brutal prison life has Corin Redgrave overseeing as the warden Boss Whalen. Redgrave will be making his second Broadway appearance in thirty-five years. Trevor Nunn directs this production at the Circle in the Square Theatre. I thought this show was incredibly powerful & the 3 leads were mezmerizing.

2000 Disney makes it three in a row when it opens Aida, its third hit musical in a row, after Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1983 Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams died of asphyxiation in his hotel room at the Elysse Hotel in Manhattan. The author of such classics as The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof lived to 71.

2003 Vincent G. Liff, a longtime Broadway casting director connected with such major Broadway hits as Cats, Miss Saigon, The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables, dies after a six-year battle with a brain tumor.

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

Milla