Today's Birthdays 4/1

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 3/31/08 at 10:30pm

Sergei Rachmaninov 04/01/1873 - Mar 28, 1943 composer - The Climax; Anya (Constance Towers, Irra Petina, Michael Kermoyan, Lillian Gish)

Lon Chaney 4/1/1883 - 8/26/1930 American silent film actor - film's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Bushwackers, The Phantom of the Opera, The Unholy Three, He Who Gets Slapped, Oliver Twist, West of Zanzibar, The Horror of it All, The Unknown

Wallace Beery 04/01/1885 - Apr 15, 1949 performer, half-brother of Noah Beery, husband of Gloria Swanson (1916 - 1919) divorced - A Yankee Tourist; film's Academy Award-winning actor: The Champ [1931-1932], Grand Hotel, We’re in the Navy Now, Treasure Island, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Last of the Mohicans, China Seas

Alberta Hunter 04/01/1895 - Oct 17, 1984 performer - Mamba's Daughters (Fredi Washington); Mrs. Patterson; Debut (Inger Stevens, Charles McDaniel)

George Grizzard 04/01/1928 - Oct 2, 2007 performer - Seascape; The Desperate Hours; Big Fish, Little Fish; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Inquest (James Whitmore, Abe Vigoda); California Suite; 1996 A Delicate Balance; Judgment at Nuremberg; & o/b Beautiful Child (Penny Fuller); film's Advise and Consent, Bachelor Party, False Witness, The Stranger Within, Scarlett

Jane Powell 04/01/1929 - performer - Irene [replacement]; film's Deep in My Heart, Hit the Deck, Small Town Girl, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers; fav A Date With Judy; also played in Sondheim's "Bounce"

Debbie Reynolds 04/01/1932 performer, mother of Carrie Fisher, wife of Eddie Fisher (1955 - 1959) divorced - 1973 Irene; Debbie; 1981 Woman of the Year; film's Singin’ in the Rain, Tammy and the Bachelor, The Tender Trap, The Unsinkable Molly Brown; tv's & film's Unsinkable Molly Brown; Will & Grace

Paddy Croft 04/01/1938 performer - The Killing of Sister George (Eileen Atkins, Polly Rowles); Crown Matrimonial (Enid Rodgers, Eileen Herlie); Night Must Fall; James Joyce's The Dead

Jane Adams 04/01/1965 performer - Match (Frank Langella, Ray Liotta); I Hate Hamlet (Nicol Williamson, Adam Arkin, Celeste Holm); 1991 The Crucible; 1994 An Inspector Calls; tv's Citizan Baines

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1941 Eight months before Pearl Harbor, Lillian Hellman is predicting that America would be drawn into World War II in her drama Watch on the Rhine, which runs 378 performances at the Martin Beck Theatre.

1975 In a bit of theatre verite, We Interrupt This Program... enacts the seizure of a Broadway theatre by terrorists. Audiences laughed at the time, and Norman Krasna's drama ran just 7 performances at the Ambassador Theatre.

1993 Putting It All Together, a revue based on Stephen Sondheim's work by Julia McKenzie and the composer himself, plays at the Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center. Julie Andrews, Christopher Durang, Stephen Collins, Michael Rupert and Rachel York help sell out the house. A few years later, Broadway would see a revised version, Putting it Together, with Carol Burnett starring.

1999 The Broadway production of Conor McPherson's ghost-haunted The Weir opens today at the Walter Kerr Theatre. The Olivier Award-winning Irish play played 276 performances on Broadway (with 11 previews) but was absent from the Tony Awards nominations.

2001 London import Stones in His Pockets opens on Broadway. In it, two Irish actors embody an entire Irish town as an American film company arrives to capture local color for a movie.

2001 At first, all we knew was the odd title: future Broadway smash Urinetown makes its Off-Off-Broadway debut, appropriately on April Fool's Day.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1918 Actor-manager Henry Miller opens his theatre in New York City. It's designed to seat 1,000 spectators and capable of handling the latest staging innovations. This will ring true well into the future as the theatre is transformed into the Kit Kat Klub for the revival of Cabaret in 1998 and Rollin' on the T.O.B.A. in 1999.

1963 - The daily TV serial, General Hospital, began its long and popular run on ABC-TV. Not to be left on the operating table alone, NBC-TV countered with its popular program, The Doctors.

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

Milla