Today's Birthdays 4/23

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 4/22/08 at 5:18pm

William Shakespeare 4/23/1564 - 4/23/1616 the 1 & only. Okay, no one's actually certain that April 23, 1564 was William Shakespeare's birthday, but that's the accepted date. Over the next 52 years, the Bard would pen such works as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Comedy of Errors, Othello, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar; source mat'l

Michel Fokine 4/23/1880 - 8/22/1942 performer, Russian ballet dancer and choreographer - Mecca; Get Together (Vera Fokina [Mrs. Fokine]; Petrouchka

Sergey Prokofiev 4/23/1891 - 3/5/1953 Russian pianist, composer; Peter and the Wolf; opera: The Love for Three Oranges, The Fiery Angel, War and Peace; ballet: Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella; film scores: Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Lieutenant Kije; symphonies: Classical Symphony, The Fifth Symphony; Piano Concertos Nos. 1-5 - The Ballet Theatre/Gala Performance (Jerome Robbins, Tania Dokoudovska, Alicia Alonso)

Janet Blair [Martha Jean Lafferty] performer 4/23/1921 - 2/19/2007 A Girl Can Tell; film's My Sister Eileen, The Fabulous Dorseys, The Fuller Brush Man, Black Arrow, Boy’s Night Out, Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood, Burke's Law

Shirley Temple Black 4/23/1928 performer - film's Little Miss Marker, Curly Top, Heidi, The Little Colonel, Poor Little Rich Girl, Wee Willie Winkie, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm; U.S. delegate to the United Nations and chief of protocol

David Birney 04/23/1939 - performer - 1969 The Miser (Blythe Danner, Philip Bosco); The Good Woman of Setzuan; Benefactors [replacement]; tv's & film's Oh, God! Book 2, Nightfall, Serpico [TV], St. Elsewhere, Great American TV Poll, Bridget Loves Bernie, Live Shot

Lee Majors 4/23/1939 performer, Farah Fawcett's ex - tv's The Six Million Dollar Man, Big Valley, The Bionic Woman, The Covergirl Murders

Sandra Dee 4/23/1944 - 2/20/2005 born Alexandra Zuck into a Carpatho-Rusyn (Lemkian) family in Bayonne, New Jersey, Bobby Darren's ex - performer - film's A Summer Place, Gidget, Tammy film series

Blair Brown 04/23/1946 performer - The Secret Rapture; Arcadia; 1998 Cabaret; James Joyce's The Dead (Marni Nixon, Chris Walken); Copenhagen

Melina Kanakaredes 04/23/1967 performer; Melina Kanakaredes is a second-generation Greek-American who was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. Her love of musical theater, especially the work of Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera, inspired her as a child. She began performing locally; singing with her sisters and making her acting debut at age eight in the community theater production of "Tom Sawyer." Kanakaredes attended Ohio State University to study music, dance and theater, later transferring to Point Park College in Pittsburgh. She appeared in commercials, industrial films and on stage in the Pittsburgh Playhouse and Pittsburgh Public Theater. Upon graduation, Kanakaredes moved to New York City where she supported her acting dreams by working in off-Broadway plays. - Cabaret [replacement]; tv's & film's CSI NY; NYPD Blue; The Long Kiss Goodnight; The Guiding Light

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1952 Alec Guinness plays an ant scientist who lives in an anthill Under the Sycamore Tree. Diana Churchill is his ant queen. Peter Glenville directs Sam Spewack's comedy at the Aldwych Theatre in London.

1959 Andy Griffith plays a gentle sheriff and Dolores Gray is the dancehall girl who falls in love with him in Destry Rides Again. Michael Kidd directs and choreographs the 472 showings at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway. Harold Rome provides the score.

1964 James Baldwin's Blues For Mister Charlie, about a northern black murdered by a white southern shopkeeper, is staged at ANTA by Burgess Meredith. Rip Torn and Al Freeman, Jr. are in the cast. It will run for 148 performances.

1997 Iceberg! Maury Yeston and Peter Stone's new musical Titanic opens on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Ylio Iliev died on the Titanic. The show, about the infamous night in April 1912 aboard the supposedly unsinkable liner, sails on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical and stays afloat for 804 performances before closing Mar 28, 1999.

1998 Martin McDonagh's hit Off-Broadway drama, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, about an elderly woman who tries to spoil her homely 40-year-old daughter's first (and possibly last) chance for romance opens at Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre. The production will earn Garry Hynes the first Tony Award ever given to a woman for Best Director. (Moments later, Julie Taymor will take home the second female directorial Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical for The Lion King.)

2006 The History Boys with Richard Griffiths

ON THIS DAY IN:

1616 The Spanish poet Cervantes died in Madrid. Source mat'l Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha

1789 President-elect George Washington and his wife moved into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House, in New York.

1985 - The first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize in over a decade was Sunday in the Park with George. Also on this day, Studs Terkel earned his first Pulitzer for The Good War: An Oral History of World War II.

2006 Susan Browning, 65, the two-time Tony Award nominated actress who created the role of April in the original Company dies after a brief illness.

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

Milla