Today's Birthdays 4/23 - Happy Birthday William Shakespeare!

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 4/22/05 at 10:21pm

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.

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 performer 4/23/1921 - 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

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

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.)

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.

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

Milla

Updated On: 4/22/05 at 10:21 PM

[Juliet2170]

Posted: 4/22/05 at 10:26pm

aww happy bday billy
Updated On: 4/22/05 at 10:26 PM

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 4/22/05 at 10:30pm

The reason that it is assumed that today is Shakespeare's birthday is because The Bard was baptised on April 26, 1564. Back in that time, there was usually a three day waiting period for a baptism.

Thanks as always, Milla. I love reading these. You really don't get enough credit.

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 4/23/05 at 11:53am

Thanks mef, for reminding us about the christening. That's an interesting fact to me that I forgot.

Milla
Updated On: 4/23/05 at 11:53 AM

[wildcat]

Posted: 4/23/05 at 12:16pm

Janet Blair: also played Nellie in the long running U.S. tour of SOUTH PACIFIC, Ella in the London BELLS ARE RINGING, and was Dorothy Collins' replacement as Sally in FOLLIES (L.A.); and starred in TV versions of ONE TOUCH OF VENUS and A CONNECTICUT YANKEE.

[LesMizazz]

Posted: 4/24/05 at 1:55am

Today/Yesterday was also David Larsen from Good Vibrations Birthday