Today's Birthdays 4/26

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 4/25/04 at 9:57pm

Ma Rainey (aka Gertrude Pridgett) 04/26/1886 - Dec 22, 1939 performer - daughter of Thomas & Ella Pridgett; wife of Will Rainey (1904 - ?); Gertrude Pridgett performed as a child with her parents in minstrel shows. She married Will Rainey in 1904 and toured as "Ma & Pa Rainey." Ma became the "Mother of the Blues," a top recording artist and made blues music popular in U.S. in 1900s. - 1984 & 2003 Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Anita Loos 04/26/1888 - Aug 18, 1981 wife of John Emmerson, writer - The Whole Town's Talking; The Fall of Eve; The Social Register; Happy Birthday; 1926, 1949 & 1995 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; Gigi (Audrey Hepburn); Chéri (Horst Buchholz, Kim Stanley); Lorelei; film's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, I Married an Angel, San Francisco, Saratoga, The Women

Douglas Sirk 4/26/1900 - Jan 14, 1987 director - film's Imitation of Life, A Time to Love & a Time to Die, Tarnished Angels, Written on the Wind, Magnificent Obsession, First Legion

Russell Nype 04/26/1924 performer - Regina; Great To Be Alive; Call Me Madam; Wake Up, Darling; 1957 Carousel; Goldilocks; 1963 Brigadoon (Edward Villella, Sally Ann Howes); The Girl in the Freudian Slip; film's Love Story

Bambi Linn 04/26/1926 performer; Dancing partner of Rod Alexander - origs Oklahoma!; Carousel; Great to Be Alive!; I Can Get It for You Wholesale; 1982 Alice in Wonderland (Kate Burton, Mary Stuart Masterson); tv's & film's Your Show of Shows, Oklahoma!

Carol Burnett 04/26/1933 Source Material, Writer, Performer; mother of Carrie Hamilton; wife of Joe Hamilton (1963 - 1984) divorced - Once Upon a Mattress (Joe Bova); Fade Out - Fade In (Jack Cassidy); Moon Over Buffalo; Putting It Together; Hollywood Arms; tv's & film's Noises Off; Annie; Friendly Fire; Pete N' Tillie; The 4 Seasons; Emmy Award-winning comedienne, actress: Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall [1962-1963], Carol & Company [1962-1963], Mad About You [1996-1997]; The Carol Burnett Show, Carol Burnett and Friends, The Garry Moore Show

Giancarlo Esposito 04/26/1958 performer - Maggie Flynn (Jack Cassidy, Shirley Jones, Irene Cara, Stephanie Mills); The Me Nobody Knows; Seesaw (Ken Howard, Michele Lee, Wayne Cilento, Amanda McBroom, Anita Morris, Thomas J. Walsh, Baayork Lee, Tommy Tune) [wow! look how many choreographers came out of this show!]; Merrily We Roll Along; Don't Get God Started; Sacrilege (Ellen Burstyn); film's The Usual Suspects, Smoke, Reckless, Blue in the Face, Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing, Sweet Lorraine, Bakersfield P.D.

Eugene Fleming 04/26/1961 performer - A Chorus Line [replacement]; Black and Blue; The High Rollers Social and Pleasure Club; Swinging on a Star (Terry Burrell, Lewis Cleale, Kathy Fitzgerald, Michael McGrath); Fosse; One Mo' Time (B.J. Crosby); The Look of Love; Never Gonna Dance; film's Catch Me If You Can

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1926 Sex. It's a comedy. Mae West plays a Canadian woman with no time for those mountees; it's the British navy for her. It runs through one season, but the following it is raided as immoral. The cast is arrested and West, who also co-produced, spends 10 days in jail and is fined $500. A well-received off-off-Broadway revival in 2000 proved that the show still had laughs and a unique social point of view.

1967 Comden and Green supply the lyrics to Jule Styne's music for Hallelujah, Baby!. Leslie Uggams plays a woman who never grows old. Arthur Laurents penned the book. Burt Shevelove stages the 293 performances.

1970 There's a book by George Furth, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Harold Prince helming, Michael Bennett on hand to choreograph, and Elaine Stritch in the lead; who wouldn't want to be in that Company? There will be 705 performances at Broadway's Alvin Theatre. Boyd Gaines, Veanne Cox and La Chanze will later star in a Roundabout Theatre Broadway revival.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1607 An expedition of English colonists went ashore at Cape Henry, Va., to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.

1865 John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded and killed by federal troops near Bowling Green, Va.

1970 Actress and author Gypsy Rose Lee, 56, died today in Los Angeles. She was immortalized along with her mother and sister, actress June Havoc, in the musical Gypsy. Arthur Laurents based the book for that musical on her memoir.

1986 - At 1:23 a.m. in Pripyat in the Ukraine when the Chernobyl atomic power station exploded. A three-hundred-square-mile area was evacuated in an attempt to protect over 100,000 residents of the area from radiation poisoning. 31 people died and unknown thousands were exposed as the radioactive material carried in the atmosphere spread throughout the world.

1989 Actress-comedian Lucille Ball died in Los Angeles at age 77.

1992 The music and life of jazz legend Jelly Roll Morton comes to life on stage as Jelly's Last Jam opens at Broadway's Virginia Theatre. Savion Glover and Gregory Hines share the title role at different ages. George C. Wolfe directs the production he wrote the book for.

1995 Manhattan Theatre Club's production of Richard Greenberg's Night and Her Stars opens Off-Broadway at the American Place Theatre. David Warren directs a cast that includes Patrick Breen, Keith Charles, Peter Frechette and John Slattery. The show follows the scandals of the late 1950s quiz show scandal.

2001 Ken Ludwig and Don Schlitz present their Broadway musical Tom Sawyer, based on the Mark Twain novel. Unlike the Tony-winning "Huckleberry Finn"-based Big River, this new musical lasts less than two weeks.

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

Milla Updated On: 4/25/04 at 09:57 PM