Today's Birthdays 4/4
Today's Birthdays 4/4
Today's Birthdays 4/4#0
Posted: 4/4/06 at 9:57pm
Frances Langford 4/4/1914 – performer - film’s Born to Dance, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Dixie Jamboree, Girl Rush, Too Many Girls, Never A Dull Moment (Ritz Brothers)
Elmer Bernstein 4/4/1922 - Aug 18, 2004 composer - Peter Pan; How Now, Dow Jones; Merlin; film’s Academy Award-winning composer of film scores: Thoroughly Modern Millie [1967]; Sudden Fear, The Man with the Golden Arm, Ten Commandments, Sweet Smell of Success, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Walk on the Wild Side, The Magnificent Seven; all brilliant but my favs are Far From Heaven and To Killa Mocking Bird
Maya Angelou 04/04/1928 – Look Away (Geraldine Page); author: All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes
Anthony Perkins 04/04/1932 – 9/12/1992 performer; husband of Berry Berenson (1973 - 1992) his death; 2 sons Elvis and Osgood (Oz) Perkins; partner of Grover Dale (? - 1973); Tab Hunter (? - ?); son of Osgood Perkins – orig Tea and Sympathy [replacement]; Look Homeward Angel (Jo Van Fleet, Arthur Hill); Greenwillow; Harold (Sidney Armus); The Star-Spangled Girl (Richard Benjamin, Connie Stevens); Romantic Comedy (Mia Farros); film’s actor: Psycho series, The Sins of Dorian Gray, Mahogany, Murder on the Orient Express, On the Beach, Desire Under the Elms, Friendly Persuasion
Frances Langford 04/04/1934 - Jul 11, 2005 performer; Wife of Harold Stuart (11/18/1994-07/11/2005)(Her death), John Evinrude (10/06/1955- 05/1986) (His death), John Hall (06/04/1934- 08/1955) (Divorce) - Here Goes the Bride (Eric Blore, Bobby Clark, Grace Brinkley); The Pure of Heart; tv's & film's The Glenn Miller Story; Frances Langford Presents; Bob Hope's Overseas Christmas Tours: Around the World with the Troops - 1941-1972; Victory in the Pacific
Craig T. Nelson 04/04/1946 performer –1998 Ah, Wilderness! (Debra Monk); tv’s & film’s Emmy Award-winning actor: Coach [1991-92]; Probable Cause, Turner and Hooch, Troop Beverly Hills, Silkwood, All the Right Moves, Stir Crazy, Chicago Story, Call to Glory, Private Benjamin, Poltergeist, The Killing Fields, The District
Christine Lahti 04/04/1950 performer; Studied with Uta Hagen and William Esper; Wife of Thomas Schlamme (1983 - present) – Division Street; Scenes and Revelations; Present Laughter tv’s & film’s Swing Shift, Crazy from the Heart, The Doctor, Hideaway, The Harvey Korman Show
Joanne Camp 04/04/1951 performer - The Heidi Chronicles (Boyd Gaines, Cynthia Nixon); 2003 Dinner at Eight
Laurie Beechman 04/04/1954 - Mar 8, 1998 performer; wife of Neil A. Mazzella (1992 - 1998 her death) – orig Annie; 1981 The Pirates of Penzance; orig Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Bill Hutton, David Asher)
Robert Downey Jr. 4/4/1965 performer – tv’s & film’s Ally McBeal, Richard III, Natural Born Killers, Short Cuts, Chaplin, Soapdish, Baby It’s You, U.S. Marshals; The Singing Detective
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1921 Sarah Bernhardt, who recently had one leg amputated, comes to London to play the title role in Louis Verneuil's Daniel at the Prince's Theatre. When she found a wooden leg unwieldy, she designed a litter chair for herself and was carried around the stage. Of course, she needed no help balancing herself on one leg for the curtain calls.
1964 Anyone Can Whistle -- but this tune carries just nine performances at Broadway's Majestic Theatre. Stephen Sondheim composes the songs and Arthur Laurents the story of this mayoress who tries to revive her town with a fake miracle.
1971 The "Broadway Baby" is pounding 42nd Street... well a few blocks away actually, at the Winter Garden Theatre as Follies opens. The Stephen Sondheim musical about Ziegfeld-era performers is co-directed by Michael Bennett and Harold Prince and stars Alexis Smith, Gene Nelson, Dorothy Collins and John McMartin. The tuner will be revived 30 years later closer to 42nd Street at the Belasco Theatre with Blythe Danner, Treat Williams, Judith Ivey and Gregory Harrison.
2000 Speaking of 42nd Street, Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, starring Sir Derek Jacobi, will begins previews at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on April 4. The Roundabout Theatre Company's production of the show, co-starring Roger Rees, Brian Murray and Laura Linney, will open April 30 and run through June 11.
2001 42nd Street comes home to 42nd Street when previews begin for an opulent new Broadway revival of the backstage musical at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts. The show would go on to win the 2001 Tony as Best Revival of a Musical.
2002 The Graduate with Jason Biggs, Alicia Silverstone, Kathleen Turner, Victor Slezak
ON THIS DAY IN:
1891 - Distinguished American actor Edwin Booth made his final stage appearance in a production of Hamlet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
1949 Herman Wouk's The Traitor receives just 67 performances at the 48th Street Theatre in New York. Walter Hampden and Jean Hagen are in the cast of this story about an American scientist who believes he can prevent war by passing atomic secrets to the Russians so the race for the bomb will be a stalemate. Jed Harris stages.
1960 - Eleven Academy Awards were presented to one movie at the 32nd Annual Academy Awards at the RKO Pantages Theater, Los Angeles. Ben-Hur, the Best Picture of 1959, was the first motion picture to receive that many Oscars. The other categories for which the MGM film, produced by Sam Zimbalist, was honored were: Best Director (William Wyler); Best Actor (Charlton Heston); Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Griffith); Best Cinematography/Color (Robert L. Surtees); Best Art Direction-Set Direction/Color (Edward Carfagno, William A. Horning, Hugh Hunt); Best Costume Design/Color (Elizabeth Haffenden); Best Sound (MGM Studio Sound Department, Franklin E. Milton, Sound Director); Best Film Editing (John D. Dunning, Ralph E. Winters); Best Effects/Special Effects (visual-A. Arnold Gillespie, Robert MacDonald III; audible-Milo B. Lory); and Best Music/Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Miklos Rozsa). Ben-Hur lost only one nomination: Best Writing/Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. Room at the Top (Neil Paterson) took that Oscar home and the Best Actress award, too (Simone Signoret). The Best Supporting Actress award went to Shelley Winters for her performance in The Diary of Anne Frank, her second Oscar. The moviemakers of Anatomy of a Murder had high hopes with six nominations in the ring; but that’s all they were. However, the Best Music/Song Oscar went to High Hopes (James Van Heusen-music, Sammy Cahn-lyrics) from A Hole in the Head. It would be 38 years and a lot of high hopes before one film won 11 Academy Awards again (Titanic). And who knows how long before the host is an Award recipient again! (Bob Hope received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.)
1944 Philanthropist Irene Lewisohn died today in New York City. She and her sister Alice built and endowed the Neighborhood Playhouse. With Aline Bernstein she founded the Museum of Costume Art on Fifth Avenue in 1937.
On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot to death in Memphis, Tenn.
(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com, imdb)
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