Today's Birthdays 4/5
Today's Birthdays 4/5
Today's Birthdays 4/5#0
Posted: 4/4/06 at 10:10pm
Jean Cocteau 04/05/1889 - Oct 11, 1963 source mat'l, writer - The Eagle Has Two Heads (Tallulah Bankhead, Clarend Derwent); Opium; Indiscretions (Eileen Atkins, Roger Rees, Kathleen Turner, Jude Law, Cynthia Nixon)
Spencer Tracy 04/05/1900 - 6/10/1967 husband of Louise Treadwell (1923 - 1967) his death; partner of Katharine Hepburn (1940 - 1967) his death; performer - A Royal Fandango (Ethel Barrymore, Edward G. Robinson); Yellow; Conflict (Albert Dekker, Geo. Meeker); The Last Mile (Clark Gable); The Rugged Path (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.); film's Academy Award-winning actor: Captains Courageous [1937], Boys Town [1938]; San Francisco, Stanley and Livingstone, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1941], Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Adam’s Rib, Father of the Bride [1950], Pat and Mike, Bad Day at Black Rock, The Mountain, The Old Man and the Sea, How the West Was Won, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Melvyn Douglas 04/05/1901 - Aug 4, 1981 Producer, Director, Performer; husband of Helen Gahagan (1931 - 1980) her death; grandfather of Illeana Douglas - A Free Soul; Recapture (Glenda Farrell); Tonight or Never; Mother Lode (Beulah Bondi, Tex Ritter); De Luxe (Elsa Maxwell); The Bird Cage (Sandy Meisner, Maureen Stapleton); The Little Blue Light (Arlene Francis, Burgess Meredith); Juno; orig The Best Man; Spofford (Jerome Dempsey); film's Academy Award-winning actor: [supporting] Hud [1963], [supporting] Being There [1979]; Captains Courageous, Ninotchka, Three Hearts for Julia, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The Americanization of Emily, I Never Sang for My Father, The Candidate, The Seduction of Joe Tynan, The Changeling, Ghost Story
Bette Davis 04/05/1908 - 10/6/1989 Oct 6, 1989 wife of Gary Merrill (1950 - 1960) divorced; performer - The Earth Between; Broken Dishes; Solid South; Frederika [this was a musical, can you imagine casting Bette in a musical, pre Two's Company?] (Dennis King, Ted Daniels); Two's Company; The World of Carl Sandburg (Leif Erickson); orig Night of the Iguana; film's Academy Award-winning actress: Dangerous [1935], Jezebel [1938]; Dark Victory, The Letter, The Little Foxes, Now, Voyager, Mr. Skeffington, All About Eve, The Star, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Herbert von Karajan 4/5/1908 - 7/16/1989 Austrian-born conductor; 1 of the all-time greats, including Toscanini, Solti, Bernstein, Kleiber, Giulini, Muti, Klemperer & Mitropolous. It was amazing to see vonK conduct the Berlin just barely moving his fingers, impeccable musicianship, & the Berlin Phil was magnificent under him.
Gregory Peck 04/05/1916 - Jun 12, 2003 performer - The Morning Star (Brenda Forbes); The Willow and I (Martha Scott); Sons and Soldiers (Stella Adler, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Karl Malden); tv's & film's Academy Award-winning actor: To Kill a Mockingbird [1962]; The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Duel in the Sun, Gentleman’s Agreement, Twelve O’Clock High, David and Bathsheba, Captain Horatio Hornblower, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Roman Holiday, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Moby Dick [1956], The Guns of Navarone, Marooned, MacArthur, The Boys from Brazil, Moby Dick [TV: 1998]; Jean Hersholt Humanitarian (Academy) Award [1968]
Christopher Hewett 04/05/1922 - Aug 3, 2001 Writer, Director, Performer - orig My Fair Lady; First Impressions (Polly Bergen, Hermione Gingold); From A to Z (Alvin Epstein); Unsinkable Molly Brown; Kean; The Affair (Elizabeth Hubbard, Brenda Vaccaro, Donald Moffat); No Sex Please, We're British (Maureen O'Sullivan); Music Is (Catherine Cox [debut]); film's The Producers
Roger Corman 4/5/1926 director, producer; Apart from making dozens of enormously entertaining films (there are amazingly few duds in his output), Corman's place in film history is assured simply through his unrivalled eye for talent - among many world-class names who were employed by him at a very early stage in their careers are Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante and many others - which means that his influence on modern American cinema is almost incalculable. - film's The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Masque of the Red Death, The Raven, Little Shop of Horrors, The Fall of the House of Usher, Swamp Women; The Hunt for Eagle One
Nigel Hawthorne 04/05/1929 - Dec 26, 2001 performer - As You Like It (David Howey); Shadowlands (Jane Alexander); film's Richard III, Demolition Man, Firefox, Young Winston, Gandhi
Frank Gorshin 04/05/1933 - May 17, 2005 performer - Jimmy (Anita Gillette, Tony Stevens, the fabulous, enduring Julie Wilson!); Say Goodnight Gracie; tv's & film's Where the Boys Are; Batman
David Winters 04/05/1939 performer - 1954 On Your Toes (Elaine Stritch, Vera Zorina, Bobby Van); origs: Shinbone Alley (Eddie Bracken, Eartha Kitt, Jacques d'Amboise, Erik Rhodes, Ross Martin); West Side Story; Gypsy; 1 More River (Harry Guardino, Louis Guss)
Michael Moriarty 04/05/1941 performer; Suzana Cabrita (10 October 1998 - 1999) (divorced), Anne Hamilton Martin (1978 - 1997) (divorced), Francoise Martinet (1966 - 197
(divorced) 1 child, Margaret Brychka (? - present); Moriarty was to move to London, England where he built up a name as a great stage actor. It was also here he attended London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts as a Fullbright Scholar and as a student of Stella Adler. - The House of Atreus; The Trial of the Catonsville Nine; Find Your Way Home; G. R. Point (Michael Jeter, Howard Rollins, Jr.); 1983 The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (William Atherton, John Rubinstein); tv's & film's Law & Order; Bang the Drum Slowly, The Last Detail, Windmills of the Gods
Jane Asher 4/5/1946 performer; Younger sister of Peter Asher who was one of the members of the singing duo 'Peter and Gordon' and later became a record producer. Paul McCartney stayed overnight with the Ashers in 1964 when he missed his train to Liverpool; within weeks he'd practically moved in with them. Was Paul McCartney's muse for much of the 1960s; "Here, There And Everywhere" and many other songs were written with Jane in mind. Once engaged to Paul McCartney; while Jane could tolerate his occasional dalliances, she and Paul disagreed on when to start a family. - tv's & film's Dreamchild, Masque of the Red Death, The Prince and the Pauper, Brideshead Revisited; Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage
Agnetha Faltskog 4/5/1950 performer-singer: group: Abba: People Need Love, Waterloo, Dancing Queen; solo: Can’t Shake Loose; tv's & film's Saturday Night Live; ABBA: The Movie
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1956 London's Phoenix Theatre hosts The Power and the Glory. This is the second production of the Peter Brook-staged, Paul Scofield-starred collaboration. There will be 68 performances of this Graham Greene story.
1962 A Thousand Clowns and Jason Robards make for a run of 428 performances of this Herb Gardner comedy. Robards plays a non conformist caring for his nephew and fighting the Welfare Department. The show will have a mid-1990s Broadway revival starring Judd Hirsch and Marin Hinkle.
1994 It's as easy as A-B-C for Edward Albee, whose Three Tall Women opens at the Promenade Theatre on Broadway following an Off-Broadway run at the Vineyard Theatre. Myra Carter, Marian Seldes and Jordan Baker play the trifecta that embody the same woman at different ages.
1998 Celluloid celebs Quentin Tarantino and Academy Award-winning Marisa Tomei open a revival of the 1966 thriller Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott. Tarantino, director/actor of cult classics "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction," plays the psychotic stalker who preys on a blind woman, played by Tomei (Oscar winner for "My Cousin Vinny"). Playwright Knott made revisions for the updated drama that played at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.
2001 A long-awaiting Broadway revival of the Stephen Sondheim/James Goldman musical Follies brings on those beautiful girls at the Belasco Theatre -- but runs into critical static, despite the presence of a cast that includes Blythe Danner, Treat Williams, Gregory Harrison, Marge Champion and Joan Roberts (the original Laurey in Oklahoma!.
ON THIS DAY IN:
1614 American Indian princess Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia.
1887 In Tuscumbia, Ala., teacher Anne Sullivan taught her blind and deaf pupil, Helen Keller, the meaning of the word "water" as spelled out in the manual alphabet.
1895 Playwright Oscar Wilde lost his criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, who had accused the writer of homosexual practices.
1965 - Two very British but very different women were the cause of much celebration at the 37th Annual Academy Awards at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Los Angeles. My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins vied for Best Picture as did Alexis Zorbas; Becket; and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. And the winner was ... My Fair Lady (Jack L. Warner, producer). My Fair Lady was the name in the winner’s envelope seven more times: Best Director (George Cukor); Best Actor (Rex Harrison); Best Cinematography/Color (Harry Stradling); Best Art Direction-Set Decoration/Color (Gene Allen, Cecil Beaton, George James Hopkins); Best Costume Design/Color (Cecil Beaton); Best Sound (George Groves-Warner Bros. Studio Sound Dept.); and Best Music/Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment (André Previn). Mary Poppins was not about to let Eliza Doolittle steal all her thunder. Julie Andrews was awarded an Oscar for Best Actress for her title role; Cotton Warburton won for Best Film Editing; Peter Ellenshaw, Hamilton Luske, Eustace Lycett for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects and Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman won for Best Music/Song (Chim Chim Cher-ee from Mary Poppins) and for Best Music/Score-Substantially Original. The two remaining crowd-pleaser awards went to Peter Ustinov in Topkapi for Best Supporting Actor and to Lila Kedrova in Alexis Zorbas for Best Supporting Actress. The host for this gala ceremony was Bob Hope.
(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com)
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