Today's Birthdays 6/21 - Happy 1st Day of Summer
Today's Birthdays 6/21 - Happy 1st Day of Summer
#1Today's Birthdays 6/21 - Happy 1st Day of Summer
Posted: 6/20/07 at 5:24pm
Al Hirschfeld 6/21/1903 - 1/20/2003 caricaturist: hid name of his daughter, Nina, in each of his drawings. His distinctive looping line drawings will capture the essence of Broadway shows from the 1920s through the early 2000s. The Martin Beck Theatre was renamed the Al Hirschfeld in 2003, just months after his death at age 99.
Jean-Paul Sartre 6/21/1905 - 4/15/1980 French novelist and playwright - Being and Nothingness; playwright: No Exit, The Flies, The Age of Reason; rejected Nobel Prize for literature [1964]
Mary McCarthy 6/21/1912 - 10/25/1989 American novelist and critic; Sister of Kevin McCarthy - Look Who's Here; Please, Mrs. Garibaldi
Gower Champion 06/21/1919 - 8/25/1980 Choreographer, Director, Performer, Other; husband of Marge Champion (1947-73) divorced; Died on the day of "42nd Street"'s opening - Streets of Paris; Lend An Ear; 3 for Tonight; Bye Bye Birdie; Carnival; Hello, Dolly!; Rockabye Hamlet; 42nd St.; film's Show Boat; Everything I Have Is Yours; 3 For the Show; Mr. Music
Jane Russell (Jane Geraldine Russell) 06/21/1921 performer - Company [replaement]; film's Billy The Kid; Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Judy Holliday [Judy Tuvin] 6/21/1921 - Jun 7, 1965 Future stage and screen star. By the time of her untimely death in 1965 Holliday will have won the 1951 Academy Award for best actress for her performance in Born Yesterday, a role she has already done on Broadway. She will also win a Tony Award as best leading actress for her performance in the Styne Comden-Greene musical, The Bells Are Ringing. A member of "The Revuers" w/Leonard Bernstein, Comden & Green, who started out in cabaret clubs!; Kiss Them For Me; Born Yesterday; Bells Are Ringing; Hot Spot; film's Adam’s Rib, Bells are Ringing, Born Yesterday, It Should Happen to You
Maureen Stapleton 6/21/1925 - Mar 13, 2006 performer; Wife of David Rayfiel (7/63 - 6/66) divorced, Max Allentuck (7/49 - 2/59) divorced; She did not travel by air or elevator. She traveled by rail across the country, and traveled by ship across the ocean, instead of by plane. In 1981, Hudson Valley Community College in her hometown of Troy, New York, named their theatre after her. Took over the role of Rosa della Rosa because Anna Magnani (who was old enough to be her mother) didn't speak English well enough to essay the role on Broadway, so this young Irish Catholic from Troy played an Italian "Earth Mother" on Broadway to critical and popular acclaim! She originated the role of Serafina in Tennessee Williams' "The Rose Tattoo" on Broadway in 1951 and Lady Torrance in Williams' "Orpheus Descending" in 1957. Both roles were played by Anna Magnani in the movie versions. Stapleton appeared in the film version of "Orpheus Descending", retitled The Fugitive Kind (1959), but in a supporting role. Following her second divorce, she had a long affair with legendary Broadway fixture George Abbott that began when she was 43 and he was 81. It ended 10 years later when the director cheated on her with a younger woman. Quotes attributed to her: "Looking back, I don't feel I had a choice. For a fat, struggling kid like me, the only way out was to be someone else -- an actor." "I was 17 years old, I weighted 180 pounds and I had a hundred bucks in my pocket. I was invincible." -- MS, referring to her move to New York. "There are many roads to good acting. I've been asked repeatedly what the 'key' to acting is, and as far as I'm concerned, the main thing is to keep the audience awake." Moments after winning an Oscar, Ms. Stapleton was asked by the press how it felt to be recognized as one of the greatest actresses in the world; she replied, "Not nearly as exciting as it would be if I were acknowledged as one of the greatest lays in the world." [on acting] "I do a job. I get paid. I go home." - origs Detective Story; Orpheus Descending; 1966 The Rose Tattoo; Plaza Suite; 1981 The Little Foxes; film's Academy Award-winning actress: Reds [1981]; Queen of the Stardust Ballroom; Plaza Suite; Lonelyhearts (Montgomery Clift, Robert Ryan, Myrna Loy, Dolores Hart); A View from the Bridge, Bye, Bye Birdie, Cocoon 1 & 2; 1976 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Monte Markham 6/21/1935 performer - 1973 Irene (Debbie Reynolds, Ruth Warrick, Patsy Kelly, Carrie Fisher, Jeanne Lehman, George S. Irving); Same Time, Next Year [replacement]; tv's & film's The Second Hundred Years, Baywatch, Rituals, Dallas, The New Perry Mason, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town [1969 tv series], At First Sight, Judgment Day, Hotline, Guns of the Magnificent Seven
Françoise Sagan (Françoise Quoirez) 6/21/1935 - 9/24/2004 author; She wrote the best-selling novel "Bonjour Tristesse" in six weeks while a student at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1953. It sold more than two million copies worldwide and has been translated into at least 15 languages. She chose her pen name from a character in "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu" by Marcel Proust - book's & film's Aimez-Vous Brahms, Bonjour Tristesse, Evasion, A Certain Smile, Goodbye Again
Mariette Hartley (Mary Loretta Hartley) 6/21/1940 performer - 1998 Cabaret [replacement]; tv's & film's Encino Man, Silence of the Heart, Improper Channels; TV hostess; commercials: Polaroid
Meredith Baxter Birney 6/21/1947 performer - tv's & film's Family Ties, Bridget Loves Bernie, Til Murder Do Us Part
Michael Gross 6/21/1947 performer - orig Bent (David Marshall Grant); 1980 The Philadelphia Story; 2000 MacBeth; tv's & film's Family Ties, Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland, In the Heat of Passion 2: Unfaithful
Robert Pastorelli 6/21/1954 - 3/8/2004 performer - tv's & film's I Married a Centerfold, Beverly Hills Cop II, Murphy Brown, Dances with Wolves, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Striking Distance, Eraser, South Pacific [2001]
David Marshall Grant 06/21/1955 performer; writer - orig Bent (Michael Gross); The Survivor (Željko Ivanek, Lonny Price); Angels In America I & II; 1997 3 Sisters (Calista Flockhart, Billy Crudup, Paul Giammati, Amy Irving, Jerry Stiller, Eric Stoltz, David Strathairn); tv's & film's Jennifer; French Postcards (Mandy Patinkin, Debra Winger); Breaking Point; The Stepford Wives (Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Glenn Close, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken, Roger Bart); The Devil Wears Prada
Blake Hammond 06/21/1963 performer; National tours of "Joseph..."; "Jesus Christ Superstar" - 1998 On the Town; 1999 Kiss Me, Kate; 2000 The Music Man; Hairspray [replacement]
Michael Dolan 06/21/1965 performer - Breaking the Code (Derek Jacobi, Jenny Agutter, Robert Sean Leonard); A Few Good Men (Tom Hulce, Megan Gallagher); tv's & film's Biloxi Blues; Lolita
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1951 Audience members are taken back to Indianapolis circa 1907 as Seventeen opens at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Based on the novel by Booth Tarkington, the new musical features a book by Sally Benson. Singing the Walter Kent-Kim Gannon score are leads Anne Crowley and Kenneth Nelson. The show will run 23 weeks.
1984 David Rabe's play Hurlyburly opens Off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre. The original cast from Chicago's Goodman stays intact, including William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken, Jerry Stiller, Cynthia Nixon, Sigourney Weaver, and Judith Ivey. The play will run 45 performances, then transfer to Broadway's Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Can I tell you how much I dislike this play?
2000 Josh Brolin and Elias Koteas replace Tony-nominated stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly in Sam Shepard's True West on Broadway. The drama, in which two brothers change personalities, made for an interesting twist as the two actors would switch lead roles every few performances. The replacement players will follow in the same fashion until the Matthew Warchus directed show closes July 29.
ON THIS DAY IN:
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss. Their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later. Eight members of the Ku Klux Klan went to prison on federal conspiracy charges; none served more than six years.
2001 Actor Carroll O'Connor died at age 76. Oh, Archi! You are sorely missed.
2003 George Axelrod, the playwright, director and screenwriter who penned the stage comedy, The Seven Year Itch, about a Manhattan man who lusts after his comely neighbor while his family is away for the summer, died today at age 81. Axelrod also penned the Broadway plays The Seven Year Itch (1952) and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955), which he also directed; and the films The Manchurian Candidate and Breakfast at Tiffany's.
(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com)
Milla
Tiny_Dancer
Understudy Joined: 8/15/03
#2re: Today's Birthdays 6/21 - Happy 1st Day of Summer
Posted: 6/20/07 at 7:45pmIsn't today the 20th.....
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