Today's Birthdays 7/20
Today's Birthdays 7/20
#0Today's Birthdays 7/20
Posted: 7/19/05 at 7:51pm
Petrarch 7/20/1304 - 7/18/1374 Italian scholar and poet; wrote the beautiful sonnets about Laura whose "realistic presentation in his poems contrasts with the clichés of troubadours and courtly love. Her presence causes him unspeakable joy, but his unrequited love creates unendurable desires." Because there is little definite information in Petrarch's work concerning Laura, except for the description that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing, no one knows who she really was. She may have been Laure de Noves, the wife of Hugues de Sade and an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade. Franz Liszt composed a set three of Petrarch's Sonnets (47, 104, and 123) voice, Tre sonetti del Petrarca, which he later would transcribe for solo piano.
Pavel Kohout 07/20/1928 author - POOR MURDERER (Laurence Luckinbeill, Kevin McCarthy)
Sally Ann Howes 07/20/1930 performer; daughter of Bobby Howes, granddaughter of J. A. E. Malone, wife of Richard Adler (1958 - 1966) divorced - MY FAIR LADY (replacement); KWAMINA; 1963 BRIGADOON; WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN; THE DEAD; film's Dead of Night, The History of Mr. Polly, Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang, Nicholas Nickleby
Natalie Wood 7/20/1938 - 11/29/1981(Natasha Nikolaevna Gurdin, a good Russian name. Natalie also spoke fluent Russian.) performer - From Here to Eternity, & my favs: West Side Story, Splendor in the Grass, Rebel Without a Cause, Marjorie Morningstar, Gypsy, Love with the Proper Stranger; perfect in Miracle on 34th St. NW's vulnerability & pathos on-screen would be next to impossible for anyone to match today & in her day, she was second to none.
Diana Rigg 07/20/1938 Tony award winner performer - ABELAR & HELOISE (Lordy how I wished I'd a seen this); MEDEA (She was my 1st Medea!); King Lear, Witness for the Prosecution, The Avengers, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, In Trust and Follies; hostess: PBS’ Mystery
Christopher Murney 07/20/1943 performer, father of Julia Murney - TRICKS; MACK & MABEL (Lisa Kirk, Robert Preston, Bernadette Peters)
Niki Harris 07/20/1948 perf, choreog - origs: DAY IN HOLLYWOOD/NIGHT IN UKRAINE; MY 1 & ONLY; GRAND HOTEL; BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE GOES PUBLIC
Robin Haynes 07/20/1953 performer - BLOOD BROTHERS (I LOVE this show, & play CD regularly)(Stephanie Lawrence, Con O'Neill, Mark Michael Hutchinson, Jan Graveson, Kerry Butler, Barbara Walsh)
John Scott 07/20/1967 performer - 1993 MY FAIR LADY; STATE FAIR
Michael Park 07/20/1968 performer - SMOKEY JOE'S; 1998 LITTLE ME; 1994 Carousel [replacement]
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1936 Dorian Gray
1961 Stop The World - I Want To Get Off opens tonight at the Queen's Theatre on London's West End. The musical, which follows the life of one man from birth to death, will run 485 performances. The show, which features book, music, and lyrics by its star, Anthony Newley, and Leslie Bricusse, will then open at Broadway's Shubert Theatre on October 3, 1962 for a 555 performance run.
1987 Charles Busch's send-up of beach movies, Psycho Beach Party, opens Off-Broadway at the Players Theatre. Busch himself is among the cast of the lampoon directed by Kenneth Elliott. It will ride the waves for 344 performances and close May 15 the following year.
2000 Producer Stewart F. Lane and former theatre columnist Ward Morehouse III's first collaboration, If It Was Easy... opens in Atlanta's 7 Stages theatre. The play about a Frank Sinatra musical that becomes a hit when the mob gets involved will open Off-Broadway March 7 at the Douglas Fairbanks. It will swim with the fishes, though, as it closes April 1.
ON THIS DAY IN:
1944 Adolf Hitler was only slightly wounded when a bomb planted by would-be assassins exploded at the German leader's Rastenburg headquarters.
1969 With “...one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” astronaut, Neil Armstrong, pilot of the lunar spacecraft, the Eagle, made the first footsteps on the surface of the moon at 10:56 p.m. EDT on this day in 1969. Which foot did Armstrong use to step on the grainy, grayish, lunar soil? His left.
1987 Up-and-coming singer-actor Kevin Marcum, currently playing minor roles in the Broadway production of Les Miserables, is found dead in his apartment today. Marcum, also a current Jean Valjean understudy, was slated to take over that role full-time after original star Colm Wilkinson's planned departure the following November. The cause of death is "acute cocaine intoxication."
(sources: IBDB, NYT On This Day, & 440.com’s Those Were The Days, wikipedia.org)
Milla
Updated On: 7/19/05 at 07:51 PM
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