Today's Birthdays 7/29
Today's Birthdays 7/29
#1Today's Birthdays 7/29
Posted: 7/29/07 at 12:32am
Booth Tarkington 07/29/1869 - 1/19/1946 Pulitzer Prize winning writer, source material – Monsieur Beaucaire; Pulitzer Prize-winning author: The Magnificent Ambersons [1919], Alice Adams [1922] - Monsieur Beaucaire; Clarence (Helen Hayes, Mary Boland, Alfred Lunt); The Wren (Helen Hayes, Leslie Howard)
Maria Ouspenskaya 07/29/1876 - Dec 3, 1949 performer - The Saint (Leo Carrillo); The Witch (Alice Brady); Daughters of Atreus (Cornel Wilde); Outrageous Fortune (Margaret Hamilton [my lord! can you imagine Ouspenskaya & Hamilton in the same play!! Wish it was on film])
Theda Bara 07/29/1885 - Apr 7, 1955 performer – THE BLUE FLAME; film's A Fool There Was; Carmen; Romeo & Juliet; Camille; Cleopatra; Madame Du Barry; Salome; The Lure of Ambition; Madam Mystery (dir. Stan Laurel)
Sigmund Romberg 07/29/1887 - Nov 9, 1951 composer, conductor, lyricist, violinist – RUGGLES OF RED GAP; MAYTIME; THE STUDENT PRINCE; DESERT SONG; ROSALIE; NEW MOON; UP IN CENTRAL PARK; MAY WINE (Walter Slezak); MY ROMANCE (Anne Jeffreys, June Reimer)
William H. Powell 07/29/1892 - Mar 5, 1984 performer, producer – Carole Lombard’s ex & fiance to Jean Harlow – The King (prod. Geo. M. Cohan); THE WOMAN WHO LAUGHED; film's The Thin Man series; Libeled Lady (Harlow); Reckless; Dancing in the Dark (Betsy Drake)[now get this plot: "An actor signs on a Broadway star for his new film only to discover the talented girl is actually his own daughter."]
Clara Bow 07/29/1905 - 9/27/1965 American film actress known as the "it girl" – film’s THE IT GIRL
Melvin Belli 7/29/1907 - 7/9/1996 ‘King of Torts’; attorney; represented Mae West, Errol Flynn, Muhammad Ali, Jack Ruby, Tammy Fae Bakker; author: Everybody’s Guide to the Law
Richard Egan 07/29/1921 - 7/20/1987 performer – film’s Disney’s POLLYANA; SUMMER PLACE; Love Me Tender
Robert Horton 07/29/1924 performer - 110 in the Shade (Inga Swenson)[Starbuck: yowza!]; tv’s WAGON TRAIN; KINGS ROW; Murder, She Wrote; As the World Turns; The Green Slime
Robert Fuller [Buddy Lee] 07/29/1934 performer – tv’s & film's LARAMIE; WAGON TRAIN; Emergency!; Maverick; Return of the Seven; Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? (Geraldine Page, Ruth Gordon, Mildred Dunnock); Walker, Texas Ranger; Diagnosis Murder; The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. [loved this series!]
David Warner 07/29/1941 performer; Has been in 3 movies about the Titanic: S.O.S. Titanic (1979) (TV); Time Bandits (1981) and Titanic (1997). – 2001 MAJOR BARBARA; tv's & film's Holocaust; Tron; The Man With 2 Brains; Star Trek V & VI; The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. [yup, I really dig this show!]; Ladies in Lavender; Marple: 4.50 from Paddington; The Battle for Rome
Robert LuPone 07/29/1946 performer, producer; Patti’s bro & great-grand nephew the great coloratura Adelina Patti – Frozen; 2001 1000 Clowns; 2000 True West; The Magic Show; Zoya's Apartment (Bronson Pinchot, Linda Thorson); NOEL COWARD’S SWEET POTATO (Geo. Grizzard, Dorothy Loudon, Arthur Mitchell, the wonderful Judd Jones’ Mr. Mitchell’s U/S); MINNIE’S BOYS; THE ROTHSCHILDS; CHORUS LINE; 1997 VIEW FR THE BRIDGE; tv's & film's The Guiding Light; Dead Presidents; The Doors; American Tragedy; All My Children; Ryan's Hope; Jesus Christ Superstar; Dead Presidents; The Sopranos
Leslie Easterbrook 07/29/1951 performer – CA SUITE; 2003 HARVEY; film's Police Academy series, Private Resort, The Song of the Lark, ManiaX; Murder, She Wrote; House; Halloween; Diagnosis Murder
Ken Burns 07/29/1953 - Documentary filmmaker, CIVIL WAR; JAZZ; Baseball; Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson; The War
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1935 The Yeomen of the Guard - Alfred Drake in the ensemble
2000 Off-Off-Broadway reverses the Elizabethan tradition of casting all men including in females roles as the Queen's Company mounts an all-female Macbeth. The infamous Scottish Play will run its limited engagement at the Mint Space in midtown Manhattan.
ON THIS DAY IN:
1588 The English soundly defeated the Spanish Armada in the Battle of Gravelines.
1890 Artist Vincent van Gogh died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers, France.
The Tonight Show began simply as Tonight in 1954. Then it changed titles to Tonight! America after Dark. On this night in 1957, Jack Paar began a successful five-year run as host of the Tonight show on NBC-TV, changing its name to The Jack Paar Show.
1981 An ad in Variety today accuses theatre critic John Simon of being "racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, vicious, and derisive." Included in the ad/protest are excerpts from Simon's review of Richard III. Simon is quoted as writing in this review that an actress in the show "should never be cast as anything but an itinerant gefilte fish with a nervous condition." Three hundred artists, etc. have signed the protest, but none are prominent in the theatre industry at that time and, as the ad explains, many people wished to remain anonymous.
1983 Raymond Massey dies today at age 86. Massey, a well-respected stage actor, scored his biggest success as the title character in Robert Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Massey, hailed at the time by critic Brooks Atkinson as performing "with an artless honesty that is completely overwhelming at the end," also appeared in the classic 1940 film version.
1998 Legendary director/choreographer Jerome Robbins dies today at age 79. His Broadway projects included the original productions of West Side Story, Peter Pan, Fiddler on the Roof, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The King and I, On the Town, Gypsy and many more.
2003 Luther Henderson, the musical director, arranger, orchestrator and composer who helped give the distinctive sound to such musicals as Funny Girl, Ain't Misbehavin', Play On! and Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, dies after a long battle with cancer.
2005 Hildegarde, whose career as an international cabaret chanteuse spanned almost seven decades and who was credited with starting the single-name vogue among entertainers, died at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. She was 99. Usually billed as the Incomparable Hildegarde, an orchid bestowed on her by Walter Winchell, she was at the peak of her popularity in the 1930's and 40's, when she was booked in plush hotel cabaret rooms and supper clubs at least 45 weeks a year. At one engagement in 1946, she was paid $17,500 a week and 50 percent of the gross over $80,000. She was on the cover of Life magazine in 1939, had a top 10 radio show and traveled with her own orchestra and several dozen pieces of luggage. Her name became synonymous with the best clubs on both sides of the Atlantic. She also appeared in several British movies and stage revues. Another cabaret legend, Bobby Short, who died in 2005 at 80, once said, "Hers was the slickest nightclub act of all time."
(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT On This Day, & 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com, Entertainment.MSN.com)
Milla
Videos