Today's Birthdays 8/4
Today's Birthdays 8/4
#0Today's Birthdays 8/4
Posted: 8/4/06 at 12:11am
Louis Armstrong 08/04/1901 - Jul 6, 1971 performer, composer – SWINGING THE DREAM (Dorothy Dandridge, Etta Dandridge, Vivian Dandridge, Butterfly McQueen); Satchmo: jazz musician: trumpet; Grammy Award-winning singer: Hello, Dolly! [1964], Lifetime Achievement Award [1971]; It’s a Wonderful World, Mack the Knife, Blueberry Hill; appeared in films: The Five Pennies, The Glenn Miller Story, Hello Dolly!, High Society; American ambassador of good will; inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [1990]
Helen Kane 08/04/1903 - Sep 26, 1966 performer, wife of Dan Healy (1939 - ?), Wife of Max Hoffman (? - ?) divorced; the original "Boop-boop-a-doop" girl – SHADY LADY; film’s 3 LITTLE WORDS (dubbed “I Wanna Be Loved By You” for Debbie Reynolds)
Theodore Newton 08/04/1904 - 2/28/1963 performer – Accent on Youth Constant Cummings); Dead End; The Man Who Came To Dinner; 1950 THE LADY FROM THE SEA (Louise Rainer, Herbert Berghof, Anne Jackson, Steven Hill); tv's & film's Wagon Train; Alfred Hitchcock Presents; What Next, Corporal Hargrove?; Two Years Before the Mast; Somebody Up There Likes Me; Friendly Persuasion; Dime with a Halo
Will Lee 08/04/1908 - 12/7/1982 performer, musician; "Mr. Hooper" on Sesame Street. Co-founded Theater of Action and member of the WPA Federal Theater Project and Group Theater – orig ONCE UPON A MATTRESS (Carol Burnett); THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE (William Bendix, Celeste Holme, Gene Kelly); THE SHIRKE (Jose Ferrer, Judith Evelyn); Carnival!
David Raksin 08/04/1912 - 8/9/2004 composer, orchestrator – At Home Abroad; IF THE SHOE FITS (Leila Ernst); Parade (Eve Arden); New Faces of 1936 (Imogen Coca, Ralph Blane, Van Johnson); tv's & film's Laura; A Big Hand For The Little Lady; Ben Casey; 2 Weeks In Another Town; Wagon Train; Suddenly; The Bad & the Beautiful; Pat & Mike; Forever Amber; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty; 1939 The Hound of the Baskervilles; Three Smart Girls
Raoul Wallenberg 08/04/1912 - 7/17/1947 Swedish businessman and diplomat, humanitarian; rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II, died in a Russian prison
Wesley Addy 08/04/1913 - Dec 31, 1996 performer; husband of Celeste Holm (1961 - 1996) his death – 1940 ROMEO & JULIET (Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Edmond O’Brien, Dame May Whitty, Cornel Wilde); 1950 King Lear (Louis Calhoun, Nina Foch, Jo Van Fleet); A Stitch In Time [never officially opened]
D. L. Coburn 08/04/1938 writer – THE GIN GAME; tv's & film's The Gin Game (Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke); Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn)
Pamela Burrell 08/04/1945 performer – STRIDER (Gerald Hiken, Roger De Koven); THE RED SHOES (Margaret Illman, Roger Rees, Hugh Panaro, Steve Barton); orig. SCARLET PIMPERNEL; tv's film's Popeye; Dead Poets Society; Law & Order; The Catlins
George Kmeck 08/04/1949 performer; husband of Nora Mae Lyng – 1983 ON YOUR TOES; SUNSET BLVD; tv's & film's Original Sin; Fields of Freedom
Amelia Campbell 08/04/1965 performer – OUR COUNTRY’S GOOD (Cherry Jones, J. Smith-Cameron; THE HERBAL BED (Trent Dawson, Herb Foster); Waiting in the Wings (Lauren Bacall, Rosemary Harris, Barnard Hughes, Dana Ivey); tv's & film's The Paper; Law & Order; My Louisiana Sky;
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1943 The Merry Widow with Marta Eggert, Jan Kiepura, Gene Barry, David Wayne
1985 Charles Dickens' unfinished novel becomes The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a musical by Rupert Holmes at Off-Broadway's Delacorte Theatre. The play-within-a-play adaptation is performed by a cast including Betty Buckley, Judy Kuhn, George Rose, Charles Goff, Rob Marshall, and Donna Murphy, who play members of a troupe that is performing the show. The show will transfer to Broadway's Imperial Theatre later in the season and run, under the shortened name "Drood", for 208 performances.
1988 Checkmates with Ruby Dee, Denzel Washington, Paul Winfield, Marsha Jackson
ON THIS DAY IN:
1892 Andrew and Abby Borden were axed to death in their home in Fall River, Mass. Lizzie Borden, Andrew Borden's daughter from a previous marriage, was accused of the killings, but was acquitted.
1944 - Nazi police discovered Anne Frank and her family, hiding in secret quarters above her father’s factory in Amsterdam, Holland. Miss Frank was 13 years old and had kept a diary of her feelings, thoughts and fears during the two years of hiding from the Nazis. Anne and her sister were taken to a concentration camp following the arrest. Anne Frank died at Bergen-Belsen. Her diary was found later and has since been translated into 30 different languages, adapted as a dramatic play and a Hollywood film. Her diary is a symbol of the strength of the human spirit. She wrote: “I keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would like to be and what I could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.”
1964 The bodies of three missing civil rights workers were found buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi.
1981 Melvyn Douglas dies today at the age of 80. Born in Macon, Georgia as Melvyn Edouard Heselberg, Douglas went on to become one of the more accomplished stage actors of his generation. Among his New York theatre credits were Time Out For Ginger, The Best Man and Inherit the Wind. Douglas’ performances in "Hud" and “Being There” earned him Academy Awards for best supporting actor.
(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT On This Day, & 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com)
Milla
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