Today's Birthdays 9/29
Today's Birthdays 9/29
#0Today's Birthdays 9/29
Posted: 9/28/06 at 8:07pm
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 9/29/1547 - 4/23/1616 author, source material - Don Quixote
Greer Garson 09/29/1904 - Apr 6, 1996 performer, producer, one of my VERY fav actresses - orig AUNTIE MAME [replacement]; PLAYBOY OF THE WEEKEND WORLD (Emlyn Williams); ON GOLDEN POND (Frances Sternhagen, Tom Aldredge); my fav films THE VALLEY OF DECISION, MRS. MINIVER, PRIDE & PREJUDICE, RANDOM HARVEST; BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST; JULIA MISBEHAVES
Virginia Bruce 09/29/1910 - Feb 24, 1982 John Gilbert's ex, performer - AMERICA'S SWEETHEART (Bud Clark, Harriette Lake [aka Ann Sothern]); film's 1934 JANE EYRE
Stanley Kramer 09/29/1913 - Feb 20, 2001 director - film's The Defiant Ones, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Inherit the Wind, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Judgment at Nuremberg, Ship of Fools, On the Beach
Wynne Miller 09/29/1930 Niece of Glenn Miller, performer - A THURBER CARNIVAL (Peggy Cass, Tom Ewell, Paul Ford, Alice Ghostly); TENDERLOIN
James Villiers 09/29/1933 - Jan 18, 1998 performer - 1956 prodn's RICHARD II; ROMEO & JUILIET (Claire Bloom, John Neville, Jeremy Brett); MACBETH; TROILUS AND CRESSIDA; film's FOR YOUR EYES ONLY; THE RULING CLASS; MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON
Lawrence Linville 09/29/1939 - Apr 10, 2000 performer - orig. MORE STATELY MANSIONS; film's EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY
Madeline Kahn 09/29/1942 - Dec 3, 1999 performer - SILLIMAN'S NEW FACES OF 1968; TWO BY TWO (Danny Kaye, Marilyn Cooper); BOOM BOOM ROOM (Robert Loggia, Charles Durning, Barbara Monte-Britton); ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (John Cullum, Imogene Coca, Judy Kaye, Kevin Kline); SISTERS ROSENSZWEIG; film's Blazing Saddles, Paper Moon, What’s Up, Doc?, High Anxiety, Young Frankenstein
Ian McShane 9/29/1942 performer - WITCHES OF EASTWICK; tv's & film's LOVEJOY (can't believe A&E cancelled this show!); DALLAS; SEXY BEAST; Deadwood
Debbie Shapiro (aka Debbie Gravitte, aka Debbie Shapiro Gravitte 09/29/1954 performer - PERFECTLY FRANK (Jo Sullivan, Wayne Cilento); BLUES IN THE NIGHT; 1983 ZORBA (Anthony Quinn, Leila Kedrova, Rob Marshall); JEROME ROBBINS' BROADWAY; AIN'T BROADWAY GRAND
Roger Bart 09/29/1962 performer - TRIUMPH OF LOVE (Betty Buckley, F. Murray Abraham, Susan Egan); 1999 YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN (Kristin Chenoweth, B.D. Wong); THE PRODUCERS; The Frogs; tv's & film's Desperate Housewives; 2005 The Producers; 2004 Stepford Wives; Law & Order
Lynnette Perry 09/29/1963 Wife of Kevin McCollum (1997 - present), performer - GRAND HOTEL (Karen Akers, Jane Krakowski, Michael Jeter, David Carroll, Liliane Montevecchi); RAGTIME
Francis Jue 09/29/1963 - Thoroughly Modern Millie; 2004 Pacific Overtures
Darius de Haas 09/29/1968 performer - RENT; THE GERSHWINS' FASCINATING RHYTHM (Patrick Wilson); MARIE CHRISTINE
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1921 The operetta Blossom Time opens on Broadway. With a score of Franz Schubert themes rearranged by Sigmund Romberg, the show will go on to achieve a then-epic run of 576 performances and spawn four simultaneous touring companies for the Shubert Brothers.
1934 Kaufman and Hart's comedy Merrily We Roll Along introduces the plot innovation of moving backward in time from scene to scene. It will run 155 performances at the Music Box Theatre and inspire a 1981 musical by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth.
1939 Danny Kaye makes his Broadway debut in The Straw Hat Revue which runs just 75 performances depite a cast that includes Jerome Robbins (as a dancer), Alfred Drake and Imogene Coca.
1947 The Heiress with Wendy Hiller, Basil Rathbone – WOW to have seen this with 2 of my fav actors!
1955 Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge opens tonight at the Coronet Theatre. The drama about Eddie, a simple longshoreman driven to acts of brutality and despair by passions he can't understand gets mixed reviews and will run only 19 weeks. Martin Ritts is the director of this production, whose stars include Van Heflin, J. Carroll Naish, Eileen Heckart, Jack Warden and Richard Davalos. The play was revived on Broadway in 1997 with Anthony LaPaglia (later, Tony Danza), playing the roles of Eddie, with Michael Mayer directing.
1960 A jealous man disguises himself to serve as his girlfriend's paramour -- and thereby as his own rival -- in the popular musical comedy Irma La Douce, which opens tonight on Broadway. With Keith Michell, Fred Gwynne, Elliott Gould, Byron Mitchell, Elizabeth Seal
1963 Spoon River Anthology with Betty Garrett
1969 Tiny Alice with Ray Reinhardt, Paul Shenar, Philip Kerr, Harry Frazier
1975 A work by a new-to-New York playwright opens Off-Off Broadway at the St. Clement's Church called Sexual Perversity in Chicago. The play will win the season's Obie Award for Best New American Play and playwright David Mamet will go on to become a fixture in both Off-Broadway and Broadway theatre.
1985 Eugene O'Neill's classic, The Iceman Cometh, is revived at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre tonight. This play, about a group of hopeless denizens in a Lower East Side bar, was originally produced in October 1946 but was overshadowed by Arthur Miller's All My Sons. It did not receive major recognition until it was produced at the Circle in the Square Theatre in 1955. The cast of that version included Jason Robards, Jr. as Hickey, the traveling salesman, and was directed by Jose Quintero. The same actor in the same role with the same director make up the production tonight. The play was revived again on Broadway in 1999 with Kevin Spacey as Hickey and Tony Danza as Rocky, the bartender.
ON THIS DAY IN:
1953 - Danny Thomas, who many now remember as Marlo’s dad and Phil Donahue’s father-in-law, is also remembered for many things that influenced television. At the suggestion of his friend, Desi Arnaz, Thomas negotiated a deal that would allow him to retain ownership rights to his programs, like Make Room for Daddy, which debuted this day on ABC-TV. Later, in 1957, the show would move to CBS under the Desilu/Danny Thomas Productions banner. The rest is, literally, TV history. His success allowed him to give something back to the world, in the form of his philanthropic efforts to build St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis. “All I prayed for was a break,” he once told an interviewer, “and I said I would do anything, anything, to pay back the prayer if it could be answered. All I needed was a sign of what to do and I would do it.” And so it was.
1960 - My Three Sons was welcomed into U.S. homes on ABC-TV. My Three Sons endured so well that CBS bought the successful hit for somewhere between seven and ten million dollars in 1965.
1962 After six-and-a-half years, the musical hit My Fair Lady will close on Broadway tonight. It played a record 2,717 performances, and its gross receipts were $20,257,000 -- a record at that time for a musical.
1983 A Chorus Line becomes the longest-running musical in Broadway history today. After 3,389 performances, it has surpassed Grease. The show continued on for a few more years with 6,137 performances as the final total. That number has been surpassed only by Cats, which, as of May 7, 2000 had racked up 7,341 performances and counting.
2003 Nearly 80 years of theatregoers' confusion come to an end when Greenwich Village's Commerce Street is officially renamed Cherry Lane after the Cherry Lane Theatre, which has stood on the short, curved thoroughfare since it was founded by poet Edna St. Vincent Millay in 1924.
(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com)
Milla
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