Sholem Yakov Rabinowitz aka Sholom Aleichem 02/18/1859 - May 13, 1916 writer, source mat'l - If I Were You; Fiddler on the Roof; The Old Country, Tevye’s Daughters, Inside Kasrilevke, The Great Fair : Scenes from My Childhood Billy DeWolfe 02/18/1907 - Mar 5, 1974 performer - John Murray Anderson's Almanac; Ziegfeld Follies of 1957; film's Blue Skys Jack Palance 02/18/1920 - Nov 10, 2006 performer - Streetcar Named Desire [Played the part when Marlon Brando broke his nose and couldn't go on]; would have LOVED to have seen this]; A Temporary Island; The Vigil; Darkness at Noon (Claude Rains, Kim Hunter, Lois Nettleton); tv's & film's Academy Award-winning actor: City Slickers [1991]; Requiem for a Heavyweight, Batman, Cyborg 2, Cops and Robbersons, Bronk, Ripley’s Believe It or Not Bill Cullen 2/18/1920 - 7/7/1990 - TV host: I’ve Got a Secret, The Price is Right, The Joker’s Wild, Name that Tune Milos Forman 2/18/1932 director - Hair; Ragtime; film's Academy Award-winning director: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest [1975], Amadeus [1984] Cybill Shepherd 2/18/1950 performer - tv's & film's Martha, Inc.: The Story of Martha Stewar;, Moonlighting; Cybill; The Last Picture Show; The Long Hot Summer; Taxi Driver; The Heartbreak Kid John Travolta 02/18/1954 performer - orig Grease [replacement]; Over Here! (Ann Reinking); tv's & film's Welcome Back Kotter, Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Urban Cowboy, Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Primary Colors, The Thin Red Line, Swordfish; Lonely Hearts; Wild Hogs; HairSpray Jayne Atkinson 02/18/1959 performer; Wife of Michael Gill - 1987 All My Sons; 1997 Ivanov; 1999 The Rainmaker; 2002 Our Town; 2003 Enchanted April; 2009 Blithe Spirit tv's & film's 24; Syriana; Law & Order; The Education of Max Bickford; Free Willy; A Year in the Life Matt Dillon 02/18/1964 performer - The Boys of Winter; tv's & film's Crash; My Bodyguard, Drugstore Cowboy, The Outsiders, There's Something About Mary; You, Me and Dupree; my fav Wild Things Molly Ringwald 02/18/1968 performer, daughter of Bob Ringwald (jazz pianist), wife of Valery Lameignere July 28, 1999 - present - o/b Modern Orthodox; Cabaret [replacement]; Enchanted April; film's Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, The Facts of Life, Requiem for Murder Christopher Sieber 02/18/1969 performer - Spamalot; Triumph of Love; 2002 Into the Woods; replacement in: Beauty and the Beast, Chicago, Thoroughly Modern Millie; Shrek the Musical; tv's Two of a Kind; It's All Relative; Filthy Gorgeous Susan Egan 02/18/1970 performer - Beauty and the Beast; Triumph of Love (Nancy Opel, Betty Buckley, F. Murray Abraham, Roger Bart); replacement in: Thoroughly Modern Millie, Cabaret, State Fair; Spider-Man 2; tv's & film's The Drew Carey Show; The Disappearing Girl Trick; The Third Wish SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE: 1915 Blossom Seeley, Nora Bayes and Joe Jackson are Maid in America. Music to the war-oriented show is provided by Sigmund Romberg and Harry Carroll. 1930 Rodgers and Hart collaborate with comedian Ed Wynn on a musical-comedy vehicle called Simple Simon, which runs 135 performances at the Ziegfeld Theatre. The score includes "Ten Cents a Dance." 1948 Mister Roberts, Thomas Heggen's portrait of life aboard a WWII military ship, opens a 1.157-performance run, starring Henry Fonda and David Wayne. It will win the 1948 Tony Award as Best Play. 1954 Audrey Hepburn stars with husband Mel Ferrer in the medieval romance Ondine, directed by Alfred Lunt. It runs 157 performances at the 46th Street Theatre. 1964 It's Any Wednesday or any of the 982 days this comedy will run at the Music Box Theatre. Don Porter stars as a pompous businessman balancing a wife and mistress. Sandy Dennis, Rosemary Murphy, and Gene Hackman are in the cast. 1976 - Ruth Gordon, Milo O'Shea, Lynn Redgrave, Philip Bosco, Ron Randell and Edward Herrmann are featured in the New York Shakespeare Festival's revival of George Bernard Shaw's MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre for 55 performances, under the direction of Gerald Freedman. 1982 Ed Graczyk's Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean opens at the Martin Beck Theatre. Robert Altman directs stars Sandy Dennis, Cher, Karen Black, Kathy Bates, Marta Heflin and Sudie Bond for the production, which runs 52 performances. 1989 - The New York Shakespeare Festival's revival of Hy Kraft's look at the early days of Yiddish Theatre on New York's lower eastside, CAFE CROWN, opens on Broadway with Bob Dishy, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Walter Bobby, David Carroll, Marilyn Cooper and Fyvush Finkel under the direction of Martin Charnin. It runs for 42 performances at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. 1989 Cafe Crown 2003 Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons troupe christens its new $27 million West 42nd Street mainstage with the first preview of My Life With Albertine, a musical adaptation of Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past." ON THIS DAY IN: 1516 Mary Tudor, the Queen of England popularly known as "Bloody Mary," was born in Greenwich Palace. 1564 The artist Michelangelo died in Rome. 1885 "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain was published. 1976 Actor-director-producer Eddie Dowling died today at age 82. A vaudeville veteran, in 1945 he produced, directed, and starred as Tom in The Glass Menagerie 2002 Two notable passings today: James B. McKenzie, 41-year veteran of running the landmark Westport Country Playhouse summer theatre in Connecticut dies at 74. Tom Panko, choreographer of Golden Rainbow and other musicals, dies at 74. (sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com) Milla