Today's Birthdays 12/11
Today's Birthdays 12/11
#1Today's Birthdays 12/11
Posted: 12/11/06 at 3:12pm
Hector Berlioz 12/11/1803 - 3/8/1869 French musician, composer, conductor, & major force in the development of musical form during the Romantic Era - The Damnation of Faust; Benvenuto Cellini; Symphonie Fantastique; Les Troyens; My fav: Les Nuites d'Ete sung by Janet Baker
Fiorello H. La Guardia 12/11/1882 - 9/20/1947 ‘Little Flower’: politician: NYC mayor for three consecutive terms [1933-45]; LaGuardia Airport in NY bears his name, source mat'l - Fiorello
Gilbert Roland 12/11/1905 - 5/15/1994 performer (IMHO, he & Lupe Velez are the hottest things ever to come out of Mexico! Que wappisimo!); BTW When I was a student at Juilliard, I remember his great nephew, a violinist fr Mexico went out w/my roommate. He, too, was gorgeous! - Barbarosa, Islands in the Stream, Cheyenne Autumn, Treasures of Pancho Villa, Thunder Bay, Captain Kidd, The Cisco Kid series; The Bad & the Beautiful
Joe Masteroff 12/11/1919 writer, librettist; performer - Cabaret; She Loves Me; 70 Girls 70; The Warm Peninsula; The Prescott Proposals Katharine Cornell, Lorne Greene, Robert M. Culp)
Betsy Blair 12/11/1923 performer - cousin of Lois Moran; wife of Karel Reisz (1963 - 2002) his death, Gene Kelly (1940 - 1957) divorced - Panama Hattie (Ethel Merman, Pat Harrington, Betty Hutton, Arthur Treacher, Lucille Bremer, Vera Ellen); The Beautiful People (E. J. Ballantine); Face of a Hero (Edward Asner, Frank Conroy, Albert Dekker, Sandy Dennis, George Grizzard, Jack Lemon)
Rita Moreno 12/11/1931 performer - Skydrift; The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window; Gantry (Robert Shaw); The National Health; The Ritz; Wally's Cafe (James Coco, Sally Struthers [debut]); tv's & film's Academy Award-winning actress: West Side Story [1961]; The Wharf Rat, I Like It Like That, Portrait of a Showgirl, The Four Seasons, Anatomy of a Seduction, Carnal Knowledge, Summer and Smoke, The King and I, Singin’ in the Rain; Emmy Award-winning actress: The Muppet Show [1976-77], The Paper Palace, The Rockford Files [1/20/78]; Play It By Ear
Donna Mills 12/11/1942 performer - Don't Drink the Water (Lou Jacobi, Kay Medford, Anita Gillette); tv's & film's Knots Landing; Play Misty for Me
Teri Garr 12/11/1949 performer - tv's & film's Ready to Wear, Dumb and Dumber, The Tale of the Frog Prince, Mr. Mom, Tootsie, The Black Stallion, Oh, God!, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Young Frankenstein, Pajama Party, Women of the House, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, Good Advice, The Girl with Something Extra; Star Trek
Judy Kaye 12/11/1948 [ibdb says 10/11/1948] performer, wife of David Green; Appeared with the Santa Fe Opera (1985, 1990), the NYC opera (1989), NY Philharmonic (1990), Boston Pops (1990) and the London Symphony (1990). - On the Twentieth Century (John Cullum, Kevin Kline, Imogene Coca, Madeline Kahn); The Moony Shapiro Songbook (Jeff Goldblum [debut], Philip Hoffman); Oh, Brother! (Harry Groener, Larry Marshall, Pamela Khoury); The Phantom of the Opera; Ragtime; Mamma Mia!; Souvenir
Donna Bullock 12/11/1955 performer - [replacement] City of Angels & Ragtime; A Class Act (Lonny Price, Ronny Graff); tv's & film's Just Tell Me What You Want (Myrna Loy, Ali MacGraw, Alan King); Law & Order
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1893 Oscar Wilde gets his second Broadway production in a year with the U.S. premiere of his play A Woman of No Importance at Miner's Fifth Avenue Theatre.
1943 The New York City Center of Music and Drama opens tonight with a concert by the New York Philharmonic.
1958 Christopher Plummer plays the devil in Elia Kazan's highly stylized carnival-setting adaptation of the Bible story of Job, which opens tonight at the ANTA Theatre. Titled J.B. Archibald MacLeish's drama features Pat Hingle as the man whose faith in God gets the ultimate test. It runs 364 performances and wins both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award as Best Play.
1983 Noises Off, a new comedy by Michael Frayn involving a theatre company touring with a sex farce entitled "Nothing On," opens at the Brooks Atkinson tonight. It stars Dorothy Loudon, Brian Murray and Victor Garber. The will be revived on Broadway, again at the Brooks Atkinson, in a 2001 production starring Patti LuPone and Peter Gallagher.
1989 Cy Coleman, David Zippel, and Larry Gelbart's new musical, City of Angels, opens tonight at the Virginia Theatre. Directed by Michael Blakemore, the movie spoof has elaborate sets thanks to virtuoso Robin Wagner. Cast members included Randy Graff, James Naughton (Y2K), Rachel York (The Scarlet Pimpernel), and Dee Hoty (Tony nominee for Footloose). The show will run 878 performances. 1 of my most fav shows!
ON THIS DAY IN:
1792 France's King Louis XVI went before the Convention to face charges of treason. (He was convicted, and executed the following month.)
1844 - Dr. Horace Wells of Hartford, CT had a tooth extracted. Ouch! But wait. He became the first to receive an anesthetic for this dental procedure. Ah, muth bether, Dothtuh. Call me crazy, but wasn't there a movie about the this & the dentist who perfored this extraction.
1882 - The Bijou Theatre in Boston, MA became the first theatre to be lighted by electricity. Those Bostonians, always on the cutting edge!
1936 Britain's King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.
1943 The New York City Center of Music and Drama opens tonight with a concert by the New York Philharmonic.
1952 - An audience of 70,000 people watched from 31 theatres as Richard Tucker starred in Carmen. The event was the first pay-TV production of an opera. Ticket prices ranged from $1.20 to $7.20.
(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com)
Milla
