Today's Birthdays 5/7
Today's Birthdays 5/7
#1Today's Birthdays 5/7
Posted: 5/5/07 at 11:48pm
Robert Browning 05/07/1812 - 12/12/1889 English poet and writer; Pauline, Men and Women, The Ring and the Book, Pippa Passes: God’s in His Heaven - All’s Right with the World; married to poet, Elizabeth Barrett - ROBERT AND ELIZABETH [Music by Ron Grainer: Book and Lyrics by Ronald Millar: Based on The Barretts of Wimpole Street by Rudolph Besier][never perf'd on Bway because of legal problems]; A Blot in the 'Scutcheon; The Land of Heart's Desire / In a Balcony; Pippa Passes; Caponsacchi
Johannes Brahms 5/7/1833 - 4/3/1897 German composer - Requiem, Symphony #1 in C Minor, Symphony #4 in E Minor; piano concerto, violin concerto
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky 5/7/1840 - Nov 6, 1893 born in the Ural region of Russia - Marche Slave, 1812 Overture, Swan Lake, Nutcracker Suite, Romeo and Juliet, piano concerto, violin concerto.
Gabby (George Francis) Hayes 5/7/1885 - 2/9/1969 performer - sidekick of both Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers, appeared in over 100 films; vaudevillian, silent movie villain
Gary Cooper 5/7/1901 - 5/13/1961 performer - film's Academy Award-winning actor: Sergeant York [1941], High Noon [1952]; Beau Geste, The Virginian, The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell, The Wreck of the Mary Deare; my favs: Meet John Doe & Ball of Fire
Eva Peron 5/7/1919 - 7/26/1952 Argentina’s spiritual leader and wife of Argentina’s President, Juan Peron; actress on stage, film and radio; autobiography: The Reason for My Life; founder and president of the union entity: Agrupacion Radial Argentina; subject of the Broadway musical and film Evita
Darren McGavin 05/07/1922 - Feb 25, 2006 performer; His theatre debut was in the 1944 Off-Broadway play, "No Rhyme, No Reason". Beginning in 1949, he toured as Happy for 18 months in the road company of "Death of a Salesman". He also worked extensively in regional and summer stock theatre. In 1989, he starred in the Off-Broadway hit "The Night Hank Williams Died." TV and film roles included the reporter in "The Night Stalker", Frank Sinatra’s oily dealer in the drug-addiction drama "The Man With the Golden Arm" and Mr. Parker in "A Christmas Story"; Husband of Melanie York (1944 - 1969); divorced, 4 children and of Kathie Browne (1969 - 2003); her death - origs My 3 Angels (Walter Slezak, Eric Fleming, Will Kuluva, Carmen Mathews, Joan Chandler, Robert Carroll, Jerome Cowan); The Rainmaker (Geraldine Page); The Innkeepers (Geraldine Page); The Lovers (Joanne Woodward); Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole (Peter Fonda, John McMartin); 1966 Dinner at 8 (Walter Pidgeon, Arlene Francis, June Havoc, Pamela Tiffin); tv's & film's The Night Stalker, Airport ’77, A Christmas Story, Billy Madison, Child in the Night, The Man with the Golden Arm, The Martian Chronicles, The Natural, Perfect Harmony, Dead Heat, my fav Riverboat [take a look at a very young, hunky Burt Reynolds by clicking on the link]
Anne Baxter 05/07/1923 - Dec 12, 1985 performer - origs: Seen But Not Heard; There's Always a Breeze (Leslie Barrett); Madame Capet (Eva Le Gallienne); The Square Root of Wonderful; Applause [replacement]; Noël Coward in Two Keys; film's The Ten Commandments, Walk on the Wild Side, All About Eve, Cimarron, East of Eden, Homecoming
Totie Fields 5/7/1930 - 8/2/1978 performer, entertainer, comedienne: “I’ve been on a diet for two weeks and all I’ve lost is two weeks.” tv's Ed Sullivan Show
Donal McCann 05/07/1943 - Jul 17, 1999 performer - Wonderful Tennessee [Written by Brian Friel]; 1988 Juno and the Paycock (John Kavanagh, Geraldine Plunkett)
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1946 King Henry IV, Part II with Laurence Olivier, Margaret Leighton, Ralph Richardson, George Rose, Nicholas Hannen
1953 Lilo was the star but a young dancer named Gwen Verdon stole the show at Cole Porter's Can-Can, which opened an 892-performance run at the Shubert Theatre today.
1963 In Minneapolis, MN Tyrone Guthrie's namesake theater opens with a production of Hamlet starring George Grizzard as the Prince and Jessica Tandy as Gertrude. Ralph Rapson designed the complex that cost 2.5 million dollars to construct and outfit.
1973 Ferenc Molnar's The Play's the Thing opens on Broadway at the Bijou Theater. Gene Feist stages the 11-week run with a cast that includes David Dukes and Elizabeth Owens.
1981 Austin Pendleton directs Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, which opens at Broadway's Martin Beck Theatre. Elizabeth Taylor makes her Great White Way debut in the stageplay that co-stars Maureen Stapleton, Anthony Zerbe and Ann Talman.
1982 Is there life after high school? with Maureen Silliman, Alma Cuervo, Philip Hoffman, Harry Groener, Raymond Baker, David Patrick Kelly, James Widdoes, Sandy Faison, Scott Bakula [u/s]
ON THIS DAY IN:
1825 Italian composer Antonio Salieri died in Vienna, Austria.
1915 - On its return trip from New York to Liverpool, England, the British ocean liner, Lusitania, was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland. The Lusitania was carrying a cargo of ammunition from the U.S. to Great Britain. This was Germany’s reason for the attack even though the ship was carrying over 2,000 civilian men, women and children. 1,198 lives were lost.
1915 Among the dead after the sinking of the Lusitania are producer-manager Charles Frohman and playwright Charles Klein. Frohman's first success was Shenandoah. In 1893 he opened the Empire Theater in New York with his own stock company. Two of Klein's plays The Auctioneer and The Music Master were produced by David Belasco. At the time of his death, Klein was a play reader for Charles Frohman.
On May 7, 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, to take effect the following day, ending the European conflict of World War II.
1999 A jury in Pontiac, Mich., ordered 'The Jenny Jones Show' to pay $25 million to the family of a gay man who was shot to death after revealing a crush on a male guest on the talk show.
(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com)
http://www.darrenmcgavin.net/riverboat.htm
Milla
