Today's Birthdays 11/6

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 11/6/07 at 9:03pm

John Philip Sousa 11/6/1854 - 3/6/1932 Composer, Lyricist - ‘The March King’: composer, bandleader: Stars and Stripes Forever, Semper Fidelis, El Capitan, King Cotton, The Thunderer, Washington Post March; Chris and the Wonderful Lamp; 1982 Dancin'; Tintypes; Teddy & Alice

Gus Kahn 11/06/1886 - Oct 8, 1941 Lyricist, Composer, source mat'l - Whoopee!; A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine; Mr. Wonderful (Sammy Davis, Sr., Sammy Davis, Jr., Chita Rivera); film's I'll See You In My Dreams

Ole Olsen 11/06/1892 - Jan 26, 1963 born a yr. after Cole Porter in Peru, Indiana [imagine that!]; Producer, Writer, Director, Performer, Part of the comedy team "Olsen & Johnson" with Chic Johnson - Hellzapoppin’; All Over Town, Country Gentlemen; Pardon Our French; TV host: Fireball Fun-for-All [w/Johnson]

Francis Lederer 11/06/1899 - May 25, 2000 performer, Gorgeous! - Autumn Crocus; 1950 Arms & the Man (Anne Jackson, Sam Wanamaker); my fav film's The Diary of a Chambermaid (Paulette Goddard); Midnight (Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore)

Juanita Hall 11/06/1901 - Feb 28, 1968 performer - The Green Pastures (Rex Ingram); St. Louis Woman (Pearl Bailey); South Pacific; House of Flowers; The Ponder Heart (David Wayne, Will Geer)

Peter Matz 11/06/1928 - Aug 9, 2002 Arranger, Composer, Musical Director, Orchestrator, Musical Staff; husband of Marilyn Matz (a wonderful singer) til he died - House of Flowers; Whoop-Up; Beg, Borrow or Steal (Claiborn Carey [Cloris Leachman's sis], Eddie Bracken, Betty Garrett, Estelle Parsons); Vintage '60 (Bret Convey, Mickey Deems, Michele Lee); Grand Hotel; Anna Karenina; The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public; Minnelli on Minnelli

Mike Nichols (Michael Igor Peschkowsky) Nov 6, 1931 Berlin, GERMANY Producer, Presenter, Writer, Director, Performer; husband of Diane Sawyer; He, along with the other members of the "Compass Players" including Elaine May, Paul Sills, Byrne Piven, 'Joyce Piven' and Edward Asner helped start the famed "Second City Improv" company. They used the games taught to them by fellow cast mate, 'Paul Sill' 's mother, Viola Spolin. He later worked in legitimate theater as an actor before entering into a very successful comedy duo with Elaine May. The two were known as "the world's fastest humans". - An Evening With Nichols and May; Barefoot in the Park; Luv (Alan Arkin, Anne Jackson, Eli Wallach); The Odd Couple; The Apple Tree (Alan Alda, Larry Blyden, Robert Klein, May Louise, Barbara Harris [who's alive & living in Arizona]); 1967 The Little Foxes (Anne Bancroft, Richard A. Dysart, Margaret Leighton, E. G. Marshall, Austin Pendleton, Geo. C. Scott); Plaza Suite; 1973 Uncle Vanya; Streamers (Paul Rudd); The Gin Game; Lunch Hour (Sam Waterston, Gilda Radner); Fools (John Rubinstein); The Real Thing; Social Security (Olympia Dukakis, Ron Silver, Marlo Thomas, Joanna Gleason, Stephan Schnabel, Kenneth Welsh); Death & the Maiden (Gene Hackman, Glenn Close, Richard Dreyfuss); Spamalot; 2008 The Country Girl (Frances McDormand, Morgan Freeman, Peter Gallagher); Academy Award-winning director: The Graduate [1967]; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Silkwood, Postcards from the Edge, The Day of the Dolphin; comedian: [w/Elaine May]; Angels in America

Sally Field 11/6/1946 performer - The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? [replacement]; Academy Award-winning actress: Norma Rae [1979], Places in the Heart [1984]; Gidget series, Steel Magnolias, Mrs. Doubtfire, Smokey and the Bandit series, Hooper, Forrest Gump, Absence of Malice; Emmy Award-winner: The Big Event/NBC World Premiere Movie: Sybil [1977]; The Flying Nun, Gidget, The Girl with Something Extra, Alias Smith and Jones; David Copperfield; Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde; Brothers & Sisters

Eddie Korbich 11/06/1960 what a terrific performer - The Drowsey Chaparone; The Little Mermaid; After the Night and the Music; Wicked [replacement]; 1989 Sweeney Todd; 1994 Carousel; Seussical; 1 my very fav Off-Bway shows Eating Raoul (Adrian Zmed, Cindy Benson); tv's & film's Law & Order; Quiz Show

Michael Cerveris 11/06/1960 performer -2007 Cymbeline (John Cullum, Martha Plimpton, Phylicia Rashad); Lovemusik (Donna Murphym Judy Blazer, David Pittu); 2005 Sweeney Todd; 2004 Assassins; The Who's Tommy (Jonathan Dokuchitz, Tracy Nicole Chapman, Norm Lewis, Alice Ripley); Titanic; Broadway Unplugged; Off-Broadway, Los Angeles and West End: Hedwig in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"; tv's & film's tv Fame; CSI; General Hospital; Temptation

Ethan Hawke 11/06/1970 performer, Husband of Uma Thurman (1 May 1998 - 20 July 2004) (divorced); First cousin twice removed of Tennessee Williams. Hawke's great grandfather and Williams' father were brothers. - Coast of Utopia Parts 1, 2 & 3; 2003 Henry IV; 1993 The Seagull (Tyne Daily, Tony Roberts, Jon Voight); tv’s & film's Alias; Search and Destroy, Reality Bites, Alive, Waterland, A Midnight Clear, White Fang, Dead Poets Society, Dad, Explorers; Assault on Precinct 13

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1882 - 'The Jersey Lily of England' made her American debut. Lily Langtry starred in An Unequal Match which opened in New York City.

1899 Opening night at the Garrick Theatre for the melodrama Sherlock Holmes written by and starring William Gillette, based on the Arthur Conan Doyle stories about a brilliantly analytical detective. Gillette will revive and tour the play almost constantly over the next three decades. In all, the play will produced on Broadway eight times, most recently in 1974 with John Wood in Gillette's signature role. [Since I'm such a big Sherlock Holmes fan, I'm very happy that this was my very 1st Broadway Show!]Later, Gillette would be razor sharp in the same part on the radio.

1905 Peter Pan flies over Broadway for the first time, in a production by James M. Barrie at the Empire Theatre, starring Maude Adams as the original Peter Pan. The play will be revived on Broadway seven times over the next 50 years, then be adapted twice as a musical (first by Leonard Bernstein, then by Moose Charlap and Jule Styne), earning it more productions, most recently in 1999 with Cathy Rigby as Peter.

1911 Henrik Ibsen's The Lady From the Sea gets its American premiere.

1931 Elmer Rice's drama Counsellor-at-Law opens on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre, with Paul Muni and Constance McKay. It stays for 292 performances.

1988 An all-star cast comprises the revival of Waiting For Godot at the Lincoln Center Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, which opens tonight. This Samuel Beckett staple was directed by Mike Nichols and starred Robin Williams and Steve Martin, along with F. Murray Abraham and Bill Irwin, but only had a limited run of 25 performances.

2000 Interviews with exonerated death row inmates form the basis for Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen's The Exonerated, which features performers Richard Dreyfuss, Steve Buscemi, Vincent D'Onofrio, Hazelle Goodman and Ruben Santiago Hudson tonight at the Culture Project at 45 Bleecker. The play uses simple staging with the actors reading interconnected monologues based on the interviews. Two other nights will be performed by such stars as Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Edie Falco, Sarah Jones and David Morse.

2002 In an abrupt change of style, character and subject matter tough-guy playwright David Mamet opens Boston Marriage, an Oscar Wilde-style comedy of manners about two Victorian-era lesbians who work out their jealousy over a pretty, young interloper.

2003 Broadway's Biltmore Theatre gets its first opening night in 16 years when Richard Greenberg's The Violet Hour bows at the space that has become the flagship for the Manhattan Theatre Club after a multimillion-dollar renovation.

2005 The close harmonies and personal dramas of the doo-wop group Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons are turned into a crowd-pleasing songbook musical, Jersey Boys, which will turn into the dark-horse winner of the 2006 Tony Award as Best Musical.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1893 Composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg, Russia, at age 53.

1955 - The first motion picture premiere was seen coast to coast as TV viewers watched Rex Harrison and Margaret Leighton star in The Constant Husband.

(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com)

Milla

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 11/7/07 at 12:23am

Happy 50th Anniversary, RUMPLE, you weird flop, you!

http://ibdb.com/production.asp?id=2655

It was set in "Oblivia"!

And Elliot Gould made his Broadway debut! How many peeps can say they made their Bway debut playing "He Who Gets Slapped"? How special.