Today's Birthdays 11/15

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 11/13/08 at 8:01pm

Edward Asner 11/15/1929 performer - 1955 Threepenny Opera [replacement]; Face of a Hero (Betsy Blair, Albert Dekker, Sandy Dennis, George Grizzard, Jack Lemmon, Guy Sorel); 1989 Born Yesterday (Madeline Kahn, Gregory Jbara)[wish I'd a seen this!]

Joan Bowman 11/15/1930 performer, wife of Frank Bouley (February 21, 1955 - present); 3 children; Other credits: "Living the Life" (Phoenix), "Shoestring Revue" (Off Bway, President Theatre) - The Girl in Pink Tights (Gregory & Maurice Hines, Marni Nixon); orig Music Man (Robert Preston, Barbara Cook)

John Kerr 11/15/1931 performer - The American Way (Fredric March, Barbara Wooddell, Dickie Van Patten, Florence Eldridge); Florence Eldridge (Peggy Cass); Tea & Sympathy; All Summer Long (Carroll Baker, Ed Begley, John Randolph); Cue for Passion (Robert Lansing)

Petula Clark 11/15/1932 performer - Blood Brothers [replacement]

Gloria Foster 11/15/1933 - Sep 29, 2001 wife of Clarence Williams III (divorced), performer - Purlie Victorious; A Hand Is on the Gate (James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson); Yerma (Frank Langella, Nancy Marchand); Having Our Say (Mary Alice)

Yaphet Kotto 11/15/1937 - performer - The Zulu and the Zayda (Ossie Davis, Louis Gossett); The Great White Hope [replacement]; tv's & film's Two If by Sea, The Puppet Masters, Extreme Justice, Midnight Run, The Running Man, Eye of the Tiger, Fighting Back, Alien, Raid on Entebbe, Shark’s Treasure, Live and Let Die, The Thomas Crown Affair, Five Card Stud, Nothing But a Man, Blue Collar, Homicide: Life on the Street, For Love and Honor

Sam Waterston 11/15/1940 - performer - Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling so Sad; Halfway Up the Tree (Eileen Herlie, Anthony Quayle, written & dir by Peter Ustinov); Indians (Stacy Keach, Charles Durning, Raul Julia); Hay Fever (Shirley Booth, Sudie Bond, Roberta Maxwell, Carole Shelley); The Trial of the Catonsville Nine
(Michael Moriarty); 1972 Much Ado About Nothing (Barnard Hughes); 1975 A Doll's House (Liv Ullman, Judith Light); 1975 Hamlet (Jane Alexander, Maureen Anderman, George Hearn, Mandy Patinkin, Reginald Vel Johnson); Lunch Hour (Gilda Radner, David Rasche); Benefactors (Glenn Close, Simon Jones, Mary Beth Hurt); A Walk in the Woods (Robert Prosky); 1993 Abe Lincoln in Illinois); tv's & film's The Killing Fields, Law & Order, Friendly Fire, I’ll Fly Away, The Great Gatsby, Serial Mom

Bob Gunton 11/15/1945 performer - Happy End (Christopher Lloyd [Due to a leg injury, Christopher Lloyd did not perform on opening night; Bob Gunton went on until Mr. Lloyd could resume the role on crutches], Meryl Streep); Working; King of Hearts; Evita; Passion; orig Big River; Roza (Georgia Brown, Marcia Lewis); 1989 Sweeney Todd

Beverly D'Angelo 11/15/1954 performer - Rockabye Hamlet (Larry Marshall, Pat Gorman); tv's & film's Coal Miner’s Daughter, Paternity, Hair, Annie Hall, Every Which Way but Loose, National Lampoon’s Vacation series, Captains and the Kings

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1875 British comic operetta titans Gilbert & Sullivan make their U.S. debut today with Trial by Jury at the Eagle Variety Theatre, where it runs 8 performances.

1904 - One of Broadway’s most famous phrases was uttered for the first time. Ethel Barrymore, appearing in the play, Sunday, spoke the famous line, “That’s all there is. There isn’t any more,” as the curtain fell.

1926 Lynn Fontanne makes one of her last Broadway appearances without her partner/husband Alfred Lunt when she stars as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion at the Guild Theatre. Reginal Mason plays Henry Higgins, and the production runs 143 performances.

1932 Elia Kazan, listed in the Playbill as "E. Kazan," makes his Broadway debut in Chrysalis, a short-lived drama with Humphrey Bogart and Maragaret Sullavan at the Martin Beck Theatre. As a director and advocate of the Method acting technique, Kazan will staged some of the landmark Broadway plays of midcentury, including A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman.

1956 Dogpatch comes to life as Li'l Abner is staged at the St. James Theatre. Melvin Frank and Norman Panama adapted the Al Capp comic-strip, with songs by Johnny Mercer and Gene dePaul. The cast includes Tina Louise and Stubby Kaye dancing to Michael Kidd choreography.

1972 Mourning Becomes Electra is the first production in the new uptown Circle in the Square Theatre in the Uris Building. Colleen Dewhurst and Pamela Payton-Wright are featured in this production, which will run 53 performances.

1989 The military courtroom drama A Few Good Men by Aaron Sorkin opens tonight at the Music Box Theatre. The cast is headed by Tom Hulce, known for his roles in the 1984 film "Amadeus" and 1990's "Parenthood." The show will be made into a movie in 1992 after its 497-performance run on Broadway. The show catapults the writing career of Sorkin, who later creates the TV series "The West Wing."

1994 Julie Harris stars as Amanda Wingfield in Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of The Glass Menagerie. But the reviews focus on the waiflike actress who plays Laura: Calista Flockhart, who wins a Theatre World Award for her performance. She is quickly snapped up by TV, eventually landing the title role in the "Ally McBeal" TV series.

2000 The Rocky Horror Show, Richard O'Brien's camp science-fiction/horror/musical, gets a Broadway revival starring Daphne Rubin-Vega, Lea DeLaria, Alice Ripley, rock star Joan Jett, and, as the Narrator, onetime talk show host Dick Cavett. The British import was a 45-performance flop in its original 1975 production, but a movie adaptation, The Rocky Horror Picture Show attracted a devoted cult. In accord with that, audiences for the Broadway revival are issued sacks with newspapers (to use as rain hats) and rice (to throw in the wedding scene), along with other wacky interactive goodies.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1926 The National Broadcasting Co. debuted with a radio network of 24 stations.

1954 Lionel Barrymore dies at age 76. He made his stage debut at the age of fifteen and appeared in productions including The Jest and Peter Ibbetson. His film career ranged from "Grand Hotel" to the perennial "It's a Wonderful Life." He also published an autobiography, titled "We Barrymores."

1958 Tyrone Power dies of a heart attack in Madrid, Spain. He was 1 of the great, handsome, romantic swashbuckling stars of the mid-twentieth century. He was the third Tyrone Power of four in a famed acting dynasty reaching back to the eighteenth century. He was a supernumerary in his father's stage production of 'The Merchant of Venice' in Chicago and held him as he died suddenly of a heart attack later that year. Power began production on Solomon and Sheba (1959). Halfway through shooting, he collapsed during a dueling scene with George Sanders and died of a heart attack before reaching a hospital.

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

Milla