Today's Birthdays 2/20

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 2/20/04 at 8:49pm

Mary Garden 2/20/1874 - 1/3/1967 Scottish-bn. American opera singer

Russel Crouse 02/20/1893 - Apr 3, 1966 Presenter, Producer, Writer, Source Material, Performer, Other, Theatre Owner/Operator; father of Lindsey Crouse - prodigious output of scripts, many in partnership with Howard Lindsay, includes State of the Union and The Great Sebastians, librettos to The Sound of Music, Call Me Madam and Anything Goes, and the play that is still the longest-running non-musical in Broadway history, Life With Father

Gloria Vanderbilt 2/20/1924 source mat'l, fashion designer; subject of famous Vanderbilt child-custody case

Sidney Poitier 02/20/1924 another source lists 1927, dir., performer - Lysistrata [all black cast](Rex Ingram, Etta Moten); 1947 Anna Lucasta; A Raisin in the Sun; Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights (Louis Gossett, Diane Ladd, Cicely Tyson); film's Academy Award-winning actor: Lilies of the Field [1963]; Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, To Sir With Love, Sneakers

Robert Altman 02/20/1925 director - Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Karen Black, Cher, Kathy Bates, Sudi Bond); film's M*A*S*H, Nashville, Brewster McCloud

Patricia Smith 02/20/1930 performer - Point of No Return; Maybe Tuesday; Howie (Leon Ames, John Fiedler, Gene Saks); film's Spirit of St. Louis, Save the Tiger

Richard Beymer 2/20/1938 - performer - film's The Diary of Anne Frank, West Side Story, Twin Peaks, The Longest Day

Sandy Duncan 02/20/1946 performer, wife of Thomas Calcaterra (1973 - 1979) divorced, Don Correia (1980 - present), Bruce Scott (1968 - 1972) divorced - Canterbury Tales; Love Is a Time of Day (Tom Ligon); 1970 The Boy Friend; 1979 Peter Pan; tv's & film's Pinnochio, Roots, The Hogan Family

Peter Strauss 02/20/1947 performer - Einstein and the Polar Bear; tv'd Rich Man, Poor Man

Jennifer O’Neill 2/20/1948 performer - film's The Summer of ’42, Cover-Up, Rio Lobo

Edward Albert 2/20/1951, son of Eddie Albert performer - film's Mind Games, Butterflies are Free, The Heist, Terminal Entry, Guarding Tess

David Beach 02/20/1964 performer - Moon Over Buffalo; Moon Over Buffalo; off bway "Big, Fat & Ugly with a Moustache," "Modigliani," "Pets," "That's Life," "Hell's Kitchen Sink"

Ron Eldard 02/20/1965 performer - On the Waterfront; 1999 Death of a Salesman [replacement]

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1934 Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson collaborate on an unusual Broadway "opera," Four Saints in Three Acts, which runs 48 performances at the 44th Street Theatre.

1973 Demonstrating the difference in sensibilities between London and New York, the farce No Sex Please, We're British, opens at Broadway's Ritz Theatre today en route to a 16-performance flop run. The London original will continue for a run of 6,761 performances, their longest-running comedy ever.

1980 The Broadway premiere of Lanford Wilson's Talley's Folly opens at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. The play is the prequel to Wilson's Fifth of July which, also under the direction of Marshall W. Mason, will open later in the year.

2003 First Off-Broadway performance for the puppet/human musical Avenue Q at the Vineyard Theatre. The show by Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty will earn raves and move to Broadway.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1872 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in New York City.

1954 Augustin Duncan, the American producer-director-actor died today in Astoria, New York. In 1922 he directed and starred in Eugene O'Neill's The First Man, and in 1926 he starred in and directed Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock. He was 81 years old.

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

Milla Updated On: 2/20/04 at 08:49 PM