Today's Birthdays 10/28

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 10/28/03 at 5:56pm

Elsa Lanchester 10/28/1902 - Dec 26, 1986 performer, widow of Charles Laughton - Payment Deferred; They Walk Alone; fav film's THE CLOCK & WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

Peter Glenville 10/28/1913 - Jun 3, 1996 writer, director - The Innocents; 1951 Romeo and Juliet; Rashomon; Take Me Along; Becket (Laurence Olivier, Anthony Quinn); 1963 Tovarich (Vivienne Leigh); Outcry (Cara Duff-MacCormick, Michael York)

Dody Goodman 10/28/1915 performer - My Darlin' Aida, orig Wonderful Town; My Daughter, Your Son (Vivian Vance, Robert Alda). Saw Dody this summer at Richard Skipper's July 4th Party. She's a great gal. My Mus. Dir., Paul Trueblood was her Mus. Dir.

Cleo Laine 10/28/1927 performer - The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Cleo singing Sondheim is my fav CD)

1928 Six-time Tony-winning costume designer Florence Klotz is born today. Her designs will be worn by the original casts of Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, On the Twentieth Century, Rags, City of Angels, Kiss of the Spider Woman and dozens more Broadway shows.

Joan Plowright 10/28/1929 Mother of Terry Parsons
Wife of Laurence Olivier (1960 - 1989) his death - The Entertainer; A Taste of Honey; Filumena

Jane Alexander 10/28/1939 mother of Jace Alexander,
wife of Robert Alexander (divorced), wife of Edwin Sherin (1975 - present), Attended Sarah Lawrence College and University of Edinborough. Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts - The Great White Hope; First Monday in October; The Night of the Iguana; The Sisters Rosensweig

James Murtaugh 10/28/1942 performer - orig. Two Shakespearean Actors; 1994 Philadelphia, Here I Come!; 1998 Ah, Wilderness!

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

Dead End 10/28/1935

The Rainmaker 10/28/1954 - N. Richard Nash's play about a con-man's visit to a small Western town, The Rainmaker, opens tonight at the Cort Theatre. Geraldine Page is the star for the Broadway run of 128 performances and then will go on to also do the London run in 1956. This critically-acclaimed production will be made into a movie in 1956 and also be the basis for a stage musical, 110 in the Shade, in 1963. Woody Harrelson and Jayne Atkinson starred in a 1999 revival of the show for the Roundabout Theatre Company.

The Time of Your Life 10/28/1975

By Jeeves 10/28/2001 - Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn's revised musical confection, By Jeeves, opens at Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre, some 27 years after it opened in Great Britain as simply Jeeves. Broadway audiences don't take to this musical version of P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooser stories, however, and it goes on to close after just 72 performances, the shortest run ever for a Lloyd Webber show in its Broadway debut.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1636 - The Massachusetts General Court provided 400 pounds to support a school or college, and so, Harvard University was founded in Cambridge, MA.

1886 An emblem of Franco-American unity, the Statue of Liberty, was presented to the American people by the French and unveiled this day in 1886.

The Statue of Liberty at Bedloe’s Island (now Liberty Island) in New York Harbor is the work of French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. He called it Liberty Enlightening the World. Bartholdi was present at the dedication presided over by U.S. President Grover Cleveland. Inscribed on a tablet inside the pedestal of ‘Miss Liberty’ is a poem by Emma Lazarus. It reads:

"‘....Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she with silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’”

1940 - The Greek people had much to celebrate. Their resistance and military had turned back Mussolini’s troops and Greece’s borders were closed to the Nazi supporters. This day is still celebrated throughout Greece as Ohi (No!) Day. - the 1st JUST SAY NO day.

1979 Arnold Soboloff, who is playing Smee, the sidekick to Captain Hook, in Peter Pan at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, dies today of a heart attack. He has just finished a song in Act II of the show and has gone off into the wings, where he will collapse. He is 48 years old.

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

Milla Updated On: 10/28/03 at 05:56 PM