Today's Birthdays 12/2

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 12/2/03 at 11:44am

Georges Seurat 12/2/1859 - 3/29/1891 French painter French painter: Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grand Jatte, source mat'l - Sunday in the Afternoon With George

Charles Ringling 12/2/1863 - 12/3/1926 American circus owner

Ruth Draper 12/2/1884 - 12/30/1956 American entertainer, monologist

Sir John Barbirolli 12/2/1899 - 7/29/1970 English conductor and cellist

Hy Gardner 12/02/1908 - Jun 17, 1989 performer - Pins & Needles [replacement](Anne Brown)

Robert (John) Paige 12/2/1910 - 12/21/1987 performer - Bye Bye Birdie, Hellzapoppin, Son of Dracula, The Green Promise, The Monster and the Girl; TV emcee: The Big Payoff, The Colgate Comedy Hour

Marc Platt 12/02/1913 performer - The Lady Comes Across; Beat the Band; orig. Oklahoma!; Maggie (Kathryn Lee, Odette Myrtil [THE Odette!], James McCraken, Anita Ellis [u/s])

Adolph Green , 12/2/1914 - 10/23/2002 Writer, Lyricist, Source Material, Performer, Other; husband of Phyllis Newman (1960 - 2002) his death, husband of Allyn Ann McLerie (? - ?) divorced, member of The Revuers w/Comden & Judy Holliday - Subways Are for Sleeping (Sydney Chaplin, Carol Lawrence, Phyllis Newman, Orson Bean, Gordon Connell, Grayson Hall, Valerie Harper); Fade Out - Fade In (Carol Burnette, Jack Cassidy, Tina Louise); Lorelei; Peter Pan; Tony Award-winning playwright: Applause, Hallelujah, On the Twentieth Century, Bells are Ringing, Auntie Mame, On the Town, The Barkleys of Broadway; lyricist: collaborated with Betty Comden: Singin’ in the Rain, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

Ray Walston 12/2/1914 - Jan 1, 2001 1947 Hamlet (Maurice Evans); The Survivors (Richard Basehart, Louis Calhern, Kevin McCarthy); Summer and Smoke; Mrs. Gibbons' Boys; The Rat Race (Betty Field, Pat Harrington); Me and Juliet; House of Flowers; orig Damn Yankees (Stephen Douglass, Gwen Verdon, Jean Stapleton); Who Was That Lady I Saw You With? (Larry Storch, William Swetland); Agatha Sue, I Love You (Renee Taylor, Corbett Monica, Betty Garde, Lee Lawson); tv's & film's Emmy Award-winning actor: Picket Fences [1995-96]; My Favorite Martian, Fast Times, Silver Spoons, Damn Yankees, South Pacific, The Apartment, Of Mice and Men, Popeye, Silver Streak, The Sting

Sylvia Syms 12/2/1917 - 5/10/1992 singer: Sinatra called her the ‘world’s greatest saloon singer’, she died while doing what she loved best...she'd just finished doing a show & died during a standing ovation she received at the New York cabaret scene's famed Oak Room; 1 of my fav SS sayings is something like: no lover's kiss can be as sweet as the kiss of an audience; film's Murders at Lynch Cross, The Tamarind Seed; The Saint - The Fiction Makers (1967); Victim (1961)

Ezra Stone 12/02/1917 - Mar 3, 1994 Director, Performer, Production Crew - Tom Sawyer (Alice John); 3 Men on a Horse; Brother Rat; What a Life; Horse Fever; Me and Molly; Wake Up Darling (Raymond Bramley, Barbara Britton)

Don Fellows 12/02/1922 - performer - orig South Pacific; Only in America (Alan Alda, Vincent Gardenia); Marathon '33 (Julie Harris, Joe Don Baker, Doris Roberts); Generation (Henry Fonda)

Maria Callas 12/2/1923 - 9/16/1977 dramatic & dramatic coluratura soprano, La Divina, Prima Donna Assoluta Del Mondo; many have tried to imitate her & failed miserably - Aida; I Puritani; Nabucco; I Vespri Siciliani; Turandot; Tosca; La Forza; Il Trovatore; Norma; Madama Butterfly; Il Turco In Italia; La Traviata. Now that was an actress, watching her was a lesson, performing w/secure abandon, not self-indulgence, as some of her imitators are want to do.

Jonathan Frid 12/02/1924 performer - Roar Like a Dove (William Kinsolving, Charles Ruggles, Betsy Palmer); [replacement] 1986 Arsenic & Old Lace; tv's Dark Shadows

Julie Harris Julie Harris 12/02/1925 performer - It's a Gift (Whitford Kane); Magnolia Alley (Jackie Cooper, Bibi Osterwald); Mademoiselle Colombe (Sam Jaffe, Edna Best); The Lark; A Shot in the Dark (Wm. Shatner, Walter Matthau, Pierre Epstein, Gene Saks); And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little (Estelle Parsons, Nancy Marchand, Rae Allen); The Belle of Amherst; Mixed Couples (Geraldine Page, Michael Higgins, Rip Torn); Emmy Award-winning actress: Hallmark Hall of Fame: Little Moon of Alban [1958-1959], Victoria Regina [1961-1962]; Knots Landing, The Family Hovak, Backstairs at the White House, Carried Away, Scarlett, The Dark Half, Gorillas in the Mist, The Bell Jar, Voyage of the Damned, Harper, A Doll’s House, I Am a Camera, East of Eden, Member of the Wedding

Ron Raines 12/02/1949 performer - 1983 Show Boat (Lonette McKee, Sheryl Woods, Paige O'Hara); Teddy & Alice (Len Cariou, Beth Fowler, Karen Ziemba); 1996 Chicago

Keith Szarabajka 12/02/1952 performer - Warp (André De Shields, John Heard); Doonesbury; Search and Destroy (Griffin Dunne, Paul Guilfoyle, Gregory Simmons)

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1924 The Student Prince opens at the Jolson Theatre in New York. The show, based on the play Old Heidelberg, has a book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly with a score by Sigmund Romberg. Tunes include the "Drinking Song." In the story, a prince falls in love with a waitress. It stars Howard Marsh and Ilse Marvenga.

The Merry Widow 12/02/1929

The Great Magoo 12/02/1932 - Paul Kelly, Charlotte Granville

Blackbirds of 1933 12/02/1933

Carmen Jones 12/02/1943

Five Finger Exercise 12/02/1959

1979 Martin Sherman’s play about homosexuals in the Nazi concentration camps, Bent, opens at the New Apollo Theatre. Richard Gere stars as a gay man who is also a Jew. Other cast members include David Marshall Grant and David Dukes. The show will run for 240 performances.

1985 The Mystery of Edwin Drood, adapted from the Charles Dickens novel by Rupert Holmes, opens on Broadway tonight at the Imperial Theatre. The show ran for free in Central Park over the previous summer. Dickens never wrote an ending to his novel, and because of this, the responsibility of choosing an ending falls to the audience each night. The cast included Betty Buckley, George Rose, Donna Murphy and George N. Martin.

1999 Audra McDonald received her fourth Tony Award nomination and first for Leading Actress in a Musical for Lincoln Center production, Marie Christine, which opens today. The musical was written especially for McDonald by Michael John LaChiusa. An ambitious musical adaptation of the Greek tragedy, Medea, Marie Christine ran on Broadway for just 44 performances and received five Tony Award nominations.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1804 Napoleon was crowned emperor of France.

1990 Composer Aaron Copland died at age 90.

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

Milla Updated On: 12/2/03 at 11:44 AM