Today's Birthdays 1/22
Today's Birthdays 1/22
#0Today's Birthdays 1/22
Posted: 1/22/06 at 12:02am
Lord George Gordan Byron 1/22/1788 - 4/19/1824 English romantic/satirical poet, Manfred, Cain, Don Juan, source mat'l - Cain
August Strindberg 01/22/1849 - May 14, 1912 Source Material, Writer - The Last Dance; The Father; Miss Julie; Dance of Death (1971 Viveca Lindfors, Rip Torn)
D.W. (David Wark) Griffith 1/22/1875 - 7/23/1948 film producer, director: The Birth of a Nation; Los Angeles’ Griffith Park named for him
Constance Collier 01/22/1878 - Apr 25, 1955 performer - Thais; Camille; Peter Ibbetson; orig Dinner at Eight; Gratefully Yours (Gertrude Lawrence)
Rosa Ponselle 1/22/1897 - 5/25/1981 started out in vaudeville with her sister, American opera star (Norma, La Forza, Carmen); I knew Ponselle when I was a student at Peabody. She sang for a select few students, still had her "chops." "The Caruso in Petticoats". Leonard Bernstein, who credited Ponselle with changing the direction of his young life, wrote in a letter to her, "Yours is the first operatic voice I ever heard, at age eight, on an old Columbia 78, singing 'Suicido'. Even through all the scratchiness and surface noise, that voice rang through in such glory that it made me a music-lover forever. I thank you every day of my life." Maria Callas, who credited Mme Ponselle as being her vocal idol and sole inspiration, is quoted as having said, "I think we all know that Ponselle is simply the greatest singer of us all."
George Balanchine 1/22/1904 - 4/20/1983 Russian-bn. American Choreographer, Director, Other, Producer, affectionately known as Mr. B, husband of Tamara Geva (? - 1926) divorced, Vera Zorina (1938 - 1946) divorced, Maria Tallchief (1946 - ?) divorced, Tanaquil Le Clercq (1952 - 1969) divorced - On Your Toes; Babes in Arms; I Married an Angel; The Boys from Syracuse; Keep Off the Grass (Jimmy Durante, Ray Bolger, Ilka Chase, Jane Froman, Jackie Gleason, Emmett Kelly, Virginia O'Brien, Jerry Robbins); Cabin in the Sky; Song of Norway; The Telephone / The Medium; Nureyev and Friends; classic ballets Apollo, Orpheus, Firebird, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker; founded School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet
Ann Sothern (aka Harriette Lake) 01/22/1909 - Mar 15, 2001, Wife of Roger Pryor 1936 - 1942 (divorced), Robert Sterling 1943 - 1949 (divorced), performer - Smiles (Fred & Adele Astaire, Marilyn Miller); America's Sweetheart (Virginia Bruce); Faithfully Yours (Robert Cummings, Barbara Barondess MacLean); tv's & film's Lady Be Good, Panama Hattie, The Whales of August, The Ann Sothern Show, voice of My Mother, the Car
William Warfield 01/22/1920 - Aug 25, 2002 Husband of Leontyne Price (1952 - 1972) divorced, performer - Set My People Free; Regina (Brenda Lewis)
Piper Laurie (Rosetta Jacobs) 01/22/1932 performer - 1965 The Glass Menagerie; 2002 Morning's at Seven (George Grizzard, Pat Hingle, Maureen Stapleton); tv's & film's The Road to Galveston, Twin Peaks, Rising Son, Children of a Lesser God, The Thorn Birds, Days of Wine and Roses, Carrie, The Hustler, Francis Goes to the Races
Bill Bixby 01/22/1934 - 11/21/1993 performer - The Paisley Convertible (Marsha Hunt, Betsy Von Furstenberg, dir James Hammerstein); tv's My Favorite Martian, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, The Incredible Hulk, Fantasy Island, Rich Man Poor Man
Emanuel Azenberg 01/22/1934 Producer, Manager - The Impossible Years; The Lion in Winter; George M!; Billy; Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death; The Sunshine Boys; The Wiz; Home Sweet Homer; Something's Afoot (Tessie O'Shea, Liz Sheridan, Gary Beach); Whose Life is it Anyway?; I Ought to Be in Pictures; Sunday in the Park with George; A Month of Sundays; Lost in Yonkers; Side Show; Laughter on the 23rd Floor; The Dinner Party; 2002 La Bohème; Mark Twain Tonight; 2005 The Odd Couple
John Hurt 1/22/1940 performer - film's Wild Bill, Rob Roy, Spaceballs, 1984, The Elephant Man, Alien, Midnight Express, A Man for All Seasons; V for Vendetta
Michael Cristofer 1/22/1945 Writer, Director, Performer, Author - 1977 The Cherry Orchard; The Shadow Box (Geraldine Fitzgerald, Laurence Luckinbill, Mandy Patinkin); 1992 Hamlet; The Witches of Eastwick, The Bonfire of the Vanities
John Wesley Shipp 01/22/1956 Norfolk, VA. (ibdb says N.C, but imdb & tvtome say Norfolk, VA), performer - Safe Sex (Harvey Fierstein); Dancing at Lughnasa [replacement]; tv's & film's 1 Life To Live; Dawson's Creek; JAG; Road Rage; All My Children; The Flash; Dawson's Creek; Starcrossed; Second to Die
Diane Lane 01/22/1965 writer, performer; Her parents are acting coach Burt Lane and nightclub singer/centerfold Colleen Farrington - 1977 Agamemnon; Runaways; tv's & film's Jack, Wild Bill, Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All, Judge Dredd, Chaplin, Lonesome Dove, The Cotton Club, Rumble Fish, A Little Romance; Must Love Dogs [cute film, good possibility to be musicalized]; Under the Tuscan Sun [also game to be musicalized]; Unfaithfaul [hot, hot, hot scenes with Olivier Martinez, phew!]
Olivia d'Abo 01/22/1967 performer - 2005 The Odd Couple; tv & film's Conan the Destroyer; The Wonder Years; Point of No Return
Katie Finneran 01/22/1972 performer - Two Shakespearean Actors (Brian Bedford, Tom Aldredge, Michael Butler, Victor Garber, Judy Kuhn, Eric Stoltz); My Favorite Year; Proposals; Noises Off; tv's & film's Bewitched; Night of the Living Dead; You've Got Mail
SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:
1907 - The Richard Strauss opera, Salome, was featured with the Dance of the Seven Veils. It was copied by vaudeville performers and, um, strip-tease performers, as well. Soon, performances of the opera were banned at the Metropolitan Opera House.
1938 Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town" was performed for the first time, in Princeton, N.J.
1946 Playwright Emmett Lavery considers the life of Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Magnificent Yankee. This comedy stars Louis Calhern and Dorothy Gish and will run 160 performances.
1953 The Arthur Miller drama "The Crucible" opened on Broadway.
1968 Elly Stone, Shawn Elliot, Mort Shuman, and Alice Whitfield star in Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris at the Village Gate. The show will run 1,847 performances.
1968 The NBC-TV show, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, debuted “from beautiful downtown Burbank”.
ON THIS DAY IN:
1793 France's King Louis XVI, condemned for treason, was executed on the guillotine.
1901 Britain's Queen Victoria died at age 82.
1905 Thousands of demonstrating Russian workers were fired on by Imperial army troops in St. Petersburg on what became known as "Red Sunday" or "Bloody Sunday."
1964 Composer-playwright Marc Blitzstein is murdered on Martinique, West Indies. He worked with the Mercury Theatre as composer-librettist of The Cradle Will Rock and also composed the incidental music for that company's production of Julius Caesar that same year. He adapted Bertold Brecht's The Threepenny Opera in 1955.
On Jan. 22, 1973, in its Roe vs. Wade decision, the Supreme Court legalized abortions, using a trimester approach.
(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com, tvtome.com, rosaponsell.com, marcblitzstein.com)
Milla
