Today's Birthdays 3/13

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 3/12/09 at 11:44pm

Harold Stone 03/13/1913 - Nov 18, 2005 Producer, Director, Performer, Stage Manager - Honeymoon (Thomas Mitchell); One Touch of Venus; Abraham Cochrane (Olympia Dukakis, Ann Harding); A Way of Life [never officially opened]; Ring Around the Bathtub (Carol Kane, Elizabeth Ashley)

Tessie O'Shea 03/13/1913 - Apr 21, 1995 performer - The Girl Who Came to Supper; A Time for Singing (Steven Boockvor); Something's Afoot (Gary Beach, Liz Sheridan); Broadway Follies; film's The Way Ahead, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!, The Entertainers, Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Robert Whitehead 03/13/1916 - Jun 15, 2002 Producer, Presenter, Director, Performer, Other, Theatre Owner/Operator; cousin of Hume Cronyn; father of William "Sam" Whitehead & Charles Whitehead; Husband of Virginia Whitehead (? - 1965) her death, Zoe Caldwell (1968 - June 15, 2002) his death; I feel terrible that the Tonys didn't air his acceptance speach when he rec'd his lifetime award in 2002. He died shortly afterward. Whitehead’s long producing career inspired the Robert Whitehead Award, established in 1993 by the Commercial Theater Institute (CTI) to honor “outstanding achievement in commercial producing” by a graduate of CTI [US’s only formal training program for commercial theatre producers] - 1947 Medea (Judith Anderson, Marian Seldes, starring & dir John Gielgud); origs: The Emperor's Clothes (Maureen Stapleton, Brandon de Wilde); Portrait of a Lady (Jennifer Jones, Eric Fleming); Tamburlaine the Great (Anthony Quayle, Wm. Shatner, Colleen Dewhurst); Orpheus Descending; The Day the Money Stopped; The Visit; A Touch of the Poet; Goldilocks; The Man in the Dog Suit; The Conquering Hero; Midgie Purvis (Tallulah Bankhead, Red Granger, Pia Zadora); A Man for All Seasons; After The Fall; Foxy; The Physicists (Robert Shaw); The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; A Matter of Gravity (Kate Hepburn, Christopher Reeve); A Texas Trilogy; Carmelina; Betrayal; Lillian (Zoe Caldwell); The Speed of Darkness (Len Cariou, Robert Sean Leonard); Master Class

Mike Stoller 03/13/1933 - Producer, Lyricist, Composer, record producer, songwriter with Jerry Leiber: Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Up on the Roof, On Broadway, film's score for Jailhouse Rock

Leslie Parrish (Marjorie Helen) 3/13/1935 performer - film's The Manchurian Candidate, Sex and the Single Girl, The Invisible Strangler, Li’l Abner

William H. Macy 03/13/1950 - performer; Husband of Felicity Huffman (1997 - present) - 2008 Speed the Plow; 1988 Our Town (Spalding Gray, Roberta Maxwell, Penelope Ann Miller, Katharine Houghton); film's Fargo; State & Main; Wild Hogs; He Was a Quiet Man

Dana Delany 03/13/1956 performerm - A Life (Pat Hingle); Translations (Brian Dennehy, Michael Cumpsty); tv's China Beach; 2006 tv Kidnapped

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1928 It's one for all, and all for almost 10 months of The Three Musketeers. William A. McGuire stages his book based on the Dumas novel. P.G. Wodehouse and Clifford Grey write the lyrics for Rudolf Friml's score. Dennis King, Vivienne Segal and John Clarke are in the cast at the Lyric Theatre in New York.

1945 This Foolish Notion lingers 13 weeks at the Martin Beck Theatre. Philip Barry's comedy stars Tallulah Bankhead and is directed by John C. Wilson.

1947 Brigadoon appears out of the mist at the Ziegfeld Theatre. Lerner and Loewe's musical has choreography by Agnes de Mille and a cast that includes David Brooks, George Keane and Pamela Britton. It will run 581 performances.

1963 And the director says Enter Laughing. Carl Reiner's novel is adapted by Joseph Stein; Alan Arkin stars as a delivery-boy who has a chance to make it big in theatre. There will be 419 performances at the Henry Miller Theatre in New York. The play would later be made into a film and adapted into the musical, So Long 174th Street.

1973 A revival of Irene featuring Debbie Reynolds inaugurates the new Minskoff Theatre. The musical comedy, with music by Harry Tierney, lyrics by Joseph McCarthy and book by Hugh Wheeler and Joseph Stein, will garner Reynolds and castmate Patsy Kelly Tony nods, but only George S. Irving will go home a winner for his performance.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1906 American suffragist Susan B. Anthony died in Rochester, N.Y.

1925 A law went into effect in Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of evolution.

1938 Attorney Clarence S. Darrow died in Chicago.

1947 - The Best Years of Our Lives, produced by Samuel Goldwyn, was a big favorite winning the Best Picture prize at the 19th Academy Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Actor/producer/comedian Jack Benny hosted the glittering gala. The Best Years of Our Lives won Oscars for Best Director (William Wyler); Actor (Fredric March); Supporting Actor (Harold Russell); Film Editing (Daniel Mandell); Screenplay (Robert E. Sherwood); and a shared award with The Jolson Story for Best Score. Other awards for the best of 1946: Actress: Olivia de Havilland in To Each His Own, and Actress in a Supporting Role: Anne Baxter in The Razor’s Edge. The Best Song was On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe (from The Harvey Girls) by Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren. Foreign-made films showed up in these Oscars, bringing an end to Hollywood’s then exclusive rights to the coveted awards. Of the foreign movies nominated, three were British (Henry V - producer, Laurence Olivier; Brief Encounter starring Celia Johnson; Perfect Strangers which won the Oscar for Best Writing/Original Story [Clemence Dane]), one was French (Les Enfants du paradis, an original screenplay by Jacques Prévert) and one Italian (Roma, città aperta, screenplay written by Sergio Amidei, Federico Fellini).

1964 Thirty-eight neighbors ignored the screams of Kitty Genovese, 28, as she was stabbed to death in Queens, New York, in a case that came to be a symbol of urban apathy and fear.

2006 stage and film star Maureen Stapleton dies today.

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

Milla