1898 Birthday of Broadway leading lady and producer Katharine Cornell, who stars in and/or produces A Bill of Divorcement, The Age of Innocence, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Alien Corn, Jezebel, Saint Joan, The Wingless Victory, No Time for Comedy, Candida, and Dear Liar.
1956 Eric Machwitz and Hy Kraft write the book and Bernard Grun arranges Antonin Dvorak‘s music for Summer Song. The musical deals with the composer’s stay in America. Charles Hickman directs the 19-week run at London’s Prince’s Theatre.
1959 Gertrude Berg plays a Jewish mother who charms a Japanese widower (Cedric Hardwicke) in A Majority of One. The comedy by Leonard Spigelgass runs at the Shubert Theatre, and later the Barrymore Theatre, for a total of 556 performances.
1960 Sidney Lumet directs Caligula at the 54th Street Theatre in New York. Albert Camus’ vision of the Roman emperor is accompanied by music composed by David Amram. It runs for 38 performances.
1964 Comedian Bert Lahr has his final Broadway opening night in Foxy, a musical based on Ben Johnson‘s Volpone, but relocated to the California Gold Rush. Lyrics are by Johnny Mercer. Also in the cast are Larry Blyden and the young John Davidson. The show, which tried out in a remote Canadian mining down, manages only a 72-performance run at the Ziegfeld Theatre.
1965 Opening night for the Sherlock Holmes musical Baker Street at the Broadway Theatre, starring Fritz Weaver as the detective, Inga Swenson as the love interest, and Martin Gabel as Moriarty. It runs 311 performances.
1977 The success of three inept thieves out for a major score is the starting point for American Buffalo. Robert Duvall, Kenneth McMillan, and John Savage thrash through the drama that marks David Mamet‘s Broadway debut. It runs at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre for 122 performances.
1989 Pauline Collins stars on Broadway at the Booth Theatre as Shirley Valentine. The one-character play by Willy Russell earns a Tony nomination for Best Play, while its star wins the Tony, the Drama Desk, and the Outer Critics Circle Award.
2002 Edward Albee‘s controversial play The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia? begins previews at the Golden Theatre. Bill Pullman and Mercedes Ruehl star in the drama about a man whose attraction for the ungulate of the title destroys his marriage. It wins the Tony Award for Best Play later that year.
2007 Sheridan Morley, the larger-than-life London theatre critic, author, and a long-time Playbill writer, dies in his sleep at age 65 at his home in London.
2011 Following their 2009 Broadway production of Exit the King, Australian theatre company Belvoir returns to New York with an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol‘s The Diary of a Madman, starring Geoffrey Rush. Performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the production reunites Rush with his Exit the King director Neil Armfield.
2012 Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It, featuring Star Trek star William Shatner, opens at Broadway’s Music Box Theatre. The solo show takes audiences on a voyage through Shatner’s life and career, from Shakespearean stage actor to internationally known icon and raconteur.
2017 The U.S. premiere of Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talk House opens Off-Broadway at the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre. The play about the 10th anniversary celebration for an “under-appreciated theatrical masterpiece” stars playwright Shawn opposite Matthew Broderick, Jill Eikenberry, and Claudia Shear.
More of Today’s Birthdays: William Le Baron (1883-1958). Albert Hackett (1900-1995). Vera-Ellen (1921-1981). Gretchen Wyler (1932-2007). Brian Bedford (1935-2016). Maria Björnson (1949-2002). John Tartaglia (b. 1978).
Watch Seth Rudetsky’s “Obsessed!” interview with John Tartaglia:
