Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: January 12
1878 Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar was born in Budapest. He writes The good fairy, the…
Browsing: birthdays today
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: November 2
1903 Daniel Frohman opens the New Lyceum Theater on West 45th Street in Manhattan with…
Playbill Vault is in theater history today: December 2
1912 The firefly kicks off the Lyric Theater with music by Rudolf Friml and lyrics…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: January 26
1925 Birthday of actor Paul Newman, who plays on Broadway in Picnic, the sweet bird…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: December 3
1888 One of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s greatest hits opens: Little Lord Fauntleroy, with Tommy Russell.…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: September 16
1892 Songwriter and producer Earl Carroll was born. His best-known contribution to the theater is…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: September 16
1892 Songwriter and producer Earl Carroll was born. His best remembered contribution to theater is…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: November 17
1901 Birthday of actor/director/producer/teacher/coach Lee Strasberg in Austria-Hungary. As founder of the Group Theater and…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: June 17
1943 George Marion, Jr. and Thomas “Fats” Waller’s Goes to bed early opens on Broadway…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: June 10
1893 Birthday of Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actor to win and be nominated for…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: November 7
1904 The timeless anthem “Give My Regards to Broadway” is sung for the first time…
Playbill Vault is in theater history today: May 13
1907 The writer and playwright Daphné du Maurier was born from the actors Gérald and…
Playbill Vault is in theater history today: March 30
1858 Birthday of DeWolf Hopper, vaudeville comedian and musical star, who appeared in Wang, Hoity-Toity,…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: January 10
1820 Birthday of Louisa Lane Drew, matriarch of the Drew and Barrymore acting dynasty which…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: December 10
1901 Sadie Martinot, Guy Bates Post and Junius Brutus Booth play The marriage game. The…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: March 2
1900 Composer Kurt Weill was born in Dessau, Germany. He composes the scores of Bertolt…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: June 7
1909 Broadway star’s birthday Jessica Tandy, who created many notable roles including Blanche DuBois in…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: September 1
1898 Birthday of one of Broadway’s most endearing performers of the 1920s, Marilyn Miller, whose…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: August 31
1897 John Drew and Billie Burke (in her Broadway debut) star in the new play,…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: December 7
1879 The composer Rudolf Friml was born in Prague. He emigrated to the United States…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: June 15
1894 Birthday of Robert Russell Bennett, orchestrator of Broadway classics, including the original Sunny, Show…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: January 14
1903 Opening night of The little PrincessFrances Hodgson Burnett’s play about a child, in the…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: December 18
1907 Playwright Christopher Fry, author of Ring Around the Moon and The lady is not…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: January 5
1894 Henrik Ibsen’s American premiere Ghosts, with Ida Jeffries Goodfriend, at the Berkeley Lyceum Theater.…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: November 16
1889 Playwright and director George S. Kaufman was born in Pittsburgh. Former journalist, Kaufman makes…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: January 6
1768 Birthday of John Durang, identified by scholars as one of the first American-born professional…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: December 2
1912 firefly sparkles the Lyric Theater with music by Rudolf Friml and lyrics and a…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: November 28
1923 Lionel Barrymore plays in David Belasco Laugh, clown, laugh!, the Pagliacci-like story of a…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: October 29
1882 Birth of the French playwright Jean Giraudoux, author of La Folle de Chaillot, Ondine,…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: January 29
1860 Birthday of Anton Chekhov, one of the fathers of modern theatre, whose relatively small…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: November 24
1849 Birthday of writer Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of several Broadway plays in the early…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: November 6
1854 Birthday of John Philip Sousa, composer of countless marches, who also found time to…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: January 4
1905 Shaky-voiced actor Sterling Holloway was born in Cedartown, Georgia. It becomes a Broadway staple…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: February 20
1893 Birthday of the playwright and producer Russel Crouse, whose prodigious output of scripts -…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: January 7
1920 Vincenzo Scognamiglio was born in Naples, Italy. Sound unfamiliar to you? To try Vincent…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: January 23
Happy birthday, Chita Rivera! 1922 It’s alcohol, jazz and The National anthem. J. Hartley Manners’…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: May 30
1868 Producer, director and manager Birth of Charles Dillingham. Dillingham’s dozens of productions include Like…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: March 10
1925 Ernest Truex is The fell guy for a group of dealers. The James Gleason-George…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: July 6
1939 A young Hollywood hopeful is forced to see her own career sparkle as her…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: November 10
1900 Opening night of the legendary musical Floradora at the Casino Theater for a run…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: June 21
1903 Cartoonist Al Hirschfeld was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His distinctive looping line drawings…
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: June 17
1943 George Marion, Jr. and Thomas “Fats” Waller’s Goes to bed early opens on Broadway…