
Playbill Vault’s Today in Theater History: October 27
1920 birthday of Nanette Fabray, Broadway musical star High buttoned shoes, Love life (Tony Award),…
1920 birthday of Nanette Fabray, Broadway musical star High buttoned shoes, Love life (Tony Award),…
1920 birthday of Nanette Fabray, Broadway Musical Star High buttoned shoes, Love life (Tony Award),…
1844 Edward Harrigan, half of Harrigan and Hart’s iconic 1880s writing and performance team, was…
1844 Actress Sarah Bernhardt was born. “La Divine Sarah” creates many memorable roles in French…
1903 Birthday party for Jerome Lester Horwitz, better known by his stage name Curly Howard,…
1907 Top ‘o the world, a musical extravaganza, opens on Broadway for an impressive series…
1888 Operetta WS Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan Broadway Premiere The Yeomen of the Guard.1915 Arthur…
1730 Birthday of Oliver Goldsmith, British author of She bends over to conquer.1900 One of…
1893 Arthur Wing Pinero woos scandal with his play The second Mrs. Tanqueray, about a…
1857 Edward Franklin Albee is born, who, along with BF Keith, controls one of the…
1919 Hitchy-Koo 1919 turns out to be a minor hit for star Raymond Hitchcock, but…
1859 Eleanora Duse was born in Italy. One of the main actors of his time,…
1890 Julius Henry Marx was born in New York. Under the nickname “Groucho”, he and…
1921 The operetta Flowering time opens on Broadway. With around twenty themes by Franz Schubert…
1928 Chee-Chee, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s musical about castration in ancient China, opens with…
1921 The Music Box Magazine of 1921 is the first production of the new Music…
1904 Julian Eltinge, the famous female impersonator, makes her Broadway debut in Mr. Wix from…
1911 Disraeli opens on Broadway at the Wallack’s Theater. George Arliss plays the British Prime…
1879 Daly’s Theater opens on Broadway and Thirtieth Street in New York City.1894 Weapons and…
1910 Birthday of Lehman Engel, the Tony-winning Broadway conductor who founded the BMI Musical Theater…
1894 Birthday of British playwright JB Priestley, playwright An inspector calls, when we are married,…
1912 Jane Cowl becomes a star playing in In law by Bayard Veiller. The play…
Teatro Hidalgo in Los Angeles, circa 1920. National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from Sep 15…
1914 A prank on the sale of soap called It pays to advertise, by King…
Market Street in downtown Lewisburg is home to a combination of modern retailers and restaurants…
1919 After 30 days, 37 productions closed and 16 openings prevented, the actors’ equity strike…
The mammoth task of directing a West End musical was only magnified by the pandemic,…
1897 John Drew and Billie Burke (in her Broadway debut) star in the new play,…
1899 The girl from Maxime, one of Georges Feydeau’s most sparkling farces, has its American…
1917 Jerome Kern, Guy Bolton and PG Wodehouse open their romantic musical Leave that to…
1918 Birthday of composer Leonard Bernstein, who bridged the worlds of classical and Broadway, both…
As Covid-19 hit in early 2021, The Production Company was gearing up for one last…
1922 Theoni V. Aldredge, one of the leading Broadway costume designers of the late 20th…
1923 The game Red light Annie opens at the Morosco Theater (which closed in 1981…
1885 London’s hit operetta The Mikado, by WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, premiered on Broadway…
1871 Birthday of playwright Jesse Lynch Williams. During the 1917-1918 theatrical season, Williams’ play, Why…
1879 The legendary Barrymore family has one more to add to their list with the…
1888 Comedian DeWolf Hopper begins his dramatic recitation of the poem Bat casey at the…
1895 Bert Lahr (née Irving Lahrheim), future stage and film clown, was born in New…
1924 Singer and vaudeville star Sophie tucker opens at the Palace.1924 Helene hayes opens in…
1967 Playwright Joe Orton is found dead in his London apartment. His companion, writer and…
1975 Liza Minnelli to the rescue! With just six days to learn the role of…
1947 Variety announces that John Garfield will star in the first production of a new…
1921 Composer Richard Adler was born. Alongside Jerry Ross, he wrote two of the most…
1900 Birthday of actress and singer Helen Morgan, who became famous as a nightclub artist.…
1921 Opening night of the popular farce Obtain Gertie’s Garter about a man who gives…
Festival Pass is a newsletter that arrives weekly in your inbox. But during the festival…
Festival Pass is a newsletter that arrives in your inbox every week. But during the…
Festival Pass is a newsletter that arrives in your inbox every week. But during the…
Festival Pass is a newsletter that arrives in your inbox every week. But during the…
Festival Pass is a weekly newsletter that arrives in your inbox. But during peak festival…
1920 Two of Broadway’s greatest songwriter talents debut on Main Stem: lyricist Lorenz Hart, 25,…
1853 Birthday of Broadway impresario David Belasco, namesake of Belasco Theater, who wrote and /…
1920 Producer Alexander H. Cohen, known for bringing quality plays to Broadway for six decades,…
1951 Birthday of Lillias White, whose Broadway appearances include Effie White in Dream girls, Miss…
1928 After the birth of talkies, Variety publishes an article focusing on the amount of…
ST. CLOUD – Walking into the Paramount Theater is an awe-inspiring experience, even for the…
1905 Birthday of the lyricist and librettist Dorothy Champs, daughter of the vaudeville star Lew…
1895 Birthday of Oscar Hammerstein II, descendant of a notable theater family who became their…
July 1716 (305 years ago) Charles and Mary Stagg, two artists from the colonial settlement…
1887 Birthday of legendary director George Abbott, whose long life (107 years) and colossal catalog…
1903 Cartoonist Al Hirschfeld was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His distinctive looping line art…
1894 Birthday of Robert Russell Bennett, orchestrator of Broadway classics including the original Sunny, Show…
1909 Birthday of Broadway star Jessica Tandy, who has created many landmark roles including Blanche…
Caffe Cino in 1962. (Photo from the collection of Brian Merlis) June 1961 (60 years…
1946 Orson Welles takes the stage in Around the world, musical he adapted from Jules…
1924 The star of the Marx Brothers in I will say that she is at…
1905 Theater producer Sam S. Shubert dies in train crash. His brothers Lee and JJ…
1903 In Runaways, with a book by Addison Burkhardt and a score by Raymond Hubbell,…
Frank Chin. (Wikimedia / Nancy Wong) May 1976 (45 years ago) In the May edition…
1915 Among the dead after the sinking of the Lusitania were director-producer Charles Frohman and…
1917 Birthday of Betty Comden, lyricist and Broadway librettist, mainly in collaboration with Adolph Green.…
1917 birthday of Betty Comden, Broadway lyricist and librettist, mainly in collaboration with Adolph Green.…
1887 Anniversary of Vernon Castle who, along with his wife and dance partner Irene Castle,…
1924 Birthday of Sheldon Harnick, who writes lyrics for musicals including Fiorello !, She loves…
1900 Cho-Cho San and his passionate and tragic love light up David Belasco’s adaptation of…
1926 Sex. It is a comedy. Mae West plays a Canadian who doesn’t have time…
1926 Sex. It is a comedy. Mae West plays a Canadian woman who doesn’t have…
I became a fan of John Cullum when I saw him in Shenandoah and then…
1912 Karl Malden was born in Chicago, Illinois. He appears in numerous Broadway productions, most…
1912 Karl Malden was born in Chicago, Illinois. He appears in numerous Broadway productions, most…
1872 Birthday of singer and actress Anna Held, future wife of Florenz Ziegfeld, and the…
1927 Birthday of composer John Kander, who composes scores for Broadway Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of…
1927 composer’s birthday John Kander, who composes scores for Broadway Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the…
1928 Birthday of playwright Edward Albee, who writes Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The goat…
1925 Ernest Truex is The right guy for a group of drug dealers. The James…
1856 Comedian Eddie Foy was born. He plays in vaudeville and on Broadway, notably in…
1920 Ziegfeld Girls of 1920 enjoys a run at the New Amsterdam Roof Theater. This…
1920 Ziegfeld girls from 1920 enjoys a run at the New Amsterdam Roof Theatre. This…
This is an archived article and the information in the article may be out of…
1900 Composer Kurt Weill was born in Dessau, Germany. He composed the scores of Bertolt…
Theater would not be theater without the efforts of black artists, and it is important…
1859 Sholem Yakov Rabinowitz was born in Ukraine. Under the pseudonym Sholem Aleichem, he wrote…
1859 Sholem Yakov Rabinowitz was born in Ukraine. Under the pseudonym Sholem Aleichem, he wrote…
1901 A man hugs his fiancee Quiet because his parents want him to finish Yale.…
Happy birthday, Nathan Lane! 1938 A grandfather holds back death by chasing him into a…
1812 Author’s birthday Charles Dickens, whose A Christmas Carol has been adapted for the stage…
1903 Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion are seen on Broadway…
1859 Birthday of King of Broadway Operetta Victor Herbert, composer of Babes in Toyland, The…
1859 Birthday of the King of Broadway Operetta Victor Herbert, composer of Babes in Toyland,…