By Robert Viagas
and Ernio Hernandez and Anne Bradley
24 Feb 2009
1876 Birthday of Broadway comedian Victor Moore (1876-1962), who starred or co-starred in the original casts of many musical comedies, notably Of Thee I Sing, Anything Goes, Louisiana Purchase, Leave It to Me! and Oh, Kay!.
1930 Tom Powers stars as a King who threatens to abdicate and upset The Apple Cart. George Bernard Shaw penned this comedy, which will run for 11 weeks at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York. The cast includes Claude Rains and Morris Carnovsky. Philip Moeller provides the direction.
1934 Sidney Howard's adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel Dodsworth will run at the Shubert for 131 performances. Walter Huston stars with Fay Bainter and Nan Sunderland.
1955 Ninotchka slips into Silk Stockings at the Imperial Theatre. The transformation into a musical is the handiwork of Cole Porter, George S. Kaufman, Leueen MacGrath Kaufman and Abe Burrows. Hildegarde Neff and Don Ameche star. Cy Feuer stages the 478 performance run.
1956 Hugh Griffith and Beatrix Lehmann tread through The Waltz of the Toreadors at London's Arts Theatre. Peter Hall directs Lucienne Hill's translation of this Jean Anouilh comedy.
1980 Brian Clark's Whose Life is it Anyway?, which saw a production at the Trafalgar Theatre (now the Nederlander) in 1979, returns to Broadway for another production at the Royale Theatre. The play originally starred actor Tom Conti but was then revised for actress Mary Tyler Moore.
1999 Director Michael Greif's production of Paul Scott Goodman's Bright Lights, Big City opens Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop, where director Greif's Rent debuted in 1996. The musical is based on the Jay McInerney novel about a writer who hedonistically plows through New York City high life in 1984. A pre-Full Monty Patrick Wilson makes his New York debut as the lead.
2004 John Randolph, the accomplished character actor whose career include Broadway collaborations with Orson Welles and the Lunts, as well as a Tony Award-winning performance as cranky, opinionated grandfather Ben in Neil Simon's Broadway Bound, dies at age 88.
2006 Don Knotts, 81, the TV, film and stage actor who capitalized on a persona of the nervous, bumbling boob in "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Three's Company," Feb. 24 of pulmonary and respiratory complications at U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Beverly Hills. He appeared on Broadway with Griffith in No Time for Sergeants.
More of Today's Birthdays: James J. Wallack Jr. 1818. Abe Vigoda 1921. Richard B. Schull 1929. Michel Legrand 1932. James Farentino 1938. Jenny O'Hara 1942. Barry Bostwick 1946. Rupert Holmes 1947.
