Director Gordon Davidson, playwright Tom Stoppard, actress and arts supporter Kitty Carlisle Hart, and actors Hal Holbrook, Robert Morse, Jerry Orbach, Frances Sternhagen, and Teresa Wright are the 1999 inductees into the Theatre Hall of Fall, located in the lobby of Broadway's Gershwin Theatre. The eight will be inducted on Jan. 31, at 6:30 PM, at the Gershwin. Actress Irene Worth will be mistress of ceremonies. Honorary chairs of the event are Robert Whitehead, Zoe Caldwell, Barnard Hughes and Helen Stenborg.

Davidson is the longtime artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and a pioneer in regional theatre.

Stoppard is the author of dozens of plays, including the classics Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, The Real Inspector Hound, The Real Thing and Arcadia.

Hart was first an actress, acting on Broadway and in movies, then the wife of playwright Moss Hart, and finally a tireless supporter of the arts in New York as head on the New York State Council for the Arts.

Morse won Tonys for both his Finch in How to Succeed.. and his Truman Capote in Tru. Orbach is known for both musicals (the original Fantasticks and Chicago) and plays (Scuba Duba). Sternhagen, currently appearing in The Exact Center of the Universe, has appeared in dozens of plays, including The Heiress and The Good Doctor. Wright, best known for her films, such as "Shadow of a Doubt" and "Mrs. Miniver," has acted in such Broadway shows as Morning's at Seven and On Borrowed Time. Hal Holbrook, last seen on Broadway in An American Daughter, made his stamp as Mark Twain in Mark Twain Tonight!.

--By Robert Simonson