Tag: Broadway
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RIP ROBERT MORSE
1931-2022 Robert Alan Morse was born in Newton, Mass. He was probably best known as the star of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, both the 1961 original Broadway production, for which he won a Tony Award, and the 1967 film adaptation. That same year (1967) Morse appeared with Walter Matthau, Lucille Ball, and…
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RIP LESLIE BRICUSSE
1931-2021 Leslie Bricusse was a British composer, lyricist, and playwright, most prominently working in musicals and movie music. He was best known for writing the music and lyrics for the films Doctor Dolittle, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Scrooge, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and the songs “Goldfinger”, “You Only Live Twice”, “Can You Read My Mind”…
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STAGE MUSICAL!
July 11, 1955 Billion-dollar combination is the deal Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are cooking with Rodgers and Hammerstein (1) for a Broadway musical to follow their TV tour of Europe (2). They’re figuring on an original story to fit their personalities, and it will bring these two back to the stage for the first…
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LUCY LOCO? DIZZY DESI?
July 1, 1946 On the first of July 1946, Dorothy Kilgallen reported that Lucille Ball was considering an offer by Broadway producer Jed Harris to come to New York in the fall and star in the play Loco written by Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert. Lucille Ball appealed to MGM where she was under contract, to allow her to…
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OUT OF THE ‘RAIN’
June 15, 1944 In his Behind the Scenes: Hollywood column on June 15, 1944, Harrison Carroll reported that Lucille Ball was close to signing to play the lead in the Broadway musical based on the play Rain. The play version of Rain was written by John Colton and Clemence Randolph, based on the short story…
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JOHN EMERY
May 20, 1905 John Emery was born in New York City to stage actors Edward Emery and Isabel Waldron. He was educated at Long Island’s La Salle Military Academy. Emery was in 22 Broadway shows between 1934 and 1960, including playing Benvolio to Basil Rathbone’s Romeo, Leartes to John Gielgud’s Hamlet, Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra…
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BEA ARTHUR
May 13, 1922 Bea Arthur was born Bernice Frankel in Brooklyn, New York, to an Austrian mother and a Polish father. She was raised in a Jewish home with older sister Gertrude and younger sister Marian. In 1933, the Frankel family relocated to Cambridge, Maryland. During World War II, Arthur enlisted as one of the first…
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EDIE ADAMS
April 16, 1927 Edie Adams was born Edith Elizabeth Enke in Kingston, Pennsylvania. Her family moved around before settling in Tenafly, New Jersey, where she attended Tenafly High School. Ada Enke taught her daughter singing and piano. Adams’s grandmother, a seamstress, taught her how to sew. She earned a vocal degree from Juilliard and then graduated from Columbia…
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HOWARD KEEL
April 13, 1919 Harold Clifford Keel, known professionally as Howard Keel, was born in Gillespie, Illinois. It was stated that Keel’s birth name was Harold Leek. After his father’s death in 1930, Keel and his mother moved to California, where he graduated from high school at age 17. He worked various odd jobs until settling at Douglas…
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CRITIC’S CHOICE
April 13, 1963 Directed by Don Weis Produced by Frank P. Rosenberg for Warner Brothers Written by Jack Sher, based on the play by Ira Levin Synopsis ~ Parker Ballantine is a New York theater critic and his wife writes a play that may or may not be very good. Now Parker must either get out…
Papermoon Loves Lucy 