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Bretaigne Windust
Ernest Bretaigne Windust (January 20, 1906 – March 19, 1960) was a United States-based French-born theater, film, and television director. Early life He was born in Paris, the son of English violin virtuoso Ernest Joseph Windust and singer Elizabeth Amory Day from New York City. The family escaped to London during World War I, and it was there that he developed an interest in theater. They returned to Paris following the war, but Windust's parents divorced in 1920, and he and his mother moved to the United States. He attended Columbia University and then Princeton, where he became a member and later president of the Theatre Intime players. Career Planning to become an actor, Windust co-founded with Charles Leatherbee the University Players in 1928 on Cape Cod in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The company lasted five years and included later luminaries Joshua Logan, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Mildred Natwick, Eleanor Phelps, Barbara O'Neil, Myron McCormick, K ...
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Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence. It is a member of the Ivy League. Columbia is ranked among the top universities in the world. Columbia was established by royal charter under George II of Great Britain. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolution, and in 1787 was placed under a private board of trustees headed by former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In 1896, the campus was moved to its current location in Morningside Heights and renamed Columbia University. Columbia scientists and scholars have ...
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Norris Houghton
Charles Norris Houghton (26 December 1909 – 9 October 2001) was an American stage manager, scenic designer, producer, director, theatre manager, academic, author, and public policy advocate. Houghton is known as an American expert in 20th-century Russian Theatre; as a major force in creating the "off-Broadway" movement; as a student and educator of global theater; and as an influential advocate of arts education. Houghton taught at Princeton, Columbia, and Vassar; his academic career continued at the State University of New York, where he helped create the SUNY Purchase campus and served as founding Dean of Theatre and Film. He wrote many books and articles. His books and papers are preserved for study in several university and college libraries and archives.http://findingaids.princeton.edu/simpleSearch?text1=Norris+Houghton&maxdisplay=50 Abstracts and finding aids for Norris Houghton collections at Princeton libraries and listing of Princeton classes; listing for Norris Hought ...
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Howard Lindsay
Howard Lindsay, born Herman Nelke, (March 29, 1889 – February 11, 1968) was an American playwright, librettist, director, actor and theatrical producer. He is best known for his writing work as part of the collaboration of Lindsay and Crouse, and for his performance, with his wife Dorothy Stickney, in the long-running play ''Life with Father''. Biography Lindsay graduated from Boston Latin School in 1907. He was an actor and director before turning to writing plays. He played the role of "Father" in ''Life with Father'' on Broadway in 1939. Together with Russel Crouse, Lindsay won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the 1945 play '' State of the Union'', which was adapted into a film directed by Frank Capra three years later. On October 5, 1947, Lindsay became the master of ceremonies of the ''Ford Theatre'' radio program. The 1957 Rodgers and Hammerstein television musical ''Cinderella'', recently revived by PBS, featured Lindsay and Stickney playing the roles of the King ...
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Russel Crouse
Russel Crouse (20 February 1893 – 3 April 1966) was an American playwright and librettist, best known for his work in the Broadway theatre, Broadway writing partnership of Lindsay and Crouse. Life and career Born in Findlay, Ohio, Crouse was the son of Sarah (née Schumacher) and Hiram Powers Crouse, a newspaperman. He began his Broadway career in 1928 as an actor in the play ''Gentlemen of the Press,'' in which he played Bellflower. By 1931, however, he had turned his attention to writing, penning the book for the musical ''The Gang's All Here,'' collaborating with Frank McCoy, Morrie Ryskind and Oscar Hammerstein II. His first work with his long-time partner Howard Lindsay came in 1934, when the two men revised the P. G. Wodehouse/Guy Bolton book for the Cole Porter musical ''Anything Goes.'' They then went on to adapt Clarence Day's ''Life with Father'', which became one of the longest running Broadway plays. Lindsay and Crouse later became Broadway producers, often acting i ...
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Life With Father
''Life with Father'' is a 1939 play by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, adapted from a humorous autobiographical book of stories compiled in 1935 by Clarence Day. The Broadway production ran for 3,224 performances over 401 weeks to become the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway, a record that it still holds. The play was adapted into a 1947 feature film and a television series. Book Clarence Day wrote humorously about his family and life. The stories of his father Clarence "Clare" Day were first printed in ''The New Yorker''. They portray a rambunctious, overburdened Wall Street broker who demands that everything from his family should be just so. The more he rails against his staff, his cook, his wife, his horse, salesmen, holidays, his children and the inability of the world to live up to his impossible standards, the more comical and lovable he becomes to his own family who love him despite it all. First published in 1936, shortly after his death, Day's book is a pi ...
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Broadway Theatre
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (namely the Broadwa ...
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Idiot's Delight (play)
''Idiot's Delight'' is a 1936 Pulitzer-Prize-winning play written by American playwright Robert E. Sherwood and presented by the Theatre Guild. The play takes place in the Hotel Monte Gabriel in the Italian Alps during 24 hours at the beginning of a world war. The guests trapped in the hotel by the sudden onset of hostilities are from Germany, France, the United States and Britain. Directed by Bretaigne Windust, the cast starred Alfred Lunt (Harry Van) and Lynn Fontanne (Irene), with Sydney Greenstreet as Dr. Waldersee and Francis Compton as Achille Weber. The play was nominated for the 1936 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, Best American Play. Productions ''Idiot's Delight'' had a pre-Broadway tryout at the National Theatre, Washington, D.C., starting on March 9, 1936. It premiered on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre, running from March 24, 1936 to July 4, 1936 and from August 31, 1936 to January 30, 1937, for 300 performances. The play won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize for D ...
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Amphitryon 38
''Amphitryon 38'' is a play written in 1929 by the French dramatist Jean Giraudoux, the number in the title being Giraudoux's whimsical approximation of how many times the story had been told on stage previously. Original productions ''Amphitryon 38'' was translated into English in 1938 by S. N. Behrman, in 1964 by Phyllis La Farge and Peter H. Judd, and in 1967 by Roger Gellert. ''Amphitryon 38'' was first performed on 8 November 1929 in Paris at the Comedie des Champs-Elysees in a production by Louis Jouvet. An English production of ''Amphitryon 38'', starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, opened at New York's Shubert Theatre on 1 November 1937. In 1957 a BBC production included its first piece of commissioned electronic music, created by Daphne Oram Daphne Blake Oram (31 December 1925 – 5 January 2003) was a British composer and electronic musician. She was one of the first British composers to produce electronic sound, and was an early practitioner of musique concr ...
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The Taming Of The Shrew
''The Taming of the Shrew'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592. The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Christopher Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself. The nobleman then has the play performed for Sly's diversion. The main plot depicts the courtship of Petruchio and Katherina, the headstrong, obdurate shrew. Initially, Katherina is an unwilling participant in the relationship; however, Petruchio "tames" her with various psychological and physical torments, such as keeping her from eating and drinking, until she becomes a desirable, compliant, and obedient bride. The subplot features a competition between the suitors of Katherina's younger sister, Bianca, who is seen as the "ideal" woman. The question of whether the play is misogynistic has become the subject of considerable controversy, particularly among mode ...
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Lynn Fontanne
Lynn Fontanne (; 6 December 1887 – 30 July 1983) was an English actress. After early success in supporting roles in the West End, she met the American actor Alfred Lunt, whom she married in 1922 and with whom she co-starred in Broadway and West End productions over the next four decades. They became known as "The Lunts", and were celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic. Fontanne was born in what is now the London suburb of Woodford, and received her first training as an actress from Ellen Terry. After building up an acting career in Britain she worked extensively in the US, first appearing in New York in 1910. Although she appeared in classics including ''The Taming of the Shrew'' and ''The Seagull'', experimental drama by Eugene O'Neill, and dark comedy by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Fontanne and her husband were best known for their stylish performances in light comedies by Noël Coward, S. N. Behrman, Terence Rattigan and others, and romantic plays by writers such as Robert ...
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Alfred Lunt
Alfred David Lunt (August 12, 1892 – August 3, 1977) was an American actor and director, best known for his long stage partnership with his wife, Lynn Fontanne, from the 1920s to 1960, co-starring in Broadway theatre, Broadway and West End theatre, West End productions. After their marriage, they nearly always appeared together. They became known as "the Lunts" and were celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic. Although they appeared in classics including ''The Taming of the Shrew'', ''The Seagull'' and ''Pygmalion (play), Pygmalion'', and dark comedy by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Lunts were best known for their stylish performances in light comedies by Noël Coward, S. N. Behrman, Terence Rattigan and others, and romantic plays by writers such as Robert E. Sherwood. Lunt directed some of the couple's productions, and staged plays for other managements. Though they rarely acted for the camera, The Lunts each received an Emmy Award and were nominated for an Academy Award. The Lu ...
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Strange Interlude
''Strange Interlude'' is an experimental play in nine acts by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill began work on it as early as 1923 and developed its scenario in 1925; he wrote the play between May 1926 and the summer of 1927, and completed its text for publication in January 1928, during the final rehearsals for its premiere performance. ''Strange Interlude'' opened on Broadway on January 30, 1928, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Lynn Fontanne originated the central role of Nina Leeds on Broadway. It was also produced in London at the Lyric Theatre in 1931. It was included in Burns Mantle's ''The Best Plays of 1927-1928''. Because of its length, around five hours if uncut, the play has sometimes been produced with a dinner break or on consecutive evenings. The play's themes – a woman's sexual affairs, mental illness, abortion, and deception over paternity – were very controversial for the 1920s. It was censored or banned in many cities outside New York. ''Stran ...
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