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Merriam Theater
Miller Theater, originally the Sam S. Shubert Theatre and formerly the Merriam Theater, is Philadelphia's most continuous location for touring Broadway show theatre. It is located at 250 South Broad Street within the Avenue of the Arts cultural district of Center City, Philadelphia. The Theatre was built by the Shubert Organization in 1918. In 1972 the theater came under the ownership of the Academy of Music, and was owned by the University of the Arts. In November 2016, it was purchased by the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. History Lee and J. J. Shubert, theatrical producers, set out to build a theater memorializing their brother, Sam, who had died several years earlier in a railroad accident. Two theaters were built, one in Philadelphia and one in New York. The Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia was built in 1918 on the site of the demolished Horticultural Hall that included the reuse of the hall's marble staircase in the theaters' interior design. The building sta ...
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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of world's largest metropolitan regions, with 6.245 million residents . The city's population at the 2020 census was 1,603,797, and over 56 million people live within of Philadelphia. Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker. The city served as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony during the British colonial era and went on to play a historic and vital role as the central meeting place for the nation's founding fathers whose plans and actions in Philadelphia ultimately inspired the American Revolution and the nation's inde ...
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Florence Reed
Florence Reed (January 10, 1883 – November 21, 1967) was an American stage and film actress. She is remembered for several outstanding stage productions, including ''The Shanghai Gesture'', ''The Lullaby'', ''The Yellow Ticket'' and ''The Wanderer''. Her best remembered movie role was as Miss Havisham in the 1934 production of '' Great Expectations''. In this version, however, Miss Havisham was changed from a completely insane woman to an eccentric, who did not wear her wedding veil constantly, and who dies peacefully rather than as a result of suffering burns in a fire. In the 1950s Reed performed in several early television shows, such as ''The Philco Television Playhouse'', '' Kraft Television Theatre'' and ''The United States Steel Hour''. She is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame. Early life and career Reed was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to comedy actor Roland Lewis Reed and his wife, Johanna (née Sommer) Reed. Her grandfather was John "Pop" Reed, ...
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Girl Crazy
''Girl Crazy'' is a 1930 musical by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book by Guy Bolton and John McGowan. Ethel Merman made her stage debut in the first production and co-lead Ginger Rogers became an overnight star. Rich in song, it follows the story of Danny Churchill who has been sent to fictional Custerville, Arizona, to manage his family's ranch. His father wants him there to focus on matters more serious than alcohol and women but Danny turns the place into a dude ranch, importing showgirls from Broadway and hiring Kate Forthergill (Merman's role) as entertainer. Visitors come from both Coasts and Danny falls in love with the local postmistress, Molly Gray (Rogers' role). Three subsequent film adaptations adjusted the plot. The most notable, in 1943, starred Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, with the latter playing a combined Kate and Molly. Productions The musical opened at the Alvin Theatre on October 14, 1930 and closed on June 6, 1931 after 272 performan ...
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Treasure Girl
''Treasure Girl'' is a musical with a book by Fred Thompson and Vincent Lawrence, music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. The musical's best-known song is " (I've Got a) Crush on You", which has been recorded by a number of artists, including Frank Sinatra. After a tryout in Philadelphia beginning on October 15, 1928, the musical opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on November 8, 1928. It ran for 68 performances before closing on January 5, 1929. It starred Gertrude Lawrence and featured Clifton Webb and Walter Catlett. Bertram Harrison directed, and Bobby Connelly choreographed. The critics praised the lyrics and some of the music but found the book "remorselessly dull".Pollack, Howard.''George Gershwin: his life and work'' pp. 429–30, Berkeley: University of California Press (2006). Musical numbers ;Act 1 *"Skull and Bones" – Ensemble *" (I've Got a) Crush on You" – Polly Tees, "Nat" McNally and Ensemble *"Oh, So Nice!" – Ann Wainwright and ...
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Die Zirkusprinzessin
' (''The Circus Princess'') is an operetta in three acts by Hungarian composer Emmerich Kálmán to a German libretto by Julius Brammer and Alfred Grünwald. It premiered at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 26 March 1926 and went on to 344 performances there. Synopsis The plot revolves around a romantic intrigue with interpolated circus sequences. The mysterious "Mister X", a dashing circus performer, is hired by a disappointed suitor of Princess Fedora Palinska to pose as a nobleman and marry her. "Mister X" is in fact a nobleman, the disinherited nephew of a deceased prince. One of the work's most well-known arias, ' (Two fairy-tale eyes), has been recorded by several famous tenors, including Fritz Wunderlich, Charles Kullman, and Richard Tauber. International productions The operetta was swiftly performed in Hungary, in an adaptation by Ernő Kulinyi and Imre Liptai, at the Király Színház in Budapest, on 24 September 1926. Productions in Sweden (Stockholm, Vasa-Teate ...
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Funny Face (musical)
''Funny Face'' is a 1927 musical composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and book by Fred Thompson and Paul Gerard Smith. When it opened on Broadway on November 22, 1927, as the first show performed in the newly built Alvin Theatre, it starred Fred Astaire and his sister Adele Astaire. It was in this show that Astaire first danced in evening clothes and a top hat.The Oxford Companion to American Theatre: ''Funny Face'' (1927)
Linked 2013-05-18
Originally called ''Smarty'', it first opened in Philadelphia on October 11, 1927, to poor reviews. This led to major rewrites and caused critic-humorist , who had contributed to the sc ...
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Strike Up The Band (musical)
''Strike Up the Band'' is a 1927 musical with a book by Morrie Ryskind, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and music by George Gershwin. It first ran as a satirical show in Philadelphia that year, unsuccessfully, and on Broadway in 1930 after the original book by George S. Kaufman was revised by Ryskind. The show concerned a cheese manufacturer who sponsors a war against Switzerland because it will be named after him. Much of the satire of the 1927 version was replaced in the new version by silliness, leading Ryskind to recall, "What I had to do, in a sense, was to rewrite ''War and Peace'' for the Three Stooges." Aside from the title tune, the 1940 Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney musical film ''Strike Up the Band'' had no relation to the stage production. The overture is often performed as a stand-alone concert work. Libretto The original book by George S. Kaufman centered on Horace J. Fletcher, a Babbitt-like cheese tycoon who tries to maintain his monopoly on the American market by convinci ...
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Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier (; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, was one of a trio of male actors who dominated the Theatre of the United Kingdom, British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing more than fifty cinema roles. Late in his career, he had considerable success in television roles. His family had no theatrical connections, but Olivier's father, a clergyman, decided that his son should become an actor. After attending a drama school in London, Olivier learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first important West End theatre, West End success in Noël Coward's ''Private Lives'', and he appeared in his first film. In 1935 he played in a celebrated production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an establish ...
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Angela Lansbury
Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury (October 16, 1925 – October 11, 2022) was an Irish-British and American film, stage, and television actress. Her career spanned eight decades, much of it in the United States, and her work received a great deal of international attention. At the time of her death, she was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Lansbury received many accolades throughout her career, including six Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award), six Golden Globe Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, and the Academy Honorary Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, eighteen Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award. In 2014, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Lansbury Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Lansbury was born to an upper-middle-class family in Central London, the daughter of Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury. She moved to the United States in 1940 to ...
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Sammy Davis Jr
Samuel George Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American singer, dancer, actor, comedian, film producer and television director. At age three, Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and the Will Mastin Trio, which toured nationally, and his film career began in 1933. After military service, Davis returned to the trio and became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro's (in West Hollywood) after the 1951 Academy Awards. With the trio, he became a recording artist. In 1954, at the age of 29, he lost his left eye in a car accident. Several years later, he converted to Judaism, finding commonalities between the oppression experienced by African-American and Jewish communities.Sammy Davis Jr. Biography
Biography.com. Retrieved June 6, 2013.< ...
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Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress in film, stage, and television. Her career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned over 60 years. She was known for her headstrong independence, spirited personality, and outspokenness, cultivating a screen persona that matched this public image, and regularly playing strong-willed, sophisticated women. Her work was in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and earned her various accolades, including four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. In 1999, Hepburn was named the greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute. Raised in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while at Bryn Mawr College. Favorable reviews of her work on Broadway brought her to the attention of Hollywood. Her early years in film brought her international fame, including an Academy Award for Best Actress for her thir ...
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Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes MacArthur ( Brown; October 10, 1900 – March 17, 1993) was an American actress whose career spanned 80 years. She eventually received the nickname "First Lady of American Theatre" and was the second person and first woman to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award (an EGOT). She was also the first person to win the Triple Crown of Acting The Triple Crown of Acting is a term used in the American entertainment industry to describe actors who have won a competitive Academy Award, Emmy Award, and Tony Award in the acting categories, the highest accolades recognized in American film, t ...; to date, the only other person to have accomplished both is Rita Moreno. Hayes also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, from President Ronald Reagan in 1986. In 1988, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. The annual Helen Hayes Awards, which have recognized excellence in professional theatre in greater Washington, DC, si ...
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