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Shirley Herz
Shirley Herz (December 30, 1925 – August 11, 2013) was an American Broadway theatre production press representative. Herz had publicized Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway productions, ballet companies, circuses, worlds fairs, films and television programs, beginning in 1954, aged 28, when she was the press assistant for the Truman Capote and Harold Arlen musical, '' House of Flowers''.. She worked with many notables, including Tallulah Bankhead, Rosalind Russell, Eva Le Gallienne, Jerry Herman, and Julie Harris, as well as with many off-Broadway (such as Manhattan Theatre Club) and off-off-Broadway companies. The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing presented Herz with a special Tony Award for Excellence in Theatre at the 63rd Tony Awards ceremony on June 7, 2009. Death Herz suffered a stroke on July 18, 2013 and died on August 11, aged 87. Her sole immediate survivor is her widower, Herbert Boley, to whom she was married from 1948 until her death. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' is a play by Edward Albee first staged in October 1962. It examines the complexities of the marriage of a middle-aged couple, Martha and George. Late one evening, after a university faculty party, they receive an unwitting younger couple, Nick and Honey, as guests, and draw them into their bitter and frustrated relationship. The play is in three acts, normally taking a little less than three hours to perform, with two 10-minute intermissions. The title is a pun on the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Walt Disney's ''Three Little Pigs'' (1933), substituting the name of the celebrated English author Virginia Woolf. Martha and George repeatedly sing this version of the song throughout the play. ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' won both the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1962–63 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. It is frequently revived on the modern stage. The film adaptation was released in 1966, writte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ritz (play)
''The Ritz'' is a comedic farce by Terrence McNally. Rita Moreno won a Tony Award for her performance as Googie Gomez in the 1975 Broadway production, which she and many others of the original cast reprised in a 1976 film version directed by Richard Lester. Plot The farce is set in a gay bathhouse in Manhattan, where unsuspecting businessman Gaetano Proclo, a heterosexual, has taken refuge from his homicidal brother-in-law Carmine Vespucci, a mobster. Gaetano stumbles across an assortment of oddball characters, including a rabid chubby chaser, go-go boys, a squeaky-voiced detective, and Googie Gomez, a third-rate entertainer with visions of Broadway glory who mistakes him for a famous producer and whom he mistakes for a man in drag. Further complications arise when Gaetano's wife, Vivian, tracks him down and jumps to all the wrong conclusions about his sexual orientation. Production history Original Broadway production McNally was playwright-in-residence at Yale Universi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Cage Aux Folles (musical)
''La Cage aux Folles'' () is a musical with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman and a book by Harvey Fierstein. Based on the 1973 French play of the same name by Jean Poiret, it tells the story of a gay couple, Georges, the manager of a Saint-Tropez nightclub featuring drag entertainment, and Albin, his romantic partner and star attraction, and the farcical adventures that ensue when Georges's son, Jean-Michel, brings home his fiancée's ultra-conservative parents to meet them. ''La cage aux folles'' literally means "the cage of crazy women". However, ''folles'' is also a slang term for effeminate homosexuals (queens). Opening on Broadway in 1983 ''La Cage'' broke barriers for gay representation by becoming the first hit Broadway musical centered on a homosexual relationship. The show's Act One finale, " I Am What I Am", received praise as a "gay anthem" and has been widely recorded. The original production ran for more than four years (1,761 performances), and won six Tony Awar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
All My Sons
''All My Sons'' is a three-act play written in 1946 by Arthur Miller. It opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1949, and ran for 328 performances. It was directed by Elia Kazan (to whom it is dedicated), produced by Kazan and Harold Clurman, and won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. It starred Ed Begley, Beth Merrill, Arthur Kennedy, and Karl Malden and won both the Tony Award for Best Author and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play. The play was adapted for films in 1948 and 1987. Background Miller wrote ''All My Sons'' after his first play ''The Man Who Had All the Luck'' failed on Broadway, lasting only four performances. Miller wrote ''All My Sons'' as a final attempt at writing a commercially successful play; he vowed to "find some other line of work" if the play did not find an audience. ''All My Sons'' is based upon a true story, which Arthur Miller's then-mother-in-law pointed out in an Ohi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burn This
''Burn This'' (stylized as ''Burn/This'' for the 2019 revival) is a play by Lanford Wilson. Like much of Wilson's work, the play includes themes of gay identity and relationships. Plot summary The play begins shortly after the funeral of Robbie, a young, gay dancer who drowned in a boating accident with his lover Dom. In attendance were Robbie's roommates: his sensitive dance partner and choreographer, Anna, and confident, gay advertising executive Larry. Soon joining them in Robbie's lower Manhattan loft are screenwriter Burton (Anna's longtime lover) and Pale (Robbie's cocaine-snorting, hyperactive restaurant manager brother). In the face of their shared tragedy, the quartet attempts to make sense of their lives and reconsider their own identities and relationships. Anna learns to be independent and self-confident. She begins to pursue her interest in choreography and begins a relationship with Pale, ending her dispassionate relationship with her longtime boyfriend. Production h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Legs Diamond
Jack "Legs" Diamond (possibly born John Thomas Diamond, though disputed; July 10, 1897 – December 18, 1931), also known as Gentleman Jack, was an Irish American gangster in Philadelphia and New York City during the Prohibition era. A bootlegger and close associate of gambler Arnold Rothstein, Diamond survived a number of attempts on his life between 1916 and 1931, causing him to be known as the " clay pigeon of the underworld". In 1930, Diamond's nemesis Dutch Schultz remarked to his own gang, "Ain't there nobody that can shoot this guy so he don't bounce back?" Early life Diamond was born July 10, 1897, to Sara and John Moran, who emigrated from Ireland in 1891 to Philadelphia, USA. In 1899, Jack's younger brother Eddie Moran was born. Jack and Eddie both struggled through grade school, while Sara suffered from severe arthritis and other health problems. On December 24, 1913, Sara died from complications due to a bacterial infection and high fever. John Diamond, Sr. moved ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Threepenny Opera
''The Threepenny Opera'' ( ) is a "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, ''The Beggar's Opera'', and four ballads by François Villon, with music by Kurt Weill. Although there is debate as to how much, if any, Hauptmann might have contributed to the text, Brecht is usually listed as sole author. The work offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world. It opened on 31 August 1928 at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. Songs from ''The Threepenny Opera'' have been widely covered and become standards, most notably "" ("The Ballad of Mack the Knife") and "" ("Pirate Jenny"). Background Origins In the winter of 1927–28, Elizabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's lover at the time, received a copy of Gay's play from friends in England and, fascinated by the female characters and its critique of the condition of the London poor, began translating it into German. Brecht at first took lit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gypsy (musical)
''Gypsy: A Musical Fable'' is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. It is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business mother." It follows the dreams and efforts of Rose to raise two daughters to perform onstage and casts an affectionate eye on the hardships of show business life. The character of Louise is based on Lee, and the character of June is based on Lee's sister, the actress June Havoc. The musical contains many songs that became popular standards, including "Everything's Coming Up Roses", "Together (Wherever We Go)", "Small World", " You Gotta Get a Gimmick", " Let Me Entertain You", "All I Need Is the Girl", and "Rose's Turn". It is frequently considered one of the crowning achievements of the mid-twentieth century's conventional musical theatre art form, often called the book musical. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' is a three-act play written by Tennessee Williams. An adaptation of his 1952 short story "Three Players of a Summer Game", the play was written by him between 1953 and 1955. One of Williams's more famous works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955. Set in the "plantation home in the Mississippi Delta" of Big Daddy Pollitt, a wealthy cotton tycoon, the play examines the relationships among members of Big Daddy's family, primarily between his son Brick and Maggie the "Cat", Brick's wife. ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' features motifs such as social mores, greed, superficiality, mendacity, decay, sexual desire, repression and death. Dialogue throughout is often written using nonstandard spelling intended to represent accents of the Southern United States. The original production starred Barbara Bel Geddes, Burl Ives and Ben Gazzara. The play was adapted as a motion picture of the same name in 1958, starring Elizabeth Ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fiddler On The Roof
''Fiddler on the Roof'' is a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein, set in the Pale of Settlement of Imperial Russia in or around 1905. It is based on ''Tevye and his Daughters'' (or ''Tevye the Dairyman'') and other tales by Sholem Aleichem. The story centers on Tevye, a milkman in the village of Anatevka, who attempts to maintain his Jewish religious and cultural traditions as outside influences encroach upon his family's lives. He must cope with the strong-willed actions of his three older daughters who wish to marry for love; their choices of husbands are successively less palatable for Tevye. An edict of the tsar eventually evicts the Jews from their village. The original Broadway production of the show, which opened in 1964, had the first musical theatre run in history to surpass 3,000 performances. ''Fiddler'' held the record for the longest-running Broadway musical for almost 10 years until '' Grease'' surpassed its run. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
