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15 unusual facts about Broadway


Bill Osco

In 2007, an Off-Broadway musical based on his Alice in Wonderland was staged at the Kirk Theatre in New York City.

Brett Leigh

Leigh began his career on the Broadway stage, playing the roles of "Riff" and "Action" in the musical West Side Story and "Tommy Djilas" in the The Music Man.

Additionally, he has appeared on stage in the critically acclaimed Broadway musical West Side Story.

Broadway, San Francisco

The street is home to several notable venues, such as the Showgirls theater, the Broadway Tunnel, Convent of the Sacred Heart High School and the City Lights Bookstore.

Douglass Watson

He was also an acclaimed actor on the New York stage, acting in several Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, including the 1952 Broadway revival of Desire Under the Elms by Eugene O'Neill.

Girl Crazy

An abridged version of Girl Crazy was presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC October 2–5, 2008 as part of their Broadway: Three Generations production.

Jobsite Theater

In 2010, Jobsite and Popp teamed up to create Pericles: Prince of Tires, a modern punk-rock musical based on Shakespeare's Pericles - Prince of Tyre, which would then tour to the Off-Broadway theater HERE Arts Space.

Joe Kodeih

director from the Arab world to perform on an Off-Broadway stage at Lamama ETC in 2003 with a play titled The Middle Beast.

Kathleen Widdoes

In 2002, she received the Lucille Lortel Award (Featured Actress) for her work in the play Franny's Way Off-Broadway.

Lamspringe Abbey

The monks, after a period of dispersal, reformed as a community at Broadway in Worcestershire between 1828 and 1841, after which they were spread among other houses, although the community was never formally disbanded.

Part of Your World

Originally recorded by American actress and singer Jodi Benson in her film role as Ariel, "Part of Your World" is a Broadway-style ballad in which the film's heroine, a mermaid, expresses her desire to become human.

The Broadway musical version of the song is sung by Jodi Benson, Sierra Boggess which appears on the Original Broadway Cast album.

Robert Lorick

In 1972, he made his debut as a lyricist with the Off-Broadway musical Hark! at the Mercer-O'Casey Theatre.

Willard Dyson

He is also very active on the local jazz scene in New York City, playing at local clubs as well as in various Broadway and Off-Broadway shows.

Yarbrough and Peoples

More recently, in 2009, they both appeared in the Off-Broadway musical, Blind Lemon Blues, at the York Theatre, New York, where Cavin Yarbrough portrayed Lead Belly.


Alan Furlan

Born Aleardo Furlan in Farla, in the North Friuli region of Italy, Furlan acted in films in Europe and the United States, on Broadway and in commercials.

Alex Hitz

After selling the restaurant and inspired by his step-father’s 1991 Kennedy Center Honor, Hitz moved to New York City and co-produced several Broadway shows, including Triumph of Love (1997) and the revival of The Sound of Music (1998), as well as the revival of On the Town in Central Park with the New York Public Theater.

Antonio Meneses Saillant

Now a filmmaker and innovator he has produced the fantasy thriller, The Ascension, starring Corbin Bernsen and a romantic dark comedy entitled Heterosexuals, starring J. Robert Spencer from Broadway's Musical "Jersey Boys."

Arnold Moss

He played Prospero in Margaret Webster's 1945 production of Shakespeare's The Tempest for a combined total of 124 performances, the longest run of the play in Broadway history.

Arthur Loesser

Arthur Loesser was the half-brother of Broadway composer Frank Loesser.

Caissie Levy

She later opened the Broadway production reprising her role as Molly Jensen along with Richard Fleeshman, her co-star in the West End production as Sam Wheat.

Carolyn George

She started her professional dance career in 1952 in Broadway musicals and joined New York City Ballet (NYCB) on its European tour that year in George Balanchine's Swan Lake.

Cecil Parker

Parker was also the original Charles Condomine in the West End production of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, a role subsequently played on Broadway by Clifton Webb and in the 1945 film by Rex Harrison.

Colin Bates

In November 2005 at preliminary auditions for Billy in the U.S., he went to the audition, being 15 when the cut-off age was 14; but director Stephen Daldry, realizing Colin would be too old for the Broadway production but also realizing his potential, brought Bates to London a few weeks later with his family to start rehearsals and debuted on March 13, 2006.

David Rapkin

Rapkin has designed sound on Broadway for Steaming by Nell Dunn, On Golden Pond by Ernest Thompson, The Curse Of An Aching Heart by William Alfred, The Wake Of Jamie Foster by Beth Henley and Off-Broadway for Playwrights Horizons and The Phoenix Theater.

Donald O'Connor

O'Connor appeared in the short-lived Bring Back Birdie on Broadway in 1981, and continued to make film and television appearances into the 1990s, including the Robin Williams film Toys as the president of a toy-making company.

Donna Kane

She has won acclaim for her performances in the 1995 U.S. tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat  with Donny Osmond, Les Misérables  on Broadway (1993), and as Maria in West Side Story  in Vienna and Munich (1995).

Doug Haining

He has performed professionally since 1974, backing national artists such as Steve Allen, Don Rickles, Bob Hope, and others, and Broadway shows such as West Side Story, Cats, A Chorus Line and many others.

Erminie

The Broadway, New York production was extraordinarily successful, opening at the Casino Theatre on 10 May 1886 and running for 571 performances.

Florence Mills

Mills became well-known as a result of her role in the successful Broadway musical Shuffle Along (1921) at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre (barely on Broadway), one of the events credited with beginning the Harlem Renaissance, as well acclaimed reviews in London, Paris, Ostend, Liverpool, and other European venues.

Frank McGlynn, Sr.

By 1896 though, he was appearing on stage at the Casino Theatre performing in The Gold Bug, a burlesque musical comedy written by Glen MacDonough with music from Victor Herbert.

Graciela Rivera

In 1945, she was given the role of Adele in the musical "Rosalinda", a Broadway version of Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus.

Helen Burns

Burns' Broadway stage credits include The Inspector General, There's One in Every Marriage (1957), The First Gentleman, at the Belasco Theatre in New York City, and Catsplay, for the latter of which, she received a Drama Desk Award nomination.

Henderson Forsythe

He created the role of Andrew Jorgensen in the off-broadway play Other People's Money .

Ida Straus

Alma Cuervo (1997) (Titanic) (Broadway Musical) When Ida decided to stay with her husband, they sang the song "Still."

Ira Gershwin

With George he wrote more than a dozen Broadway shows, featuring songs such as "I Got Rhythm", "Embraceable You", "The Man I Love" and "Someone to Watch Over Me".

Jewel and Blaire Restaneo

Jewel & Blaire also had the great opportunity of working with Erin Brockovich on ABC's Challenge America TV Special with other Broadway kids, Ashley Rose Orr, Danielle Brown, Jennifer Brown, and Shadoe Brandt.

Joe DiPietro

2003 The Thing About Men (Off-Broadway) (book, lyrics) (musical version of the German comedy film by Doris Dörrie, Männer... (Men...), from 1985) with music by Jimmy Roberts

Joe Langworth

From 1990 - 2005, Langworth appeared in a number of major Broadway musicals, including the closing company of the original production of A Chorus Line, the Tony Award-winning production of Ragtime with Audra McDonald, Marin Mazzie and Brian Stokes Mitchell, and the 2001 revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies.

John B. Snook

Snook's 620 Broadway (1858) – called the "Little Cary Building" for its resemblance to the Cary Building by Gamaliel King and John Kellum (1856) – was fronted with cast iron from Badger's Architectural Iron Works.

Jump, Little Children

Jazz dancer Clarice Ordaz and Broadway dancer Jess LeProtto performed a contemporary routine choreographed to the song by Stacey Tookey.

Leon Ichaso

He first made his mark with the independently made Spanish-language feature, El Super (1979), based on an Off-Broadway play about an immigrant building superintendent trying to make his way in New York City.

Linda Lee Thomas

A one-woman show about Linda's life with Porter, Love, Linda: The Life Of Mrs. Cole Porter, starring jazz vocalist Stevie Holland, ran Off-Broadway at the York Theatre, in 2013.

Long Wharf Theatre

More than 30 Long Wharf productions have been transferred to Broadway or Off-Broadway, including Durango, Wit, (winner of a Pulitzer Prize), The Shadow Box (Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award/Best Play winner), Hughie, American Buffalo, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Quartermaine's Terms (Obie Award winner for best play), The Gin Game (Pulitzer Prize winner), The Changing Room, The Contractor and Streamers.

Lucienne Boyer

In 1927, Boyer sang at a concert by the great star Félix Mayol where she was seen by the American impresario Lee Shubert who immediately offered her a contract to come to Broadway.

Mary Testa

She returned to Broadway in July, 2007 in the musical-theater remake of the 1980 film Xanadu for which she received a Drama Desk Award nomination.

Maurice Manson

Maurice Manson (January 31, 1913, in Toronto, Canada – September 21, 2002) was a character actor who appeared in several film and Broadway productions.

Mixed Company of Yale

Bellamy Young '92, stage and film actress. Starred in This Life and Merrily We Roll Along on Broadway and currently plays Mellie Grant on the ABC show Scandal.

Nick Basile

His acting credits include roles in the Off-Broadway production of Tony n' Tina's Wedding, H.P. Lovecraft (LoveCracked! The Movie) and has appeared in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing at the Gene Frankel Theatre in NYC.

North Carolina Theatre

Several Broadway veterans are said to have started their careers at North Carolina Theatre, including Clay Aiken, Sharon Lawrence, Lauren Kennedy, and Beth Leavel.

Nottingham Trent University, School of Art and Design

In the field of art and design, NTU has links with a wide range of companies, professional bodies and institutions on an international level, including Apple, Arcadia Group, Broadway, Fashion Institute of Technology, Marks & Spencer, Ralsey Group Limited, Association of Illustrators, Sony, and Sophie Stellar.

Paul Dietzel

During the first game of the 1968 season, Dietzel heard the school's band play the Broadway show tune "Step to the Rear" and decided that it should be the school's new fight song, and proceeded to write a new set of lyrics to the tune.

Prince of Wales Theatre

The theatre played more musical comedies beginning in 1903, including the Frank Curzon and Isabel Jay hits Miss Hook of Holland (1907, its matinee version, Little Miss Hook of Holland was performed by children for children), King of Cadonia (1908), and The Balkan Princess (1910), and later the World War I hits, Broadway Jones (1914), Carminetta (1917), and Yes, Uncle! (1917).

Shi Pei Pu

The incident became the basis of David Henry Hwang's 1988 play M. Butterfly, in which B. D. Wong played Song Liling, a Chinese opera singer and spy based on Shi Pei Pu in the original Broadway production of the play.

Summer Shaw

Summer considered asking him to stay,before a heart-to-heart with Sarah,who asked her "what if you landed a part in a Broadway show?" "I'd ask him to come with me" "For him to drop everything to follow your dreams, when you wouldn't let him follow his?"

The Great Divorce

In 2007 the Magis Theatre Company of New York City presented their adaptation in an off-Broadway run at Theatre 315 in the Theatre District with music by award-winning composer Elizabeth Swados and puppets by Ralph Lee.

The Mary Tyler Moore Hour

Moore announced plans to return in a new sitcom in the fall of 1980, but instead turned to Broadway, where she starred in a revival of Whose Life Is It Anyway? (winning a special 1980 Tony Award for her performance of a role originally played by Tom Conti), and then went back to Hollywood, where she played the emotionally crippled mother in the acclaimed film Ordinary People, directed by Robert Redford.

The Old Glory

The Old Glory was produced off-Broadway in New York City at the American Place Theatre in 1964 in the company's first production which starred Frank Langella, Roscoe Lee Brown, and Lester Rawlins and won five Obie Awards in 1965 including an award for "Best American Play" as well as awards for Langella, Brown and Rawlins.

The School for Scandal

John Gielgud played Charles Surface in a legendary season at the Queens Theatre in 1937 and repeated the role under his own direction in a 1963 Broadway production.

The Shubert Organization

The company was reorganized in 1973, and as of 2008 owned or operated seventeen Broadway theaters in New York City, an off-Broadway theater — the Little Shubert — and the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia.

The Wabbit Who Came to Supper

The title of the short is a reference to the 1942 Warner Brothers film version of the 1939 George S. Kaufman Broadway comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner, in which an overbearing house-guest threatens to take over the lives of a small-town family.

Tiger Rose

Tiger Rose (play), American theatrical production written by Willard Mack and produced by David Belasco for star Lenore Ulric; Broadway opening in October 1917 at Lyceum Theatre; closed in September 1918 after 384 performances

To Love You More

Lea Michele performed the song in season 4 finale of the hit TV series Glee as her character Rachel Berry had her final callback for the Broadway revival of Funny Girl.

Tony Azito

Azito's best-known role, however, came in yet a third production for NYSF: as the Sergeant of Police in the 1980 Broadway revival of The Pirates of Penzance, starring Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline.

Wilson Jermaine Heredia

He starred alongside Harvey Fierstein (who won a Tony Award for writing the Book of the musical) as Albin/Zaza and Broadway veteran Christopher Sieber as Georges.