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39 unusual facts about Broadway theatre


Arthur Berthelet

Arthur Berthelet (1879–1949) was an American movie director who went from directing stage plays (several on Broadway) to directing silent movies.

Athalia Ponsell Lindsley

Athalia Ponsell Lindsley (July 25, 1917 – January 23, 1974) was a former American model, Broadway dancer, political activist and television personality on the show Winner Take All.

Bojoura

Bojoura scored her first hit in 1967 with the Kooymans ballad "Everybody's Day," and in 1969 charted once more in Europe with her version of the song "Frank Mills" from the Broadway musical Hair.

Consumer Rapport

Vocals were by Frank Floyd, who was a pit singer in the Broadway musical The Wiz.

Dorothy Otnow Lewis

In 2004 Lewis alleged that British playwright Bryony Lavery's hit Broadway play Frozen, particularly the character of 'Agnetha', a psychiatrist sent to evaluate a serial killer, was based on thematic similarities with her book Guilty by Reason of Insanity and verbatim extracts from a New Yorker article about her by Malcolm Gladwell.

Ed Grimley

Ed Grimley made a brief onstage appearance, triangle in hand, in the 2006 Broadway show Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me.

Edward Buzzell

He appeared on Broadway, and was hired to star in the 1929 film version of George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones with Alice Day.

Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars

As an exploitation film tie in, Universal had the feature's title changed to Mars Attacks the World, and a week after the Welles broadcast, opened it at a Broadway theater as a major premiere event.

Fly So Free

A grandson of U.S. Racing Hall of Fame inductee Damascus, Fly So Free was owned by New York City Broadway theatre producer and music publishing company owner Tommy Valando and his wife Elizabeth.

Ford Cougar 406

In 1963, the Cougar was used in Frederick Brisson's film version of his Broadway comedy hit "Under the Yum Yum Tree".

Harold Orlob

Harold Orlob (3 June 1883 – 25 June 1982) was a native of Logan, Utah who became a major composer and lyricist for Broadway theatre productions.

I Guess I'll Miss the Man

The song has appeared in the musical Pippin since its original Broadway introduction in 1972 (as it was partially financed by Motown at the time), and is sung by the show's character Catherine.

Imogen Carpenter

Imogen Carpenter, born Mary Imogene Carpenter on February 2, 1912 in Hot Springs, Arkansas, died March 24, 1993 in Los Angeles California, was a musician, composer, music lecturer, and Broadway actress.

Jennifer Nettles

In an interview on Fox News with Martha MacCullum, Nettles expressed interest in appearing in a Broadway play, stating in particular that she would like to play the role of Elphaba in Wicked.

Kenneth Thorpe Rowe

According to an article in Michigan Today, Rowe helped Arthur Miller in making his first steps in Broadway by connecting him with people Rowe knew personally in the theater world.

Lauren Lucas

Lucas also contributed to the Broadway adaptation of the film Urban Cowboy, and one of her cuts for the play was nominated for a Tony award.

Mari Yaguchi

From May 25, 2007 to June 6, 2007, Yaguchi performed in Damn Yankees, a popular 1955 Broadway musical, at the Tokyo Aoyama Theater.

Masterworks Broadway

Masterworks Broadway is a record label created by the consolidation of Sony Music Entertainment's Broadway theatre music divisions, Columbia Broadway Masterworks and RCA Victor Records' Broadway series.

Max Stafford-Clark

He returned to work and directed the production of The Overwhelming on Broadway in October 2007, as well as continuing to direct for Out of Joint.

Monster Mini Golf

Patrick was the founder of a sound/lighting/theatrical production company that provided sound and lighting for numerous Broadway theater productions and large concert tours.

N'Versity

She later became a lead singer of a rock band as well as playing the role of young Nala in the Broadway edition of The Lion King.

Nobiz Like Shobiz

The horse was given the name Nobiz Like Shobiz by his show business owner Elizabeth J. Valando whose late husband Tommy Valando was a Broadway theatre producer and owner of an important music publishing business.

Paree, Paree

Four of the songs in this short were first used in Porter's 1929 Broadway musical Fifty Million Frenchmen, then in the 1931 film adaptation of the same name, which was filmed in Technicolor.

Presidio Brass

The group's repertoire is made up of classical and commercial music transcriptions, including selections from composers Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber and George Gershwin to popular songs from jazz legend Dave Brubeck, the rock band Queen and the Broadway smash hit, West Side Story.

Robert Shaw Chorale

During its existence the Robert Shaw Chorale became arguably the best-known and most widely-respected professional choral organization in the United States, with repertoire ranging from J.S. Bach to folk music and Broadway theatre tunes.

Rose McClendon

Rose McClendon born Rose Virginia Scott McClendon, (August 27, 1884 – July 12, 1936) was a leading African-American Broadway actress of the 1920s.

Soul of Shaolin

Soul of Shaolin was a theatrical event presented on Broadway by Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment to coincide with the celebration of the Lunar New Year in January 2009.

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?"

Tamanend

In 1794, Ann Julia Hatton's tremendously popular "Tammany: The Indian Chief" premiered on Broadway.

Terazije Theatre

Theatre on Terazije (Serbian: Позориште на Теразијама / Pozorište na Terazijama) is a Broadway-style theatre in the Terazije area of Belgrade, Serbia.

Terry Riordan

Riordan was also in the 2007 Broadway revival, The Ritz.

The Passions of Girls Aloud

Walsh then went to New York City to practice with a Broadway vocal coach, as well as a coach who helps her act through facial expressions and body language.

The Trapp Family

The Trapp Family was the inspiration for the even more fictionalized Broadway musical The Sound of Music and its highly successful 1965 film version.

Theodor Mommsen

Fellow Nobel Laureate (1925) Bernard Shaw cited Mommsen's interpretation of the last First Consul of the Republic, Julius Caesar, as one of the inspirations for his 1898 (1905 on Broadway) play, Caesar and Cleopatra.

Thomas Coram

The book was adapted into a play by Helen Edmundson, which had its world premiere at the Royal National Theatre in London in November 2005 and recently had a brief run on Broadway.

United Airlines Flight 624

Among the passengers were Broadway theatre impresario Earl Carroll and his girlfriend, actress Beryl Wallace; Henry L. Jackson, men's fashion editor of Collier's Weekly magazine and co-founder of Esquire Magazine; and Venita Varden Oakie, the former wife of actor Jack Oakie.

William C. Conner

In a 1981 decision later reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a case brought by Harpo Marx's widow Susan Fleming, Conner ruled that the producers of A Day in Hollywood / A Night in the Ukraine had improperly used the Marx Brothers characters in their Broadway theatre production and that the publicity rights of the comedians, even after their deaths, overrode the First Amendment claims of the show's creators.

WLS-FM

WENR-FM then began simulcasting WLS, and later adopted its own separate programming formats (which included classical and Broadway theatre show tunes) for part of the day.

Zombie Broadway

It tells the story of a zombie outbreak in New York City that can only be quelled by the song and dance of the Broadway stage.


Angela Bettis

In addition to her work in film, Bettis also starred in two Broadway productions: The Father in 1996 with Frank Langella, and as Abigail Williams in a 1996 production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible alongside Liam Neeson and Laura Linney.

Broadway Theatre, Catford

Since 2001's production of Ben Elton's Popcorn the studio has hosted numerous productions including Cabaret, Trainspotting, A Clockwork Orange and their critically acclaimed take on Frank McGuinness's Someone Who'll Watch Over Me.

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.

Cristin Milioti

Cristin Milioti (born August 16, 1985) is an American actress known for her work in Broadway theatre productions such as That Face, Stunning and the Tony-winning Once.

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.

Dick Kleiner

Kleiner wrote about Broadway for fifteen years, then switched to covering Hollywood in 1964.

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.

Frances Scott Fitzgerald

Her show Onward and Upward with the Arts was considered for a Broadway run by director David Merrick.

Gavin Lee

Gavin Lee (born 15 October 1971) is an English actor who starred as Bert on Broadway in the musical Mary Poppins.

Gertrude Berg

She wrote practically all the show's radio episodes (more than 5000) plus a Broadway adaptation, Me and Molly (1948).

Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts

In 2005 the Academy was selected by the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization to be the first high school in the United States to perform the long-running Broadway Musical Cats.

Helen Lawson

Lawson is described as having been a very successful Broadway star for many years (Lawson is said to be based on the real-life Broadway actress Ethel Merman).

How Now, Dow Jones

The original Broadway production opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on December 7, 1967 and closed on June 15, 1968 after 220 performances and 19 previews.

Hugo Winterhalter

At Kapp he recorded a handful of albums including The Best of '64 and its follow-up, The Big Hits of 1965, before leaving the label to work on Broadway.

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".

Jackson Krall

Through the years Jackson's instruments have found their way into the hands of the world's greatest drummers and percussionists, and can be heard on recordings as well as in live performance by many bands, orchestras, and the most popular Broadway and Off-Broadway shows like "Lion King" and "Blue Man Group".

James Hayden

Apart from starring on Broadway and in various movies, he is perhaps best known for playing Patrick 'Patsy' Goldberg in the 1984 film Once Upon a Time in America.

John C. Rice

John C. Rice (ca. 1858, Sullivan County, New York – June 5, 1915, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was an American born Broadway stage actor who is credited with performing the first onscreen kiss with May Irwin in 1896 for the Thomas Edison film company film The Kiss.

John Heilpern

He has also worked as Peter Hall’s assistant director on Tamburlaine at the National Theatre of Great Britain in 1976, and when he went to live in New York in 1980, he subsequently worked on Broadway as a librettist for Michael Bennett (of A Chorus Line).

John Pascal

His works included collaboration on the book for the Broadway musical George M!, which was also released on NBC, and on scripts for the ABC Daytime soap opera The Young Marrieds.

North Carolina School of the Arts Summer Performance Festival

In addition to playing in orchestras and on stages worldwide, recent alumni have won the Metropolitan Opera's National Finalist award, performed on Broadway, played in the Grammy orchestra, acted in films and TV series and joined professional dance companies like Limon, Pilobolus, and American Ballet Theatre.

Orlando Theatre Project

Most of the Orlando Theatre Project's productions are contemporary plays which have been previously been produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in the United Kingdom or in regional theatres in the United States.

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.

Peter Feller

Peter Feller is a Tony Award winning American theatrical set builder who worked primarily on Broadway.

Ralph Carter

Carter is best known for his work as a child and teenager, both in the Broadway musical Raisin (based on the Lorraine Hansberry drama A Raisin in the Sun) and as the character Michael Evans, the youngest member of the Evans family, on the 1970s sitcom Good Times.

Raymond Bailey

He appeared in four Broadway plays, as Howard Haines in Last Stop (1944), playing an unknown man in The Bat (1953), A.J. Alexander in Sing Till Tomorrow (1953), and Captain Randolph Southard in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1954–1955), which starred Henry Fonda.

Samuel E. Wright

Wright was nominated for a Tony Award in 1984 for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance in The Tap Dance Kid, and again in 1998 for Best Featured Actor in a Musical as the original lead actor for Mufasa in The Lion King, the Broadway version of Disney's animated classic of the same name.

Shanelle Workman

When she was younger she appeared with fellow soap actress Eden Riegel in the Broadway production of Les Misérables.

Smokey Joe's Cafe: Direct from Broadway

Smokey Joe's Cafe: Direct from Broadway is a 2000 film of the Broadway production of the musical revue Smokey Joe's Cafe as captured live in performance on Broadway featuring the show's final Broadway cast.

Susan H. Schulman

In 1998, Schulman had just mounted a well-received Broadway revival of The Sound of Music when she was contacted by Andrew Lloyd Webber, who asked her to adapt a scaled-down production of Sunset Boulevard for a US tour starring Petula Clark.

The 49th Cousin

The work premiered on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre on October 26, 1960 and closed after 102 performances on January 21, 1961.

The Honeymoon Machine

The Honeymoon Machine is a 1961 film directed by Richard Thorpe and starring Steve McQueen, Brigid Bazlen, Jim Hutton, Paula Prentiss, Jack Mullaney, and Dean Jagger, based on the 1959 Broadway play The Golden Fleecing by Lorenzo Semple Jr..

The Last Warning

It was adapted from the 1922 Broadway melodrama mystery The Last Warning written by Thomas F. Fallon based on the story The House of Fear by Wadsworth Camp, the father of the writer Madeleine L'Engle.

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.

They Just Had to Get Married

The screenplay was written by Gladys Lehman, H.M. Walker, and an uncredited Preston Sturges, based on the Broadway play A Pair of Silk Stockings (1914) by Cyril Harcourt.

Tibor Kozma

He began his career there working as a conductor and vocal coach for Broadway productions, notably conducting Porgy and Bess and Eva Le Gallienne's production of Alice and Wonderland.

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.

Uptown... It's Hot!

It's Hot! was a 1986 Broadway play created, directed, choreographed by and starring Maurice Hines.

William Pierson

Pierson, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York originally played the role of Marko in the original Broadway production of Stalag 17, and was tapped by director Billy Wilder for the role in the 1953 motion picture production.

Zvi Kolitz

He later moved to the United States and was co-producer of Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy, one of the first plays to challenge the Vatican's silence during the Holocaust, which ran on Broadway, amid considerable controversy, for nine months in 1964.