My Fair Lady is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story, based on the 1938 film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phonetician, so that she may pass as a lady. Despite his cynical nature and difficulty understanding women, Higgins grows attached to her.
Thomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the first half of the 20th century. His enduring reputation rests largely on his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel (1929), and on the short fiction that appeared during the last years of his life. He was one of the first masters of autobiographical fiction, and along with William Faulkner, he is considered one of the most important authors of the Southern Renaissance within the American literary canon. He is North Carolina's most famous writer.
The Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical is an honor presented at the Tony Awards, a ceremony established in 1947 as the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, to actresses for quality leading roles in a musical play, whether a new production or a revival. The awards are named after Antoinette Perry, an American actress who died in 1946.
Jo Van Fleet was an American stage, film, and television actress. During her long career, which spanned over four decades, she often played characters much older than her actual age. Van Fleet won a Tony Award in 1954 for her performance in the Broadway production The Trip to Bountiful, and the next year she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in East of Eden.
Hugh Emrys Griffith was a Welsh actor. Described by BFI Screenonline as a "wild-eyed, formidable character player", Griffith appeared in over 100 theatre, film, and television productions in a career that spanned over 40 years. He was the second-ever Welsh-born actor to win an Academy Award, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Ben-Hur (1959), with an additional nomination for Tom Jones (1963).
Gas Light is a 1938 thriller play, set in 1880s London, written by the British novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton. Hamilton's play is a dark tale of a marriage based on deceit and trickery, and a husband committed to driving his wife insane in order to steal from her.
Walking Happy is a musical with music by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn and book by Roger O. Hirson and Ketti Frings. The story is based on the 1916 play Hobson's Choice by Harold Brighouse. The musical was nominated for six Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
John Guare is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation.
George White's Scandals were a long-running string of Broadway revues produced by George White that ran from 1919–1939, modeled after the Ziegfeld Follies. The "Scandals" launched the careers of many entertainers, including W. C. Fields, the Three Stooges, Ray Bolger, Helen Morgan, Ethel Merman, Ann Miller, Eleanor Powell, Bert Lahr and Rudy Vallée. Louise Brooks, Dolores Costello, Barbara Pepper, and Alice Faye got their show business start as lavishly dressed chorus girls strutting to the "Scandal Walk". Much of George Gershwin's early work appeared in the 1920–24 editions of Scandals. The Black Bottom, danced by Ziegfeld Follies star Ann Pennington and Tom Patricola, touched off a national dance craze.
The Ethel Barrymore Theatre is a Broadway theater at 243 West 47th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1928, it was designed by Herbert J. Krapp in the Elizabethan, Mediterranean, and Adam styles for the Shubert family. The theater, named in honor of actress Ethel Barrymore, has 1,058 seats and is operated by the Shubert Organization. Both the facade and the auditorium interior are New York City landmarks.
Nola Fairbanks was an American actress. She was also the aunt of actor Matthew Modine.
Angel is a Broadway musical that opened at the Minskoff Theatre in New York on May 4, 1978. It was based on Ketti Frings’ Pulitzer Prize winning 1957 theatrical adaptation of Thomas Wolfe's best-selling 1929 novel, Look Homeward, Angel.
Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life is a 1929 novel by Thomas Wolfe. It is Wolfe's first novel, and is considered a highly autobiographical American coming-of-age story. The character of Eugene Gant is generally believed to be a depiction of Wolfe himself. The novel briefly recounts Eugene's father's early life, but primarily covers the span of time from Eugene's birth in 1900 to his definitive departure from home at the age of 19. The setting is a fictionalization of his home town of Asheville, North Carolina, called Altamont in the novel.
Richard D. Lineback is an American actor who appeared in the films Speed, Twister and Varsity Blues. He played Deputy Dodd in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.
A Moon for the Misbegotten is a play in four acts by Eugene O'Neill. The play is a sequel to O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, with the Jim Tyrone character as an older version of Jamie Tyrone. He began drafting the play late in 1941, set it aside after a few months and returned to it a year later, completing the text in 1943 – his final work, as his failing health made it physically impossible for him to write. The play premiered on Broadway in 1957 and has had four Broadway revivals, plus a West End engagement.
Ketti Frings was an American writer, playwright, and screenwriter who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1958.
November is a play written by David Mamet which premiered on Broadway in 2008.
Kermit Bloomgarden was an American theatrical producer. He was an accountant before he began producing plays on Broadway including Death of a Salesman (1949), The Diary of Anne Frank (1955), The Music Man (1957), Look Homeward, Angel (1957), and Equus (1973).
The Asolo Repertory Theatre is located in Sarasota, Florida. It was originally a summers-only operation called The Asolo Comedy Festival. In 1963 it began to be referred to as The Asolo Theatre Festival. Starting in the fall of 1966, when it went into year-round operation, the name was changed to The Asolo Theater Company. Starting in 2006, it became The Asolo Repertory Theater, familiarly known as The Asolo Rep.
Florence E. "Flo" Sundstrom was an American actress who had an active career in theatre, television, and film. A prominent character actress on Broadway from 1936-1959, she notably created the roles of Bella in the world premiere of Anita Loos's Happy Birthday in 1946, Bessie in the world premiere of Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo in 1951, and Mrs. Marie "Fatty" Pert in Ketti Frings's Look Homeward, Angel in 1957. She made her film debut as Flora in the film adaptation of The Rose Tattoo in 1955, and thereafter remained active as a character actress in American television and film into the 1990s. She was a main cast member in the 1955–1956 season of The Life of Riley, portraying a new neighbor of the Riley family.
