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14 unusual facts about Broadway


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".

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.

John A. Willis

Theatre World, founded in 1945, covers the complete statistical and photographic Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and regional theatre seasons, major theatrical awards, obituaries, and the longest Broadway and Off-Broadway runs, among other categories.

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.

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.

Mark Jacoby

He has also performed widely in national tours, regional theatre and Off-Broadway.

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.

Roscoe Born

Over the last thirty years he has worked in Regional Theatre on both coasts, and Off Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway in New York.

Ruth Sobotka

She appeared in a number of Off-Broadway productions and was a member of the Seattle Repertory Theatre during their first season in 1963, playing Cordelia in King Lear.

Ryan Solle

Solle grew up in Broadway, North Carolina, played club soccer for the Fayetteville Force with whom he won three consecutive North Carolina state championships (1999, 2000 and 2001), and attended Lee County High School in Sanford, North Carolina, where he was selected as a 2003 Parade Magazine High School All American.

Steven Fischer

His international work includes documenting the first Irish National Tour of the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway play Coole Lady, a historical play about the life of Lady Gregory by noted playwright and W. B. Yeats biographer Sam McCready.

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.


1500 Broadway

The 1500 Broadway building is host to ABC Studios and Times Square Studios since 1985.

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."

Baron Bomburst

In Broadway versions the character has been played by Jonathan Freeman, Ed Dixon, and Marc Kudish.

Bill Hinnant

He attended the Yale School of Drama, but left after his sophomore year in 1958 to originate the role of the navigator in the Broadway play, No Time for Sergeants.

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.

Carl Benton Reid

He also appeared in several Shakespeare plays on Broadway, and in the original production of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, as Harry Slade.

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.

Corcoran, California

Whitley first intended the town be named "Otis", after Harrison Gray Otis of the Los Angeles Times, and streets as Otis, Sherman, Letts (the Broadway store) and Ross (after his son, Ross Whitley) show the connections.

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.

Gene Gabriel

The play transferred to Broadway in early 2003 and won three Tony's including best play for Greenberg and best director for Joe Mantello.

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".

Irwin Chanin

Irwin Salmon Chanin (29 October 1891 – 24 February 1988) was a Jewish American architect and real estate developer, best known for designing several Art Deco towers and Broadway theaters.

Jazz hands

Probably the biggest proponent of jazz hands was the late Bob Fosse, who incorporated them in nearly all of his Broadway and film musical choreography.

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 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.

Lester Rawlins

Born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, Rawlins appeared in off-Broadway productions of Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, Winterset, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, and Nightride, for which he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance.

Liam Aiken

Aiken made his stage debut in the Broadway play A Doll's House at the age of seven and his film debut playing Parker Posey's son in Henry Fool in the same year.

Lone Star Love

The musical started pre-Broadway try-outs at the 5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle, on September 8, 2007, and had an official run from September 19 through September 30.

Loring Smith

Smith's most memorable Broadway role came nearly three years later when he portrayed Horace Vandergelder in Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker, with Ruth Gordon as Dolly, Arthur Hill as Cornelius and Robert Morse as Barnaby.

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.

Megan Reinking

She has appeared on Broadway in multiple shows including Dracula, Lestat, the acclaimed revival of Hair, The People in the Picture and most recently Million Dollar Quartet at New World Stages, as well as featuring in the first season of Boardwalk Empire.

Night Hostess

Silver screen legend Katharine Hepburn (using the alias "Katharine Burns") made her Broadway debut in Night Hostess, playing the bit part of "Other Hostess".

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.

Red Clay Ramblers

The Red Clay Ramblers continued to perform steadily, including an Off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's Lie of the Mind in 1985-86.

Rosie Live

Jennifer Cody appeared in a skit featuring O'Donnell as "Officer Lockstock" and Cody as "Little Sally", a reference to the off-Broadway show Urinetown.

Sabina Spielrein

Both plays were preceded by the Off Broadway production of Sabina (1996) by Willy Holtzman.

Sanford Friedman

Friedman was also active off-Broadway as a writer and producer, collaborating with actor Howard Da Silva; author Ben Maddow; and playwright Arnold Perl.

Sattler

Sattler's, a regional department store chain headquartered at 998 Broadway, Buffalo, New York

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 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.

The Water Coolers

The actors in the revolving cast have appeared on and off Broadway, in television and radio commercials, in such TV shows as Law & Order, Rescue Me, General Hospital, All My Children, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and in major comedy clubs and concert halls across the country.

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.

Tommy Rall

On Broadway he danced to considerable acclaim as "Johnny" in Marc Blitzstein and Joseph Stein's 1959 musical Juno (based on Sean O'Casey's play Juno and the Paycock).

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.

Valisia LeKae

Previously, she was a swing and understudy in the Broadway productions of The Book of Mormon (2011), Ragtime (2009), and The Threepenny Opera (2006) and a performer in 110 in the Shade (2007).

Warren Casey

Producers Ken Waissman and Maxine Fox saw the show and suggested to the playwrights that it might work better as a musical, and told them if the creative partners were willing to rework it and they liked the end result, they would produce it off-Broadway.

Willy Russell

Bill Kenwright produced a revival in 1988 which has run for more than twenty years; the show was produced on Broadway in 1993.

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.