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15 unusual facts about Broadway


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.

Dick Gallagher

When Pigs Fly (1996), which was produced internationally after an extended run Off-Broadway, and won the 1996 Outer Critics Circle award for Best Musical Revue, and the Drama Desk Award for Best Off-Broadway musical

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.

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.

Millie the Model

A 1986 Off-Broadway musical, Dial "M" For Model by John Epperson, inspired by Millie, was staged at LaMaMa E.T.C. Not a direct adaptation, it featured, for instance, the female impersonator Lypsinka as Mannequin St. Claire, a character based on Chili.

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.

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.

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.

Windmill Performing Arts

Internationally, Windmill have performed in many countries, including in the US (including Off-Broadway), New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea.

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.


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.

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.

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.

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.

Effie Shannon

They appeared in numerous plays as a team predating by a generation the famous Lunt and Fontanne as a great Broadway romantic team.

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.

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.

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.

Henry V. Esmond

For the next Broadway production, Eliza Comes to Stay, Esmond travelled to New York to appear alongside his wife and the popular actor Leslie Banks.

Ina Balin

She also did summer stock, which led to roles on Broadway, and in 1959, she won the "Theatre World Award" for her performance in the Broadway comedy, A Majority of One, starring Gertrude Berg and Sir Cedric Hardwicke.

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".

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 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

John Boulter

Boulter appeared as the male lead - Freddie Flowerdew - in the musical production of "Ask Dad" in the Jeeves and Wooster episode, "Introduction on Broadway."

Karen Ziemba

She will return to Broadway in March 2014 to appear in the new musical adaptation of Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway as the character "Eden Brent", directed by Susan Stroman.

Larry Keith

In the 1961 Broadway production of My Fair Lady, Keith served as an understudy to Michael Allinson and played the role of Higgins some 50 times.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mel Welles

Jonathan Haze, who played Seymour in the original film, attended the opening, and Welles also received a visit from Martin P. Robinson, the designer of the Audrey II plant puppets used in the off-Broadway production (Robinson is also famous for his puppetry on Sesame Street).

Ming Cho Lee

Lee's first Broadway play as Scenic Designer was "The Moon Besieged" in 1962; he went on to design the sets for over 20 Broadway shows, including Mother Courage and Her Children, King Lear, The Glass Menagerie, The Shadow Box, and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.

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.

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812

The work received the 2013 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater, a 2013 Obie Award, and Best New Musical at the 2013 Off-Broadway Alliance Awards, and was nominated for five Drama Desk Awards.

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.

Northwest Vocal Project

They perform a wide variety of styles within a cappella music, including traditional barbershop, jazz, Broadway, and light classical.

Pudur, Ambattur

Bus services are there to Poonamallee (62), Avadi (62), Koyambedu, Vallalar Nagar (M248), Vandalur, Broadway, Tambaram (170L) and few private buses to Kanchipuram and Redhills.

Raoul Bhaneja

In January 2006 Bhaneja debuted in Hamlet (solo), a one-man version of William Shakespeare's Hamlet directed by Robert Ross Parker, which has been performed across Canada including an engagement at The National Arts Centre in the fall of 2013, in the United Kingdom at The Assembly Rooms as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art as well as in New York City on a number of occasions, including Off Broadway.

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.

Sakharam Binder

Its most recent performance in English was staged Off-Broadway as a part of the theatre company The Play Company's season starring Adam Alexi-Malle, Sarita Choudhury, Anna George, Sanjiv Jhaveri, Bernard White and directed by Maria Mileaf.

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

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 Love of Sunya

She chose to film another adaptation of Max Marcin and Charles Guernon's play as it had been filmed once before in 1919 starring Clara Kimball Young and was a resounding success on Broadway.

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 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

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).

Transcendence Theatre Company

Over 450 people participated in the project from Artistic Directors at the United States' top regional theatres like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage and Steppenwolf Theatre, to Broadway Producers to college students and professors.

Woodbridge, Connecticut

Maury Yeston, Tony Award-winning Broadway composer and lyricist.