Belasco Theater
111 W 44th Street
between 6th & 7th Avenues
Completed 1907
Architect George Keister
Theaters became smaller after the
turn of the century; many people who were dependent on less
expensive, upper-balcony seats for their weekly entertainment
turned to the new, even cheaper, movie houses. Impresarios such as
David Belasco saw this as an opportunity to present drama in
intimate spaces. The auditorium's drawing-room theme is carried
out in a Tiffany-bedecked neo-Georgian style, complemented by 18
Everett Shin murals surmounting the proscenium. Reinforcing the
'at home' style is the domesticity of the colonial revival
exterior. In contrast to the apparent intimate simplicity of the
theater, Belasco was a 'man of the century,' incorporating a new
sophisticated lighting system, an elevator stage and a special
effects studio behind the scenes
The theater's premier production as
the Stuyvesant, on October 16, 1907, featured William Warfield and
Antoinette Perry in A Grand Army Man. Belasco renamed the
theater for himself in 1910. Except for a brief span in the early
'50s when it was used as a radio studio by NBC, the Belasco has
remained a legitimate Broadway house
1908 William J Hurlbut's drama The
Fighting Hope stars Blanche Bates
1909 Frances Starr stars in The Easiest
Way, by Eugene Walter
1914 Leo Ditrichstein and Laura Hope Crews
star in Ferenc Molnar's comedy The Phantom Rival
1915 Arthur Byron and Martha Hedman are on
the boards in the smash comedy hit The Boomerang. It runs
for 522 performances
1916 Guy Bolton wrote the lyrics to go
with George Middleton's music for David Belasco's production of Polly
With a Past
1919 People hear a lot more of George
Abbott as a director in future years, for now he's on the boards
with Jeanne Eagels in John Hubble's comedy Daddies
1920 Who's Frederick Bickel? He makes his
debut in the strangely-named drama Deburau. He'll become a
star as Fredric March
1921 Kiki, the Belasco-written
comedy, stars Lenore Ulric
1922 David Warfield is back at the Belasco
in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice
1926 Lenore Ulric takes a dramatic turn in
Edward Sheldon's and Charles McArthur's Lulu Belle
1927 Hit the Deck! Vincent Youmans
wrote the music for this musical. It includes Louise Groody,
Charles King and a young Brian Donlevy in the cast
1929 Humphrey Bogart appears with Mildred
McCoy and Harlan Briggs in It's a Wise Child, a comedy by
Laurence Johnson
1935 Clifford Odet's Awake and Sing
features Stella Adler, Morris Carnovsky and John Garfield
1935 All the Dead End Kids are here for Dead
End, which includes Sidney Lumet in the cast and features Dan
Duryea's Broadway debut
1937 If you're going to make a Broadway
debut, you may as well make it with a cast that includes Morris
Carnovsky, Frances Farmer, Luther Adler, Lee J Cobb, Howard Da
Silva and Phoebe Brand. Karl Malden does just that in Clifford
Odet's Golden Boy
1940 John Barrymore has been away from
Broadway for awhile, 18 years in fact. He returns to star in the
Catherine Tunney-Jerry Horwin comedy My Dear Children
1948 As The Madwoman of Chaillot,
Martita Hunt receives a Tony
for outstanding performance in a play
1953 The Solid Gold Cadillac is
playwright George S Kaufman's last Broadway enterprise
1955 Throw Jayne Mansfield and Tina Louise
together with Orson Bean and Walter Matthau and you get George
Axelrod's comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
1957 Noel Coward writes. Noel Coward
directs. Noel Coward stars in Nude with Violin, along with
Morris Carnovsky
1960 Tad Mosel's Pulitzer Prize winning All
the Way Home features Colleen Dewhurst, Arthur Hill and
Lillian Gish. Dewhurst receives her first Tony
for this performance
1966 Beryl Reid is Tony's
best actress for her performance in Frank Marcus' The Killing
of Sister George
1975 Folks aren't lining up at midnight to
throw toast. They aren't lining up at all to see Tim Curry in 45
performances of The Rocky Horror Show
1995 The play's title is one word: Hamlet.
The Tony
title is: best performance by a leading actor in a play. It goes
to Ralph Fiennes
1997 Anthony Page directs Janet McTeer and
Owen Teale in this Tony-winning
revival of Ibsen's The Doll House. They all receive Tonys
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