Today's Birthdays 2/29 - Happy Sadie Hawkin's Day!


Posted by: do_re_milla 09:58 pm EST 02/28/08

Gioacchino Rossini 02/29/1792 - Nov 13, 1868 composer - The Barber of Seville; Boutique Fantasque; Once Over Lightly; Those Were the Days

William A. Wellman 2/29/1896 - 12/9/1975 Academy Award-winning screenwriter: A Star is Born [1937]; director: The High and the Mighty, Battleground, A Star is Born [1937], Westward the Women

Dinah Shore 2/29/1916 - Feb 24, 1994) performer - tv's & film's (Emmy Award-winning singer, entertainer: The Dinah Shore Show [1951], Dinah’s Place [1970]; Daytime Emmy: Dinah’s Place [1970], Dinah! [1974]; The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, Oh, God!, The Belle of the Yukon (Gypsy Rose Lee); Thank Your Lucky Stars; Up In Arms (Danny Kaye)

James Mitchell 02/29/1920 performer - 3 Penny Opera (off-bway); origs. Bloomer Girl; Brigadoon; Paint Your Wagon; First Impressions (Polly Bergen, Hermione Gingold, Farley Granger, Stuart Damon, Phyllis Newman); Carnival!; Mack & Mabel; tv's & film's All My Children; The Band Wagon; The Toast of New Orleans

Joss Ackland 2/29/1928 performer - 1958's Twelfth Night, Hamlet & King Henry V; tv's & film's White Mischief; The Hunt for Red October, The House that Dripped Blood, The Sicilian, A Woman Named Jackie); Midsomer Murders; How About You; Prisoners of the Sun

Reri Grist 2/29/1932 performer - West Side Story; Shinbone Alley; The Barrier; Jeb; The Wisteria Trees

Phyllis Frelich 02/29/1944 hearing-impaired actress - Prymate; 2003 Big River; 1970 The National Theater of the Deaf; wins the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Drama for Children of a Lesser God.

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE

1932 - Denis Johnston's drama, The Moon in the Yellow River, opens at the Guild Theatre. Egon Brecher stars as a German electrical engineer caught in the Troubles of rural Ireland. Also in the cast Claude Rains.

1944 - At the 48th Street Theatre, Mrs. Kimball Presents -- but only for 7 performances. Alonzo Price's short-lived farce of backstage romances and high-society shenanigans closes just four days later.

There Was a Little Girl 02/29/1960 - Jane Fonda, Dean Jones, Joey Heatherton, Gary Lockwood

Tiger at the Gates 02/29/1968 - Philip Bosco, Bruce Davison, Roger De Koven, M'el Dowd,

ON THIS DAY IN:

1940 - For her role as Mammy in "Gone with the Wind," Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African American to win an Academy Award (Best Supporting Actress). Gone with the Wind won an additional seven Oscars.

1995 65% of the population in Bosnia Herzegovina voted in favour of independence

LEAP YEAR DAY, which occurs every four years to make the calendar year "catch up" with the solar year which actually takes 365.242199 days. In the comic operetta The Pirates of Penzance, Frederic, born on February 29, was not apprenticed to a band of pirates until his 21st birthday, in theory until he is 84 years old.

There is a tradition that women may make a proposal of marriage to men only on February 29; this is a tightening of an older tradition that such proposals may only occur on leap years. In 1288 the Scottish parliament legislated that any woman could propose in Leap Year. The man may, of course, refuse but, by tradition, he should soften the blow by providing a kiss, one pound currency and a pair of gloves (some later sources say a silk gown). This law was adopted in France, Switzerland and Italy and the tradition was carried to America.

In Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner, a similar custom called "Sadie Hawkins Day" was commemorated on or around November 9 each year. On Sadie Hawkins Day, in the hillbilly town of Dogpatch, a race was held for spinsters, in pursuit of all the local bachelors who must marry if caught. 'Sadie Hawkin's Day' functions are still held in some places, and by association with the older tradition, sometimes now occur on or around February 29.