Today is the birthday of Bill B. Van (William Webster Van de Grift, 1878-1950). He got his start as a child actor in a Philadelphia production of H.M.S. Pinafore, moved on to blackface minstrelsy, thence to vaudeville, burlesque and stock companies. In vaudeville in the teens he often appeared in an act with the Beaumont Sisters, […]
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:53AM on August 3, 2013