In the spirit of our recent post on Marion Meade, we thought you'd use the occasion of Leslie Zemeckis's natal day for a brief appreciation of, like, everything she's ever done (with fervent…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:39AM[SHARE]Though Monta Bell (1891-1958) was a protege of Charlie Chaplin and even worked with the Marx Brothers, we are late in treating of him, as his comic movies were more in the sophisticated trad…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:11AM[SHARE]A century ago (1923) Moscow Art Theatre veterans (and refugees from the USSR) Richard Boleslawski (BolesÅ‚aw Ryszard Srzednicki, 1889-1937) and Maria Ouspenskaya founded the American Labo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:15AM[SHARE]Albert "Bert" Coote (1867-1938) was the son of Robert Coote (1834-1888) a popular British music composer. Bert first went onstage himself at age five, appearing throughout his childhood in m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:40AM[SHARE]Unthinkably, blasphemously, through some apparent pact with Satan, film-maker, author, fabulist and provocateur Kenneth Anger (Kenneth Anglemyer, b. 1927) still lives. At the time of the pre…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:11AM[SHARE]Oh, don't you fret, I'll be getting in your face plenty about my own books and other projects as this year progresses, but short term, three people close to me have their own tomes to promot…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:00AM[SHARE]The headline is a trick question. Everyone who lived between 1880 and 1946 was a racist by our standards, so of course W.C. Fields was. His professional friendship with Bert Williams, and a …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:46PM[SHARE]Black History Month is when I typically have done posts honoring black performers for whom I don't know the birthdate, of which there have been a relatively high percentage. Case in point, P…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:03AM[SHARE]Cindy Williams (1947-2023) passed away about a week ago (Jan. 25) but somehow the news didn't get out until last night. Of the two Laverne and Shirley stars, Williams was far and away my fav…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:45AM[SHARE]Seems late in the game to be adding Isham Jones (1894-1956) to our roster of successful vaudeville veterans (he's the 1,790th figure we've added to the series) but while I really do love the…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:43AM[SHARE]To be of my age and of my proclivities is to have been influenced by West Coast-based RE/Search Publications (est, 1980). This underground publishing house put out high end periodicals on a …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:22AM[SHARE]It's superficial of me, I know, but I became much more interested in, and approving of Victor Mature (1913-1999) once I learned he was half Italian. His father, Marcello Maturi was a Kentuck…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:00PM[SHARE]We have accumulated over 100 posts on Travalanche about quintessential classic comedian W.C. Fields (1880-1946), so many that long ago we bundled them all into their own section. Starting wi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:55AM[SHARE]Our principal reason for celebrating Dorothy Donnelly (1875-1928) may differ from many other folks', for she was the woman who wrote to book and lyrics to Poppy (1923), the hit Broadway show…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:19AM[SHARE]January 27, 1888 was the birthdate of Harry Frankel, better known to audiences as Singin' Sam, The Barbasol Man. Born in Springfield, Ohio (hometown of Clark and McCullough), Frankel was rai…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:35PM[SHARE]Today (January 27) is Holocaust Remembrance Day and as it happens I have timely related news to report: friend Edward Einhorn of Untitled Theatre Company #61 is reviving their historical rev…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:06AM[SHARE]Haha, don't worry she's not dead, she's only turning 65! The title of this post has more to do with the fact that Ellen ended her long-running talk show a few months ago, and the monster suc…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:14AM[SHARE]Born 100 years ago today, the minor midcentury star Anne Jeffreys (Anne Jeffreys Carmichael, 1923-2017). Jeffreys was an operatically trained Southern belle from Goldsboro, North Carolina, w…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:09AM[SHARE]Born 200 years ago today: one horse circus pioneer, impresario, clown, comedian and star Dan Rice (1823-1900) Dan Rice was one of the most important show business figures of the 19th century…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:07AM[SHARE]Today would have been the 80th birthday of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate (1943-1969). The circumstances of Tate's death possess layers of wrongness: 1) that she died at all; that she died so…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:02AM[SHARE]I was running around from pillar to post yesterday so couldn't respond as immediately as I would have liked to the sad news of the passing of the great stage star Everett Quinton (b. 1952). …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:45AM[SHARE]I'd long known about Danny Arnold (Arnold Rothmann, 1925-95) as the genius creator/producer of Barney Miller and Fish, but was delighted to learn that he had a background in variety entertai…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:08AM[SHARE]I celebrated Jim Jarmusch's 70th birthday today by watching the one movie of his I hadn't yet seen, The Limits of Control (2009). To my delight, it stars Isaach de Bankolé, whom I had coinc…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:23PM[SHARE]We are well past the centennial of the birth of Soviet film-maker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) but this year marks the centennial of something he gave birth to. I had occasion …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:43AM[SHARE]Roshanara (Olive Craddock, 1894-1926) is today remembered as the more authentic competitor to Ruth St. Denis in the presentation of South Asian dances to Western audiences. While St. Denis i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:42AM[SHARE]Sorry for the last minute bulletin, but I only just learned about this yesterday. Tonight and tomorrow, New Yorkers, MOMA will be screening a restored version of The Unknown (1927), includin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:26AM[SHARE]The fame of vaudeville performer Gus Visser (1894-1967) is ironically perhaps greater now than it was in his own day. This is because footage of Visser's hilarious act wound up in the PBS do…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:46AM[SHARE]A story of strange bedfellows today, and not the first we've encountered in our exploration of vaudeville's annals. And apparently content ones! We begin with Emma Haig (1898-1939), a diminu…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:36AM[SHARE]Opening today (January 20, 2023) at New York's Film Forum, and running through February 2, a screening series entitled Written and Directed by Preston Sturges. I have already written extensi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:39AM[SHARE]David Crosby (1941-2023) has just passed away at the age of 81. Few thought he would make it to this age! I was a fan of The John Larroquette Show (1993-94), on which Crosby was stunt cast i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:58AM[SHARE]A century ago this year, George Burns teamed with Gracie Allen and made their debut in a vaudeville house somewhere in New Jersey. Nowhere that I've been able to find (and I and others have …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:31AM[SHARE]
