Sunday, January 8, 2023
I promise I don't write about every single thing I see or do, but last night was minorly momentous as far as I'm concerned. It marked the first time I have watched movies in a room with othe…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:50AM[SHARE]According to IMDB, today is the is 30th anniversary of the U.S. wide release of the movie Chaplin (1992). Don't get too excited! I'm not here for any knee-jerk celebration! Well past the cen…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:21AM[SHARE]Saturday, January 7, 2023
This will be a nearly content free post, designed purely to make you aware of the works of author/biographer Marion Meade (b. 1934). Such is the scope of her interests that I am attracted to…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:38AM[SHARE]The name of Norma Nichols (1894-1989) ought to be better known to silent comedy fans and not just because it combines the first name of a Talmadge with the last name of one of Keystone's ear…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:04AM[SHARE]My first proper date with my wife was a lecture about the life of Charles Addams (1912-88) at the Museum of the City of New York. (It was actually our second date, but it was the first one w…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:18AM[SHARE]Friday, January 6, 2023
Born this day 90 years ago, boxer, wrestler and actor Mike Lane (1933-2015). Originally from Washington DC, Lane grew to nearly 6'8″ tall in adulthood. He started out boxing and wrestl…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:20AM[SHARE]Thursday, January 5, 2023
Color me excited (that's a black and white movie joke, son). Nelson Hughes is bringing That Slapstick Show to the Q.E.D. comedy club, much closer to my Long Island digs than a lot of what's …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:29AM[SHARE]January 5 was the birthday of folk and blues singer Libba Cotten (Elizabeth Nevills, 1893-1987). Cotten's best known song is "Freight Train", off her 1958 Folkways album Folksongs and Instru…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:14AM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 4, 2023
The image above is from the wrong '22, of course " it's a still from Cecil B. De Mille's Manslaughter and depicts the aftermath of an orgy. We should have been so lucky! I'm about a week lat…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:13AM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 3, 2023
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) is top of mind at the moment for a variety of reasons. Watching The Rings of Power prequel series prompted my wife and I to go back and look at the two Peter Jacks…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:41PM[SHARE]Monday, January 2, 2023
I first became aware of singer James Melton (1904-61) as a member of The Revelers, a jazz age vocal group who were popular on records, on radio, in big time vaudeville, and at least one Vita…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:11AM[SHARE]Sunday, January 1, 2023
1923 was the year that Carl John Sedlmayr (1886-1965) first hung out banners bearing the brand "Royal American Shows". He had been in the carnival and sideshow business for years by then, fi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:23AM[SHARE]Don Novello turns 80 years old today; his best known character Father Guido Sarducci turns 50 this year, as well. This character always intrigued me when I was a kid. I'm not a Catholic, so …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:14AM[SHARE]Saturday, December 31, 2022
We pen this on New Year's Eve, the one night of the year more than any other when all eyes are pointed in the direction of Times Square, the Crossroads of the World. I used to have a post on…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:36PM[SHARE]We learned the sad news about the passing of Barbara Walters (1929-2022) late last night. I would have eulogized her anyway on account of her own pathbreaking work in the television field, a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AM[SHARE]Friday, December 30, 2022
We stipulate the other Mike Connors in our headline to differentiate our subject from the star of TV's Mannix you're more apt to know and care about; have no fear, we plan to get to him. The…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:32PM[SHARE]A little tribute to the late actor Fred Ward, who passed away in May, and would have been 80 years old today. A cause of death was not given out publicly but commentators have chosen to read…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:32PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 29, 2022
Today we take on the towering topic of one time world heavyweight champion Jess Willard (1881-1968). Your correspondent is far from a sports person, but I write about the topic as a logical …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 28, 2022
I hope the title of this post doesn't result in disappointment for some people (actually, I don't care). While it's not impossible that I would ever write an article about the '80s New Wave …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PM[SHARE]A little confession: whenever my wife or anyone mentions the comic book The Sandman, I never think of the Neil Gaiman one from 1989 through 1996 or its screen adaptation first. (Though I did…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Screen actor John Rolfe (1911-2003) was a sort of second tier version of stars like Basil Rathbone and Peter Cushing, who appeared in historical dramas and literary adaptations during the ci…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AM[SHARE]Monday, December 26, 2022
We get a thrill every time we see the logo on a contemporary or recent film or tv show bearing the logo of Pathé, for the corny reason that it is one of the oldest continuously operating mo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AM[SHARE]Sunday, December 25, 2022
Can you believe it's been 50 years since the premiere of the widely loved Christmas classic Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)? What's that? You never heard of, let alone seen, Santa and t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:32PM[SHARE]Screenwriter Noel Langley (1911-1980) was one two people connected with the 1939 MGM screen version of The Wizard of Oz to have a Christmas birthday (the other was Candy Candido, who voiced …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AM[SHARE]Saturday, December 24, 2022
If the creek don't rise, you'll be hearing much more from this quarter on the topic of RADIO (the old time kind) over the next few months and years, as we are now beginning to enter a stretc…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:03AM[SHARE]A brief thing on Danish singer, actor and sometime pugilist Carl Brisson (Carl Frederik Ejnar Pedersen, 1893-1958). Brisson was only in about a dozen films, but three of them are moderately …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:03AM[SHARE]Friday, December 23, 2022
We've chosen the birthday of Joseph Smith (1805-1844) for a post I've long been contemplating about Mormons in the Movies. I have many close Mormon relatives, and some farther afield (includ…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:24PM[SHARE]Well, it's the night before The Night Before Christmas, but it seemed a reasonable thing to peg this post about the McCutcheons to, in addition to December being the birthday of Wallace McCu…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:24AM[SHARE]Thursday, December 22, 2022
Some foolhardy person attempted a quip on my social media page earlier today with reference to a hallucinatory movie from the 1930s, joking along the lines of "Who knew people were taking dr…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:06PM[SHARE]December 22 was the birth date of the Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924). I was startled to learn how recently he'd died; we are only just coming upon the centennial. So mode…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:54AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Born on this day, the great Broadway composer/director/producer Edward E. Rice (1847-1924). When most people think "classic, old Broadway" they think of shows that opened two decades after R…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:18PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
