Sunday, October 16, 2022
For years I have taken good care to qualify my boast that I have ALMOST written about every cast member of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), because there's always someone else. This m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:25PM[SHARE]Saturday, October 15, 2022
Scratch beneath the surface of almost anybody in show business and you'll usually find a more fascinating person than Hollywood presents. I'm assuming its because the town is focused on prom…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:55AM[SHARE]Many impulses contributed to the creation of this post: the approach of Halloween, our snowballing Francophilia, the fact that this year marks the 60th anniversary of the closing of the orig…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:43AM[SHARE]Friday, October 14, 2022
Jack Arnold (Jack Arnold Waks, 1916-1992) is typically celebrated as a director of '50s sci-fi and horror classics ('tis the season), though his accomplishments range across all genres, and …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:43AM[SHARE]Thursday, October 13, 2022
Pamela Tiffin (1941-2020) passed away a few months ago, but I thought I'd leave a tribute for this birthday benchmark she never made it to. I think of Tiffin was one of the "'60s youth gener…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:49AM[SHARE]Jacques Inaudi (Giacomo Inaudi, 1867-1950) was an internationally known math prodigy from Northern Italy. Studied and written about by major scientists, his fame brought him to the attention…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:49AM[SHARE]Louise Closser Hale (1872-1933) was an early 20th century Renaissance woman: actress of stage and screen, magazine editor, author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, and playwright…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:37AM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 12, 2022
This somewhat impulsive post arises from the fact that we re-watched Martin Scorsese's Casino (1995) last night and were reminded of the unusually large number of comedians there are through…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:55AM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 11, 2022
It is my enthusiastic honor to point you to a piece I wrote on another website today. The omnivorous and multi-mediumistic Heather Quinlan is curating a wonderful series on HiLoBrow.com call…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:37PM[SHARE]Having had a recent occasion to mention Clifford Essex (1869-1946), we thought his contributions to the variety arts sufficient to merit a brief entry of his own here. Essex was basically th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:25AM[SHARE]Monday, October 10, 2022
Born on October 10, 2022: Lee and Lyn Wilde: The Wilde Twins. Singers, movies actresses, and pin-up models, the sisters were most active during the 1940s. The girls grew up in East St. Louis…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:19AM[SHARE]Sunday, October 9, 2022
October 5 was World Teachers Day, so we compose this belated tribute to someone to whom I owe a lot. I've been wanting to look him up lately, as I've recently picked up a thread that started…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:25AM[SHARE]Most who remember actor Robert Warwick (Robert Bien, 1878-1964) probably know him best as a supporting player of the sound era. His over 250 credits include nearly all of the Preston Sturges…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:19AM[SHARE]Saturday, October 8, 2022
Years ago I went on a purge, ruthlessly removing scores, probably hundreds of obsolete and/or underperforming posts from Travalanche. My piece on the interesting figure Paschal Beverly Rando…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:33PM[SHARE]Don't answer that! The question is both rhetorical and a joking reference to Atlas Shrugged. Al Alt (Alexander Alt, 1897-1992) was a comedian of the silent and early sound eras, who worked b…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:13AM[SHARE]Friday, October 7, 2022
We were saddened just now to hear about the passing of comedian/performance artist Judy Tenuta (b. 1949), a supreme example of the neo-vaudeville style that played a huge part in the stand-u…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:33PM[SHARE]Robert Z. Leonard (1889-1968) managed to direct some of the best known and loved classics of the studio era, without achieving lasting fame himself, a factor clearly of the anonymous Hollywo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:33PM[SHARE]Thursday, October 6, 2022
If you're like me, and I know that you are, you've spent a lifetime mixing up Britt Ekland (b. 1942) with Anita Ekberg (1931-2015) and Elke Sommer (b. 1940). Why not Ursula Andress (b. 1936)…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:19AM[SHARE]We have too long overlooked silent screen comedian and director Bobby Ray (Wilhelm Robert McBain Fuehrer, 1899-1957). Originally billed as Bobby Fuerher (yes, Bobby Fuerher, which I guess is…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:13AM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 5, 2022
"The first ones now shall later be last" " Matthew 20:16, by way of Bob Dylan. The Lumière Brothers [Auguste (1862-1954) and Louis (1864-1948)] were neither first nor last in the history of…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:37AM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 4, 2022
Harry Bowen (1888-1941) appeared in nearly 200 films as a bit player and stunt double, most of them comedy shorts of both the silent and talkie era with the likes of Our Gang, Laurel and Har…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:43AM[SHARE]Monday, October 3, 2022
Of all those so-called "public intellectuals" of the mid 20th century TV talk show circuit who consistently fail to impress me (Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, etc), Gore Vidal (1925-2012…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:49PM[SHARE]We were already scheduled to do a post on Sacheen Littlefeather (Mary Louise Cruz, 1946-2022) on her birthday six weeks from now as part of our section on Native American performers and othe…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:49PM[SHARE]Sunday, October 2, 2022
Rare is it now for us to add new posts to our section on the different forms of variety arts, for there can only be a finite and not very large number. But we recently learned about another …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:33PM[SHARE]Charles Kellogg (1868-1949) was a star of the B.F. Keith vaudeville circuit for decades by virtue of his ability to imitate bird calls, not just by whistling (as was common in his day) but b…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:33PM[SHARE]October 2 is the birthday of Bud Abbott, our favorite member of the comedy team of Abbott and Costello. As we have written here a few times, we are fans of the radio and television work of t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:33PM[SHARE]Will F. Denny (ca. 1860-1908) started out performing on the vaudeville stages of his native Boston, firmly in B.F. Keith territory. He specialized in comic songs and parodies sung in a high …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:33PM[SHARE]Saturday, October 1, 2022
A tip of the cap today to the great British star Stanley Holloway (1910-1982), who left us 40 years ago this year. Americans know him best from his role as Eliza Doolittle's cockney father i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:49PM[SHARE]Friday, September 30, 2022
Today, a post on the legendary lesbian cabaret singer and screen actress Bertha Levine (1906-1971), variously billed as Spivy, Spivy Levoe, or Madame Spivy. (Pronounced "Spivvy", i.e., with …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:07AM[SHARE]Thursday, September 29, 2022
Born this day the great early Hollywood star Virginia Bruce (Helen Virginia Briggs, 1910-1982). I don't usually frontload an actor's credits, but in this case I fear it might be necessary, f…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:33PM[SHARE]Hollywood actress Lizabeth Scott (Emma Matzo, 1922-2015) was born 100 years ago today. In the 1940s there was inexplicable vogue in pop culture for mannish women with deep voices, thick eye …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:13AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
