Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Richard Lewis (b. 1947) is an extremely funny guy (I've been a fan almost since the beginning) yet I can't help but talk about him in terms of other comedians. He seems primarily influenced …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:36AM[SHARE]Monday, June 28, 2021
Ruth Attaway (1910-1987) enjoyed an amazing career, beginning with her role as Rheba in the original Broadway production of You Can't Take it With You (1936-38) and concluding with the pivot…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:36AM[SHARE]Sunday, June 27, 2021
Good news of a kind today " Broadway re-opens with the resumption of Springsteen on Broadway at the St. James Theatre. Normally I write about artists on their birthdays….which makes it pro…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:06PM[SHARE]Billy Curtis (Luigi Curto, 1909-1988) may have the most impressive resume of screen credits of any professional little person of his time. As it happens, I saw him just yesterday in Alfred H…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:54AM[SHARE]Saturday, June 26, 2021
Like her frequent co-stars in the movies Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, June Presser (1920-1984) had a background in vaudeville. Hailing from New Orleans, June formed an act called The Prei…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:12PM[SHARE]Friday, June 25, 2021
Sidney Lumet (1924-2011) directed a long list of cherished Hollywood movies, including 12 Angry Men (1957), The Fugitive Kind (1960), A View from the Bridge (1962), Long Day's Journey Into N…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:36AM[SHARE]Thursday, June 24, 2021
Big news for fans of Burns and Allen! Writer, producer, actress, and (not incidentally) Gracie Allen impersonator Lauren Milberger has adapted her biographical play The Raconteurs: A Story o…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:54PM[SHARE]Wednesday, June 23, 2021
You may have seen the dance team The Bernard Brothers caper and hoof in such movies as Paris Nights (1951), Gobs and Gals (1952), and Decameron Nights (1953). The senior partner was Maryland…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:32AM[SHARE]A few scattered word about 20th century magician and ventriloquist Stanley Burns (1919-1998). Burns, whose real first name was Schlomo, was a friend and cohort of Yeshiva University Professo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:32AM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 22, 2021
Spin-off though it may have been we have had over a dozen occasions on which to mention The Bionic Woman (1976-78) so we take the opportunity of its star's D.O.B. to flesh out the portrait s…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:48AM[SHARE]Monday, June 21, 2021
Three cheers today for a very important figure in modern comedy history, the great Joe Flaherty (b. 1941). Among his SCTV cohorts (John Candy, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Ma…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:54AM[SHARE]Some little attention today to big bandleader Kay Kyser (James Kern Kyser, 1905-1985), a major pop culture figure of the 1940s whose early retirement in 1950 robbed fans of his ebullient per…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:32AM[SHARE]Today marks the 100th birthday of Jane Russell (Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell, 1921-2011). I have to marvel at the aptness of her screen name (and the fact that it is her given one), for …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:32AM[SHARE]Sunday, June 20, 2021
What a confluence today. The first day of summer alligns with the birthday of Brian Wilson (b. 1942) in the same year that the Beach Boys (est 1961) turned 60 and Mike Love (b. 1941) turned …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:42AM[SHARE]Today being the first day of summer, and a welcome one after over a year of lockdown, I thought I would mark it with a look at the teenage beach party movie craze of the '50s and '60s. Most,…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:42AM[SHARE]Saturday, June 19, 2021
No one knows the birthday of Eulabelle Moore (1909-1964) so we choose Juneteenth for the present post, both for the significance of the day, and the fact that we mention her in another post …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:36PM[SHARE]It was widely reported last night that John Paragon (b. 1954), the actor who played the genie Jambi on Peewee's Playhouse, has passed on. The causes given were heart disease and alchohol abu…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AM[SHARE]Friday, June 18, 2021
Having done a couple of posts on Paul McCartney, and over two dozen on the Beatles, I am planning a new one that will take into account his work of the last three decades, which I haven't ex…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AM[SHARE]Thursday, June 17, 2021
I saw a sad, but not surprising thing on the internet recently " a clip of '80s era comedian Joe Piscopo (b. 1951) performing at some Trump rally organized by My Pillow guy Mike Lindell. Sad…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:03AM[SHARE]But wait! you say. We don't say "Eskimo" anymore, and anyway Eskimos aren't Icelandic! If that was your response, you don't read very carefully and have missed the quotation marks in the tit…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:03AM[SHARE]Wednesday, June 16, 2021
My curiosity about the Pasadena Playhouse has grown over the years, as I constantly stumbled over references to prominent movie star alum in writing about their lives. People I've written ab…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:54AM[SHARE]Charles Eldridge Griffin (1859-1914) was not only a sword swallower (as might be apparent from the pitch card above) but also a magician, fire eater, ventriloquist, contortionist, lecturer, …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:54AM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 15, 2021
What a week for silent comedy birthdays: we got Harry Langdon, Stan Laurel, Lupino Lane, Flora Finch, Louise Fazenda, Mae Busch " and what the hell, though they're not too silent I'll throw …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AM[SHARE]In the early years of this blog I would often bundle together folks who had the same birthday for shared biographical blogposts, but I soon realized the impracticality of making readers who …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:03AM[SHARE]Monday, June 14, 2021
The above was taken at the Stonewall Memorial a few days ago on one of our first post-vax escapades in the city. We're already midway through Pride Month almost, which means that we're also …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:48PM[SHARE]The career of Gene Barry (Eugene Klass, 1919-2009) was sporadically amazing. He was at the center of some of my favorite things in the world across the worlds of theatre, film and television…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AM[SHARE]Sunday, June 13, 2021
Thanks be to friend and colleague Jenny Lee Mitchell for calling my attention to stage and screen comedian John Berkes (1895-1951). Berkes' early life in Trenton is an enigma but he made goo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AM[SHARE]Like many other pro athletes, Jazz Age football star Red Grange (Harold Grange, 1903-1991), a.k.a. The Galloping Ghost also dabbled in show biz. Grange played for the University of Illinois …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AM[SHARE]Saturday, June 12, 2021
Dolly Kay (Dora Kirschenbaum, 1900-1981) was a vaudeville and nightclub singer whose greatest fame came through recordings. She also performed under the names Margaret White and Sally Freema…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AM[SHARE]Friday, June 11, 2021
Freddy Fisher (1904-1967) was the leader of one of the most successful of those novelty bands that were so popular during the 1940s and the great age of radio, with an act that mixed swing a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AM[SHARE]Today we share a delightful discovery with you: a man who worked the circuits for decades as a muli-skilled variety artist and then shifted gears in middle age to become a modernist painter …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:03AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
