Saturday, February 20, 2021
The internet is abuzz with news of the streaming availability of The Muppet Show on Disney+, and I am surprised this morning to discover that I hadn't already done a dedicated post on the sh…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:48AM[SHARE]Friday, February 19, 2021
Tomorrow, and streaming throughout next week " the Thunderbird American Indians Dancers' Dance Concert and Pow-Wow! Check out my post from last years Pow Wow for background. I really wish we…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:48PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 18, 2021
The arc of the career of Ukrainian-American actor Jack Palance (Volodymyr Palahniuk 1919-2006) was like a jump-rope in repose: high at the beginning and end and sagging in the middle. It's a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:42AM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Folks might remember Wayne Morris (1914-1959) somewhat better if his life hadn't been cut short by a heart attack at age 45. He'd been a moderately well known star for decades, never plungin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:18AM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 16, 2021
The other day we shared a post showcasing pairs of famous people who possessed the same name. Today, a variation on a theme, only with one of the stars chiefly famous for sharing the name of…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:33AM[SHARE]Monday, February 15, 2021
Kevin McCarthy (1914-2010) is one of those actors most people don't know that they know. At best, he bumped his head against mainstream fame, never quite catapulting himself into the upper e…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:36AM[SHARE]Sunday, February 14, 2021
I don't claim that the photo above is REPRESENTATIVE of the career of comical bit player Stan Ross (Abraham Schiller, b. 1926). As an X rated movie, some might regard The Sexpert as a low po…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AM[SHARE]Saturday, February 13, 2021
This is a post that has been germinating for years and will no doubt get added to as new inspiration strikes. In fact, the impetus probably goes back 20 years, when I first heard about Spike…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AM[SHARE]Friday, February 12, 2021
It's purely and simply weird to live in a world where the significance of Arsenio Hall (b. 1956) is no longer universally known, not just because he was once such an inescapable fact of Amer…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:33AM[SHARE]Thorough as this blog is, we can pre-emptively and categorically state that we will never compose and publish biographies of all 1,500+ victims who went down with the Titanic. We have, howev…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:24AM[SHARE]Today a wave of the wand over the wizardry of Karl Germain (Charles Mattmueller, 1878-1959). Born and raised in Cleveland, Mattmueller began performing magic as a teenager after receiving Pr…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:24AM[SHARE]Thursday, February 11, 2021
There is no way to do justice to the myriad accomplishments and massive legacy of Josh White (1914-1969) at anything less than book length. Fortunately, there are a couple of biographies, an…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:36PM[SHARE]Thornton Freeland (1898-1987) is a notable director for fans of vaudeville to know about, for he directed many comedies and musicals starring vets of the vaud stage. A native of Hope, North …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:24AM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 9, 2021
News just reached us that Mary Wilson (b. 1944) has suddenly passed away at the relatively young age of 76. I was going to subtitle this post "The Last Supreme" but stayed my hand knowing th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:24AM[SHARE]Today, a squint at Clarence Chesterfield Howerton, known professionally as Major Mite (1913-1975). Howerton was at least the third American performer to use the Major Mite handle; prior to h…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:24AM[SHARE]Monday, February 8, 2021
Saturday, February 13, 8pm: Valentines of Vaudeville! In celebration of Valentine's Day, please join me for an illustrated Zoom talk on great romances and romantics of the vaudeville stage! …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:42PM[SHARE]Today we toot a horn on behalf of composer John Williams (b. 1932). There's a tendency to mischaracterize Williams' signficance in terms of "firsts", suggesting his art as a harbinger of fut…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:42AM[SHARE]Sunday, February 7, 2021
At 8443 West Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood, on the storied Sunset Strip between Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, there lies a venue whose history tracks nearly a century of American popular cu…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:33AM[SHARE]Saturday, February 6, 2021
Steven Keats (1945-1994) was a ubiquitous presence on screens big and small when I was a kid in the '70s. My clearest association is the campy 1977 scifi movie The Last Dinosaur with Richard…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:48PM[SHARE]Today we bow our heads in memory of the screen star Ramon Novarro (José Ramón Gil Samaniego, 1899-1968). Novarro was a scion of a large, aristocratic Mexican family (a second cousin of D…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:36AM[SHARE]Friday, February 5, 2021
Nigel Bruce (William Nigel Ernie Bruce, 1895-1953), known as "Willie" to his friends, is most widely remembered for playing Dr. Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes in 15 films from 19…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:18AM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 3, 2021
Mabel Mercer (1900-84) lived at the crossroads of American vaudeville and English music hall, night clubs of Paris and New York, and the black and white show biz cultures of her day. She was…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:42PM[SHARE]The Outer Limits (1963-65) falls third, both chronologically and in the esteem of the American public, in the field of "Weird Television Anthology", I believe, right after Alfred Hitchcock P…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:36AM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 2, 2021
Mark Twain was 74 when he died and was considered ancient. Look at the clips of him in his last years (or listen to a recording of his voice " one exists, you know!) He may as well have been…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:12PM[SHARE]Thanks to Criterion once again we took the opportunity to fill in a gap in our cinematic education last night. We'have had the occasion to mention Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) many times on…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:18AM[SHARE]Monday, February 1, 2021
We do not know if the Woman in Question's name is homonymic with that of the Borscht Belt comedian. Her father's name was Allen, and she was certainly named to honor him, but whether hers wa…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AM[SHARE]We caught Netflix's new producion of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to hold my rave 'til Black History Month, when I traditionally try to do a post related to A…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AM[SHARE]Sunday, January 31, 2021
Launched this day in 1936, the original radio incarnation of The Green Hornet, an interesting pop culture character for all sorts of reasons. For example, it is one of the few such character…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:06AM[SHARE]Saturday, January 30, 2021
Some brief notes on minor independent silent film produce Charles C. "C.C." Burr (1891-1956). Burr was an advertising man from Brooklyn who hung out his "Mastodon Films" shingle in 1920, pro…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AM[SHARE]Friday, January 29, 2021
I had already planned to do a post on Cicely Tyson (b. 1924) for Black History Month, just a couple days from now. But the news of her death yesterday at age 96 makes the matter more pressin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AM[SHARE]There is much I know about John Forsythe (Jacob Freund, 1918-2010) that would not tempt me to write a blogpost about him. For example, he was the voice of Charlie on the original Charlie's A…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:03AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
