Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Jack Coogan (1886-1935), originally from Syracuse, started out in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian. In 1913 he married fellow performer Lillian Dolliver. Their child John Leslie "jackie" …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:32AM[SHARE]Monday, January 20, 2020
Some days a theme emerges on Travalanche and today it is sideshow. Having just written about little person actor John George and plus-sized comedian "Fat" Karr, we take the occasion of carto…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AM[SHARE]A tribute today to little person/actor John George (Tutie Fatella, 1898-1968). While George had over 225 screen credits, it is fitting that one of his biggest and best known parts was in a f…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AM[SHARE]Hilliard "Fat" Karr (1899-1945) is today best remembered as one third of the plus sized silent comedy team Tons of Fun, but he had a thriving solo career before, during, and after that popul…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AM[SHARE]Sunday, January 19, 2020
The career of Johnny Haymer (Haymer Lionel Fileg, 1920-1989) is kind of small fry but I do like the arc of it. Though he might be best remembered as Sgt. Zale on M*A*S*H (1974-79), it was hi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:33AM[SHARE]Dolly Parton (b. 1946) is a one-woman industry at this stage. A true biography naming all of her accomplishments would need to be book-length. But the rationale for this post can be summed u…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:33AM[SHARE]Saturday, January 18, 2020
This is Part Five of Carolyn Raship's Agatha Christie series launched here. Almost everyone has heard of Agatha Christie's characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, as they're constantly re…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:54PM[SHARE]There is no particular occasion for this post on the Pink Panther movies today, other than that I had nothing else in the pipeline and this one, which I've been picking away at for months, w…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:03PM[SHARE]Friday, January 17, 2020
It speaks a lot to how far ahead of her time Eartha Kitt was (Eartha Mae Keith, 1927-2007), given that she was widely regarded as an "exotic character" even unto her last years, and, in retr…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:06AM[SHARE]Thursday, January 16, 2020
How I love a story like Harry Carey's (1878-1947). Considered the quintessential western star back in the day, Carey's origins couldn't have been more Eastern. He was a generation younger th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Though a distinctly minor show biz figure, we find ourselves interested in Mary Stewart (1913-1995), not just because we share a surname, but we also have mad respect for the sheer breadth o…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:18PM[SHARE]Time has buried the Aces, as will happen when the fields you've conquered are such things as radio stardom, television writing, and magazine humor. But make mistake, they were well known in …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AM[SHARE]Monday, January 13, 2020
We spent an entertaining hour at Pangea on Saturday in a room full of Melody Jane fans, to see and hear the second iteration of her Violet Hour series. I've known Melody Jane in a few contex…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:03PM[SHARE]Her son Buck Henry having just passed away, and her birthday falling today, it would seem to be the perfect moment to bestow some attention on Ruth Taylor (1908-1984). Raised in Oregon, Tayl…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:03AM[SHARE]At this writing Mitzi McCall (b. 1932) and Charlie Brill (b. 1938) are both still with us, although unavoidably one can't help thinking of them in their heyday several decades ago. Peppy, pe…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:03AM[SHARE]Sunday, January 12, 2020
Appropriate for such a complicated topic, I expected very little from the 2016 documentary Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown (2016), and was rewarded with unexpected riches. The film sho…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:54PM[SHARE]Saturday, January 11, 2020
The career of silent screen comedian Ethel Teare (1894-1959) was brief but way prolific: over 150 credits during her decade of activity. Originally from Phoenix (back when Arizona was still …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:12PM[SHARE]Friday, January 10, 2020
Today we celebrate the great Jazz Age humorist, J.P. McEvoy, (Joseph Patrick McEvoy, 1897-1958). McEvoy's reach in pop culture was much longer than most people know about; I'd never consider…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:06PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 9, 2020
As is not unusual in Hollywood, Rubye De Remer (Ruby Burkhardt, 1892-1984) was to become best known for her house. Her mansion "Sunkist" was located at the highest point in Beverly Hills, a …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:48AM[SHARE]Our title refers to the fact that the women we write about this morning is not the same as the fetching actress who played Atia on Rome a few years back, fitting though the latter may be for…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:48AM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Today we celebrate Philip Astley (1742-1814), generally acknowledged to be the father of the modern circus, and by extension, one could argue, all the modern variety forms, be it vaudeville,…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:24PM[SHARE]The life and career of moderately well-known Hollywood actor Richard Cromwell (Leroy Melvin Radabough, 1910-60) proves to be unexpectedly interesting. Cromwell was the son of the man who inv…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:24PM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 7, 2020
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed the new French series Le Bazar de la Charité, which they have they retitled in English The Bonfire of Destiny, which is not a translation, but is a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:03PM[SHARE]With a name like Johnnie Walker (1894-1949) you're bound to get lost in the shuffle. Not only is there the whiskey by that name, but also a more famous Bollywood actor, not to mention Johnni…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:36PM[SHARE]Shirley Ross (1913-1975) almost got there. By "there", I of course refer to that coveted state where saying her name would require no explanation. Born Berenice Gaunt, Ross studied classical…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AM[SHARE]Monday, January 6, 2020
Having nothing scheduled in the pipeline today, I thought it would be entertaining to resurrect an artifact I stumbled across when preparing my Dabney Coleman post the other day. I hadn't th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:36AM[SHARE]Sunday, January 5, 2020
A little known fact: the father of the Monkees' Mickey Dolenz was a Hollywood actor himself. George Dolenz (Jure Dolenc/Giorgio Dolenz, 1908-63) was a minor figure to be sure, but he appeare…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:18AM[SHARE]Character actor Fred "Snowflake" Toones (1906-1962) notched 223 screen credits in his 23 year, all but two of them between 1931 and 1947. Though he worked in every genre, Toones is especiall…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:03AM[SHARE]Saturday, January 4, 2020
Eleanor Bayley (1916-76) was a decidedly minor show biz figure, but her life and career do contain points of interest. Trained by the Moscow Brothers, who also taught Denishawn's Ted Shawn a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AM[SHARE]We just got the word from Time Out New York's Adam Feldman that the New York Musical Festival (formerly the New York Musical Theatre Festival) has closed its doors after 15 years. Playbill b…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AM[SHARE]In keeping with our bid to be simultaneously relevant and irrelevant, we observe National Spaghetti Day with a brief survey of classic comedy scenes involving spaghetti: Charlie Chaplin, The…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
