Saturday, April 7, 2018
Tempting though it be to do an entire post about one of the most awesome tv shows ever, The Rockford Files (1974-1980), it would be unfair to the late James Garner (James Bumgarner, 1928-201…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:25AM[SHARE]Friday, April 6, 2018
Today we celebrate a familiar face and voice with a less familiar name: Phil Leeds (1916-1998). Short statured, chinless, with huge nose and ears, and somewhat buggy, fishy eyes, Bronx-born …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:28AM[SHARE]Thursday, April 5, 2018
Just some scraps on chorus girl and actress Dorothy Leeds, whose name I came across in Marjorie Farnsworth’s Ziegfeld Follies book. Her first credit is the 1915 Vitagraph film The Awak…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AM[SHARE]April 5 is the natal day of Gale Storm (Josephine Cottle, 1922-2009). Storm was a major movie star in the 1940s and a major television star in the 1950s, but the break that led to both was a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:18AM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Ironically I only came to Bea Benaderet’s (1906-1968) biggest, best and best-known role only recently. Instead, I discovered her in a series a satisfying revelations over the years. Sh…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Happy birthday, Tony Orlando (Michael Anthony Orlando Cassavitis, b. 1944). When Orlando and his pseudo-group “Dawn” burst on the scene in the early 1970s, I imagine few people k…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:16PM[SHARE]You’ve all heard the story, right? How Doris Day’s husband and manager Martin Melcher died one day in 1968, whereupon Day learned that she had horrible debts and that she was com…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:07AM[SHARE]Monday, April 2, 2018
Hi, Loyal Friends and Neighbors! A quick little notice to let you know that just because I’ve been quiet on the theatrical end of things, that’s been far from a planned, permanen…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:28PM[SHARE]I have already written about a couple of his shows, but have not yet paid proper tribute to the great Jack Webb (John Randolph Webb, 1920-1982). By all accounts, Webb was everything he seeme…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:51PM[SHARE]Tap dance paragon Charles “Honi Coles” (1911-1992) was born on this day. Like the Nicholas Brothers, Coles hailed from Philadelphia. Schooled in the rigorous methods of street ta…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:24AM[SHARE]Thanks to reader Suzanne Stone, who let me know about her relative Ira H. Morgan (1889-1959), who was born on April 2. I rarely write about cinematographers, but on occasion I have given att…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:52AM[SHARE]Sunday, April 1, 2018
Happy birthday to Jane Powell (b. 1929). Not to be confused with Eleanor Powell or for that matter Jane Russell, Jane Wyatt, Jane Wyman or Jayne Mansfield, not is she related to William Powe…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:43PM[SHARE]Saturday, March 31, 2018
Happy birthday and Chag Sameach to Gabe Kaplan (b. 1945). I was a tween during his pinnacle years, the perfect age at which to appreciate his youth-oriented sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter w…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:51AM[SHARE]Shirley Jones (b. 1934) was one of those many people who were on television in the 1970s about whom I, a child at the time, had no idea regarding an illustrious background. Though Jones̵…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:58AM[SHARE]Friday, March 30, 2018
Thanks to Travalanche’s top benefactor Bruce Schaffer for relating the sad news that theatre scholar/author Mel Gordon has passed on at age 71. To clarify: this is not the swing era so…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:21PM[SHARE]Passover begins at dusk, so there’s still a few hours left to be sacrilegious. And by that, I mean irreverent towards the worship of cinema. Well do I remember the poster advertising W…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:25PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 29, 2018
Yeah, I gotta rise to the defense of something as palpably awesome as the new season of Roseanne. There’s an army of trash-talk about it going on among pundits and on social media, and…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:39PM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 28, 2018
L. Lawrence Weber (1869-1940) was a major entrepreneur of the stage, screen and sports worlds, with a hand in everything going at the time: minstrelsy**, burlesque, vaudeville, legit theatre…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:52AM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Roseanne Barr is debuting the long awaited season ten of her seminal sitcom tonight and since we semi-coincidentally binge-watched the whole of the original series (1988-1997) over the last …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AM[SHARE]Monday, March 26, 2018
Somehow Alan Arkin (b.1934) managed to become one of America’s most acclaimed and accomplished actors, with a track record that is positively breathtaking, without (except for a brief …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:06PM[SHARE]I musta been daydreamin’! My second book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickleodeons to Youtube turned five years old several days ago and I missed the anniversary…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:53PM[SHARE]Happy birthday, Ernest Lee Thomas (born 1949). I celebrate him today for being the star of a sitcom I loved when I was a kid, What’s Happening!! (1975-1979). Culture matters. What&#…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:03AM[SHARE]The Stroud Twins, Claude and Clarence with a pair of identical Texas brothers born on March 26, 1907. When they were 19, they developed an acrobatic comedy act for vaudeville and toured the …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:44AM[SHARE]Edith Hallor (1896-1971), born today, was the oldest of three theatrical siblings, the younger ones being Ray Hallor and Ethel Hallor,whom we wrote about here. Originally from Washington, D.…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:56AM[SHARE]Sunday, March 25, 2018
Movie buffs all know that Ed Begley, Jr.s dad, Ed Begley (1901-1970) was an Oscar-winning character actor. The elder Begley’s years prior to his film career might be less well known, b…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:15PM[SHARE]Okay, as I only yesterday started a dedicated Houdini section of Travalanche in honor of Houdini’s birthday, and today is Paul Michael Glaser’s birthday it seemed especi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:37AM[SHARE]For Paul Michael Glaser’s birthday, a little tribute to a favorite show of my tweenhood, Starsky and Hutch (1975-1979). S&H was an interesting transitional show, from the gritty re…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:58AM[SHARE]Saturday, March 24, 2018
Unlike most everybody, I imagine, when I think of Norman Fell (Norman Feld, 1924-1998) my first thought is not of his most famous role, that of the dirty-minded, nosy landlord Mr. Roper on T…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:25AM[SHARE]Friday, March 23, 2018
Actually I have more than 15 filmmakers here I think, I just titled this post that for the alliteration. And since some of them aren’t directors per se, perhaps it evens out. The photo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:16AM[SHARE]Lori Williams (b. 1946). We give her the nod today because she is the third member of the head-stompin’ yet curvaceous trio in Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:42AM[SHARE]Thursday, March 22, 2018
March 22 is the birthday of Karl Malden (Mladen George Sekulovich, 1922-2009). Malden was a Serbian-Czech steelworker from Gary, Indiana who took classes at the Goodman in Chicago, then came…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:50AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
