Saturday, December 30, 2017
On December 30, 1903 there occurred the worst disaster in theatre history, and the largest single building fire in American history, Chicago’s Iroquois Theatre Fire. The Iroquois had o…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:48AM[SHARE]Mary Alice Rice (1910-1989) came into the world on December 30. Originally from Temple, Texas, Rice was a trained soprano, and once called “one of the ten most beautiful women on the A…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:42AM[SHARE]Friday, December 29, 2017
Well, Good Riddance to 2017! If you’re all like me, you got the wind knocked out of you on November 8, 2016, sending you spinning in unanticipated directions, like in the iconic Coney …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:18PM[SHARE]Born December 29, Claire Dodd (Dorothy Dodd, 1908-1973). Born in Iowa, raised in Arkansas, it was often given out that she’d gotten her start in the Ziegfeld Follies, although there is…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:06AM[SHARE]Thursday, December 28, 2017
Charles “Slim” Timblin was known for a single signature bit in vaudeville, a comedy monologue he did in blackface** as an African American preacher. He does the bit in the 1930 V…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:48AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 27, 2017
I made an exciting discovery the other day; I stumbled upon a Jazz Age Broadway Chorus Girl to whom I am distantly related. Her name was Helen Herendeen. I have tantalizing fragments, and am…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:36PM[SHARE]Ingenue Mary Kornman (1915-1973) was born December 27. Like many of the earliest kids hired for Hal Roach’s Our Gang series of comedy film shorts, Mary was initially hired because she …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:48AM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Art Deco era visual artist Russell Patterson was born the day after Christmas, 1893. Patterson had a hand in practically every kind of influential visual expression in popular culture from t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AM[SHARE]Monday, December 25, 2017
On Christmas Day, 1977, the 88 year old Charlie Chaplin skidded around his last corner. W.C. Fields had also died on Christmas. Sometimes it is Krampus and not Santa who visits us on that da…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:04AM[SHARE]Born Christmas Day: dancing harp player Carlena Diamond (1900-1992). She is best remembered today for her 1929 Vitaphone short Carlena Diamond, Harpist Supreme, in which she plays her harp, …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:54AM[SHARE]Christmas Day was the birthday of singer and actress Frances McCoy (Franya Popowsky, 1910-1976) Born in Poland, she moved with her family to the Bronx when a young child. The family’s …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:54AM[SHARE]Saturday, December 23, 2017
December 23 is the birthday of little person performer George Brasno (1911-1982). George started out in a vaudeville act singing and dancing with his sister Olive (also a little person), and…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:54AM[SHARE]Friday, December 22, 2017
Apropos of nothing except I saw a common thread of bizarreness in their work, herewith a listicle (in no particular order) of a dozen strange and eccentric comedians, one note weirdos who ma…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:36AM[SHARE]Thursday, December 21, 2017
Happy birthday Barry Gordon! And how perfect that his birthday falls during the Holiday season, for his first claim to fame was singing the 1955 hit song “Nuttin’ for Christmas&#…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:48AM[SHARE]I shouldn’t have said “yes”, when a friend asked to take to me see The Greatest Showman. It was a nice gesture on his part and it was an opportunity to socialize with my fr…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:42AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Prior to the present age it could be truly said, though one seldom had occasion for it, that there was no way to describe Charlie Callas (1924-2011). Well, it can still be said, but you don&…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:48AM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 19, 2017
December 19 is the birthday of Minnie Maddern Fiske (Marie Augusta Davey, 1865-1932), almost invariably known in her day as “Mrs. Fiske”. (The use of a husband’s patronymic…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:42AM[SHARE]Monday, December 18, 2017
December 18 was the birthday of Betty Grable (Elizabeth Ruth Grable, 1916-1973). Others will no doubt disagree, some vociferously, but I have always deemed the Grable phenomenon to be someth…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AM[SHARE]Sunday, December 17, 2017
Just got the word that what we were bracing for a few months back has sadly come to pass: Johnny Fox has gone to his final blowoff. Best known for his skills as a sword swallower, Johnny was…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:42PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 14, 2017
December 14, 1932 was the natal day of Abbe Lane (Abigail Francine Lassman). Born in Brooklyn, young Francine Lassman was all of four years old when she first appeared on the radio and five …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:24AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 13, 2017
December 13 is the birthday of former child star Johnny Whitaker (b. 1959). The red-haired freckled Whitaker was memorable as young Jody on Family Affair (1966-1971), which we wrote about he…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:54PM[SHARE]Eve Meyer (Evelyn Eugene Turner, 1928-1977) was born on this day. The buxom Georgia beauty began her career as a pin-up model, often posing nude or topless. In 1952, she married photographer…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PM[SHARE]It happens to be National Violin Day! This seemed a natural and fitting thing to mark here on Travalanche, and what a wonderful surprise I got when I did a search and discovered how many…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:54AM[SHARE]Monday, December 11, 2017
Big Mama Thornton (Willie Mae Thornton, 1926-1984) was born this day. Hailing from Ariton, Alabama, Thornton grew up singing gospel music with her family at the church where her father preac…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:18PM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of Ethel Hallor (1902-1982). Born in Washington DC, she was the younger sister of better known actors Edith Hallor (1896-1971) and Ray Hallor (1900-1944), althoug…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PM[SHARE]Sunday, December 10, 2017
After hearing about it for years, the other night I finally got over to see Axis Theatre Company’s Seven in One Blow, or the Brave Little Kid: The Greatest Play Ever, now in its 16th y…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:42PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 7, 2017
When I was a kid in Rhode Island and Ted Knight (Tadeusz Konopka, 1923-1986) was at the height of his fame, he was considered something of a local hero. 20 years before playing bumbling tv n…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:36PM[SHARE]As anticipated, we had our minds officially blown at Jack and the Beanstalk OneOfUs (Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz)’s transplantation of English panto to Abrons Arts Center last night…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:24AM[SHARE]Monday, December 4, 2017
Christmas came early for the Mad Marchioness and myself when we got to see Brown Girls Burlesque and a bill of singers headlined by Nucomme do the “Dirty Honey Christmas Shake” a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:33PM[SHARE]December 4 gave us Thelma White (Thelma Wolpa, 1910-2005). Originally from Lincoln Nebraska, White started her career at age two in the family tent show, playing a “living doll” …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AM[SHARE]Saturday, December 2, 2017
Okay here goes nothing! Well not nothing actually: like everything else people tell you is easy in the Internet age it was a royal pain in the ass! It’s my Patreon page — I’…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:42AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
