Saturday, November 23, 2013
For someone of my age (I grew up in the 70s and 8os) Amos ‘n’ Andy is both a bellwether and a lightning rod. It was used as short hand in public dialogue about race in repr…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:58AM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of John Swor (1877-1965). Like his brother Bert Swor, he started out as a blackface minstrel, performing in the companies of Lew Dockstader, Honey Boy Evans and others.…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:20AM[SHARE]Friday, November 22, 2013
I often do a lot of soul searching about why I am such a backward-glancing person, why my sights seem so rigidly set on the past. And the answer I often come up with is the event that happen…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:04AM[SHARE]Filed under: Contemporary Variety, Dance, PLUGS Tagged: Dolly Sisters, Ziegfeld Society
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:04AM[SHARE]All of us too young to have been Baby Boomers or older missed a joke in the movie Grease (1978) and its sequel (1982). The casting of veteran Hollywood character actress Eve Arden as t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:06AM[SHARE]Thursday, November 21, 2013
Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. Certainly the spark driving this series of posts is that I am part Cherokee. 1/64th, in fact, possibly more. It m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:58AM[SHARE]Originally posted in 2009 Today is the birthday of Eleanor Powell (1912-192). This Hollywood hoofer paired off with the best of them (Ebsen, Astaire, Bolger) but always worked best whe…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:20AM[SHARE]Over the course of her long career, Mink Stole has been associated with many shocking projects, but the big shock about her new music CD Do Re Mink is how tasteful it is. After a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:15AM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of Marlo Thomas (b. 1937). It may be ironic, but it’s likely that Ann Marie’s Quixotic attempts to be a successful Broadway actress in New York would have b…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:37AM[SHARE]Here’s Bing Crosby and co-star  Judy Garland in an episode from his NBC radio program which originally aired Thanksgiving week 1946. For more on the history of show business cons…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:18AM[SHARE]A few days ago we wrote a post about Raymond Dandy, a.k.a. Kri-Kri (see post here.) Today marks the 100th anniversary of the release of his film Kri Kri Domestico a.k.a. Bloomer Man…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:55AM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Today is the birthday of Eagles’ guitarist Joe Walsh (b. 1947) Every so often I’ll do or say something and the Duchess will look at me and say “Who are you?”Â…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:01PM[SHARE]Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. The Wild West Show was a unique and popular branch of popular entertainment, akin to the circus, the sideshow, th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:31PM[SHARE]Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. When I was a very young kid (perhaps the years between kindergarten and second grade) my sister and I would have …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:50PM[SHARE]Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. A couple of days ago, we posted Don Knott’s The Shakiest Gun in the West,  a 1968 re-make of the much…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:25PM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of Reginald Denny (1891-1967). Many know him as a third and fourth billed English character actor of the classic studio era. But he was a much, much bigger star during …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:44PM[SHARE]Today is the history of yokel comedienne and singer Judy Canova (for more on her, see our full essay here). In addition to her stage and screen performances Canova was a constant presence on…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:05PM[SHARE] Today (according to IMDB) marks the 100th anniversary of the release of one of the most well known of the pre-Chaplin Keystone comedies, A Muddy Romance. This is the famous one whe…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:34AM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of Steven Quincy Reeder, a.k.a S.Q. Reeder a.k.a Eskew Reeder, a.k.a. Esquerita (1935-1986). WHO?, you ask. Well that is why we are doing a post on him! I have been …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:07AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Very excited to report that our old pal Red Bastard (Eric Davis) is back in town, taking a few days off from his world travels with Cirque du Soleil to tickle and terrify us once again. (Rea…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:08PM[SHARE]Hats off (top hats and derbies mostly) to our old pal Ben Model who has just released yet another hot-lookin’ DVD collection. And when I say hot-lookin’, I mean  — well,…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:42PM[SHARE] Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. It’s not surprising Native American Indians would be a recurring theme in Buster Keaton’s comedy…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:45PM[SHARE]Continuing our tribute to Alan Young’s birthday…I tend to think most people today know his later show best, the immortal Mr. Ed which ran from 1961 to 1966, and thereafter …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:45PM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of Angus “Alan” Young (b. 1919) who, true to his name, always had a youngish face and voice…and is still with us at age 93! English born, and with a r…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:27PM[SHARE]Originally posted in 2010 Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck was a mama's boy, and mama was a stage mother. A frustrated actress, Mrs. Hollenbeck pushed young Webb into dancing school at the age of se…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:21AM[SHARE]Originally posted in 2010 Ned Sparks is on my very short list of favorite character actors — in fact, I have gone so far as to channel him in certain past performances, and I plan to d…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:37AM[SHARE]Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. This post is a refinement on some earlier related posts, on the history of the mountebank and the medicine show.…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:42AM[SHARE]Monday, November 18, 2013
Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. In an early post today we mentioned some of the theatrical precursors to the cinema’s treatment of Native A…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:53PM[SHARE]Here’s another little post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. Because of the nature of this blog, a lot of these posts looking at negative stereotypes will be drawn fro…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:36PM[SHARE]Here’s another little post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. There were many live theatrical precursors to 20th century depictions of Native Americans in film and broadcas…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:09PM[SHARE]Sunday, November 17, 2013
Here’s another little post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. How many movies are there in which Native Americans are misrepresented, inaccurately represented, cruelly represe…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:36PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
