Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Today is the birthday of Roy D’Arcy (Roy Francis Giusti, 1894-1969). I am wracking my brains this morning as to how he ever got onto my radar — and I think it is because I saw hi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:01AM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Today is the birthday of the great midwestern humorist, author and playwright George Ade (1866-1944). I’ve already blogged here about his Fables in Slang and other humor, incl…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:28PM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of Alma Rubens (Alma Genevieve Reubens, 1897-1931). Originally from San Francisco, Rubens started out when still a teenager as a chorus girl in musical comedies. There …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:26AM[SHARE]Monday, February 8, 2016
 Today is the birthday of Valerie Bergere (Valerie Zenobia de Beaumont Lieb, 1867-1938). Borne in Alsace-Lorraine, she moved to to the San Francisco area with her family some time prior t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:40AM[SHARE]Sunday, February 7, 2016
1910 Mardi Gras revelers on Frenchman Street, New Orleans photographed by John N. Teunisson, (via Trashy Diva).
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:52AM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), a distant cousin of mine via our mutual ancestor Edmund Ingalls (1586-1648) of Lynn Massachusetts, my (10th) great grandfather. …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:52AM[SHARE]Saturday, February 6, 2016
Today is the birthday of Pat Harrington, Sr. (1901-1965). Â This performer came onto my radar just a few weeks ago, when his better known son Pat Harrington, Jr. (of The Steve Allen Show a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:45AM[SHARE]Friday, February 5, 2016
There is apparently a maxim in the genealogy field, something along the lines of “Genealogy without documentation is fairy tales.’ It’s meant to be an aspersion, but frankl…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:15AM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Filed under: Contemporary Variety, Indie Theatre, PLUGS, Valentine's Day Tagged: Ten Foot Rat Cabaret, Under St. Marks
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:08AM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Today is the birthday of S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall (1883-1955). Like most film buffs, I knew this performer well, but never learned his name until our friend Nora mentioned it one da…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:28AM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of Berta Beeson (Herbert “Slats” Beeson, 1899-1969). Billed as the Julian Eltinge of the Wire, Beeson was a cross-dressing tightrope walker. It is not known…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:32AM[SHARE]Monday, February 1, 2016
Today is the birthday of the great Hollywood film director John Ford (John Feeney, 1894-1973). Ford is too large a topic for a single blogpost. I’ve done a few smaller ones on him to d…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:18PM[SHARE]Jules Bledsoe (Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe, 1897-1943), was an operatic baritone, one of the first African Americans to gain acclaim on the American stage. Much like Paul Robeson, in additio…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:24AM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of the great American humorist S.J. Perelman (1904-1979): see my original essay on him here. One of the perks of having written a popular book is that you develop many …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:24AM[SHARE]Sunday, January 31, 2016
A reader sent me this picture today, and it made my day. It seems to symbolize where I am at the moment. It’s a New Year, I’m starting my second half-century, getting married soo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:45PM[SHARE]Sam Hague (1828-1901), was one of the first impresarios to present African American performers onstage in the United States. A native of Sheffield, England, Hague started out as a clog dance…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:45PM[SHARE]Friday, January 29, 2016
Today is the birthday of Charles F. “Zit” Zittel (1877- 1943) Long forgotten today, during the vaudeville era, Zit was thought of as one of the principal competitors of Variet…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:37AM[SHARE]Thursday, January 28, 2016
Filed under: BROOKLYN, Music, PLUGS Tagged: BROOKLYN, music, The Grand Victory
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:20AM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Today is the birthday of baby-blue eyed, Method acting, cinematic charmer Paul Newman (1925-2008). We thought we would mark the day with a look at several of his western pictures: The Left H…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:25PM[SHARE]Sunday, January 24, 2016
Being snowed in today and all, I took the opportunity to do a little busy work, and wound up entering all my year’s expense receipts into a spreadsheet in preparation for my tax return…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:04AM[SHARE]Saturday, January 23, 2016
My friend the broadcast journalist, comedy buff and once and future Woody Allen impersonator Barry Mitchell is a sharing sharer. Though there are many aspirants I would imagine to the mantle…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:48PM[SHARE]Friday, January 22, 2016
We had a great time last night at the Actor’s Fund’s tribute in honor of Broadway Producers Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley in the upstairs event space at Sardi’s. The ev…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:55PM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of the great Ann Sothern (Harriet Arlene Lake, 1909-2001). Sothern didn’t appear in vaudeville, which is why we haven’t done a post on her yet. But she had …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:32PM[SHARE]Filed under: BROOKLYN, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS, Vaudeville etc., Women Tagged: BROOKLYN, Bushwick, Cobra Club, Force Majeure, Lady Weirdo, Tanya Solomon, vaudeville
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:13PM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of Sylvester Schaffer (1885-1949). Schaffer was a second generation star of the Berlin variety stage. His father was the Austrian-Bohemian juggler and painter George Sy…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:51AM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Today is the birthday of the one and only Merwyn Bogue (1908-1994), better known by his professional name Ish Kabibble. What a mysterious thing is this Ish Kabibble — old time show …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:27AM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of Minnie Dupree (1875-1947). Dupree was a star of the old melodrama stage who’d acted with such figures as William Gillette, Nat Goodwin and Richard Mansfield. I…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:38AM[SHARE]Today is the birthday of the great 19th century libertarian philosopher Lysander Spooner (1808-1887). Born onto a Massachusetts farm, Spooner studied to become a lawyer and then proceeded…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:38AM[SHARE]Sunday, January 17, 2016
Got a press release in my e-mail box a couple of days ago from Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus announcing that they have moved up the retirement of all their elephants from 2018 t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:38PM[SHARE]We were in a doc-watching mood the other night, yet not in the mood for anything  or time-consuming or heavy. Thus, much in the same way as when you’re looking for something for som…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:20PM[SHARE]E’ vero! I came across this delightful information yesterday when writing up my eulogy of Dan Haggerty of tv’s The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.  As I wrote yesterday, t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:20PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
