11,514 stories by "Trav S.D."
Born 100 years ago today, Italian designer, director and politician Franco Zeffirelli (1923-2019). When Zeffirelli passed, only four years ago, it dawned on me that his hit 1968 screen adapt…
Strange but true, but I learned about American music hall sharpshooter Ira Paine (1837-1889) from researching the famed Folies Bergère in Paris. Born in Hebronville, Massachustetts, Paine w…
When I was a kid I associated the name Sidney Sheldon (Sidney Schechtel, 1917-2007) exclusively with cheesy paperback novels my mother read, and the soapy TV movies they made out of them. At…
I'd been planning a post on Burt Bacharach (1928-2023) for his birthday in May but his passing on February 8 makes an appreciation here and now more urgent. I'll be frank with you in a way m…
I can't recall how I first learned about Soviet theatre visionary Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940) as a young person. Perhaps by way of Brecht? For quite a while I was enthralled with reading …
Do you ever have those moments (I frequently do) when you catch an actor you haven't seen in a while in a film or a tv show, and then the next day they die? It's coincidence, but creates an …
February 8 is National Molasses Day! And you mightn't think that that blog would have anything to say on this topic, but there you'd be wrong. For molasses happens to be the stuff of comedy …
Alejandro Rey (1930-1987) was likely the first Latin-American screen actor I was ever aware of. The handsome Argentine played Carlos on The Flying Nun and is by no means to be confused with …
February 8, 1973 was the air date of the pilot of an interesting TV variety experiment called The NBC Follies. The show was subsequently picked up and ran for a single season, from September…
When Wilbur Sweatman (1882-1961) played big time vaudeville in the early nineteen tens, for his big finish he played three clarinets simultaneously. He was one of the very few African Americ…
Well, here's a new slice of information about which I was not previously aware. I'd long been aware that America had Yiddish and Italian vaudeville circuits for immigrant audiences where onl…
I've seldom ventured to write appreciations of set designers on this blog, it falling outside my purview and expertise. Among the few have been Tony Walton, and Erté, But the death today of…
Celebration today of nonagenarian sex symbol Mamie Van Doren (Joan Lucille Olander, b. 1931). She shared a birthday with Zsa Zsa Gabor! Van Doren is best remembered for being third in rank a…
In the spirit of our recent post on Marion Meade, we thought you'd use the occasion of Leslie Zemeckis's natal day for a brief appreciation of, like, everything she's ever done (with fervent…
Though Monta Bell (1891-1958) was a protege of Charlie Chaplin and even worked with the Marx Brothers, we are late in treating of him, as his comic movies were more in the sophisticated trad…
A century ago (1923) Moscow Art Theatre veterans (and refugees from the USSR) Richard Boleslawski (BolesÅ‚aw Ryszard Srzednicki, 1889-1937) and Maria Ouspenskaya founded the American Labo…
Albert "Bert" Coote (1867-1938) was the son of Robert Coote (1834-1888) a popular British music composer. Bert first went onstage himself at age five, appearing throughout his childhood in m…
Unthinkably, blasphemously, through some apparent pact with Satan, film-maker, author, fabulist and provocateur Kenneth Anger (Kenneth Anglemyer, b. 1927) still lives. At the time of the pre…
Oh, don't you fret, I'll be getting in your face plenty about my own books and other projects as this year progresses, but short term, three people close to me have their own tomes to promot…
The headline is a trick question. Everyone who lived between 1880 and 1946 was a racist by our standards, so of course W.C. Fields was. His professional friendship with Bert Williams, and a …
Black History Month is when I typically have done posts honoring black performers for whom I don't know the birthdate, of which there have been a relatively high percentage. Case in point, P…
Cindy Williams (1947-2023) passed away about a week ago (Jan. 25) but somehow the news didn't get out until last night. Of the two Laverne and Shirley stars, Williams was far and away my fav…
Seems late in the game to be adding Isham Jones (1894-1956) to our roster of successful vaudeville veterans (he's the 1,790th figure we've added to the series) but while I really do love the…
To be of my age and of my proclivities is to have been influenced by West Coast-based RE/Search Publications (est, 1980). This underground publishing house put out high end periodicals on a …
It's superficial of me, I know, but I became much more interested in, and approving of Victor Mature (1913-1999) once I learned he was half Italian. His father, Marcello Maturi was a Kentuck…
