11,524 stories by "Trav S.D."
All hail, Bill Monroe (1911-1996), Father of Bluegrass Music. If you're like me, when you hear that bluegrass was cooked up in the 1940s, you'll, be like "Wha-? Huh? Isn't that way too recen…
Some sources, apparently without authority, give September 13, 1660 as the birthday of the landmark British author Daniel Defoe (d. 1731). I therefore post on him today in an abritrary spiri…
You know you've done a lot of biographies when new ones start seeming like composites of old ones; thus Vera White sounds like a mash-up of Vera Vague or Vera-Ellen and Pearl White. In sooth…
Today we acknowledge big bandleader Shep Fields (Saul Feldman (1910-1981). You'll find nearly as many images of Fields blowinto liquid with a straw as you do of him playing his clarinet or s…
There is a great episode of Mad Men, where hero Don Draper gets taken to an Off-Off Broadway play by his second wife Megan, an aspiring actress. It is an experimental thing with guys in suit…
I'm not one of the numerous people who have to run and hide every September 11. I'm very much the opposite. I've obsessed on it since it happened; I've been working on a book length poem abo…
I was going to head this post: "50 years ago today: John Lennon's last good album" but that would not be in a very positive spirit, would it? But I think it is true. To my taste, after the b…
Queenie Smith (1898-1978) was a familiar character actress well into the 1970s, with a career that had begun over a half-century earlier. Sounds like a blues singer, right? A mix of Mamie Sm…
"Believe me, if a Turk could get out of Turkey and come here, even now, he would kiss the ground. To oppressed people, America is still a dream." This quote from Elia Kazan (Elias Kazantzogl…
One might be forgiven for assuming that character actor Irving Bacon (1893-1965) was a brother or some other relative to director Lloyd Bacon, since the former acted in some of the latter's …
Labor Day, 1921 saw the launch of the first Miss America pageant (it fell on September 8 that year). It seemed fitting for us to mark the occasion in some way, as there is some overlap with …
We have all sorts of reasons to be interested in stage and screen star Doris Kenyon (Doris Margaret Kenyon, 1897-1979). One is that singer/actress Doris Day was named after her (her mother w…
Today is September 5, 2021 and you know what that means. That's right! It's 100 years to the day since Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle held his wild party at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel. Four …
Comedienne Luella Gear (1897-1980) wasn't in vaudeville but she worked with so many who were that she seems a veteran by proxy. She was almost entirely a creature of the Broadway stage, havi…
Tonight! For Hispanic Heritage Month, learn about Latin Burlesque Heritage in Bella Sin's talk on same! Class is Donation based $5 and upVenmo @clevelandburlesque or paypal.me/bellasin Re…
It seems an injustice to make this Pat O'Malley (1890-1966) an also-ran, for he had once starred in films and has over 400 credits, but by the mid '30s he was busted down to bit player, henc…
In an industry which has given us an Al Lewis and an Al Kelly, to say nothing of an Al Flosso and an Al Mardo, it seems an Al Baker (1874-1951) would be inevitable. In spite of the quotidian…
Child star Wally Albright (Walron Algernon Albright Jr, 1925-1999) had range " his face could look cheerful and confident or haunted and melancholy, and this kept him working steadily in bot…
I'm fairly certain that I have never enjoyed a movie LESS than Val (2021) the new vanity doc about movie star Val Kilmer (b. 1959). My wife suggested it, so I figured we'd hate-watch it, the…
The career of chorine/model/bit player Jean Spangler (b.1923) was modest; her life presumably short. But we don't really know. Spangler's credits and vital stats can be summed up briefly. Sh…
Notes on and nods to Richard Arlen (Sylvanus Richard Mattimore, 1899-1976). Sylvanus? Sylvanus. That could have been his screen name right there, full stop, just the one name like Elvis, Che…
An overdue thing on Fredric March (Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel, 1897-1975), a topic so Brobdingnagian and daunting I've deferred it for years, choosing to write around it in various pos…
Actors are shape-shifters by definition. In the case of Jacqueline Brown (1914-2001) there were two levels to it: she changed her professional identity several times, from "Jacqueline Wells"…
A brief nod to magician and ventriloquist Jay Marshall (1919-2005). Marshall was a true "linking ring" between the old era and this. The Massachusetts native had attended vaudeville shows in…
A toot on the bugle this morning for character actor Joe Sawyer (Joseph Sauers, 1906-1982). Frequently cast as Irishmen, Sawyer was actually German-Canadian. His tough-looking mug was equall…
