11,524 stories by "Trav S.D."
"When you talk about The Swimmer, will you talk about yourself?" asks a 1968 poster for this impossible-to-pigeonhole film. The short answer is, probably not when you're 20. I was that age w…
I begin my appreciation of Barbara Loden (1932-1980) by telegraphing the ending. She died young, at age 48. If she hadn't it's likely she'd be better known today for she was on the cusp of b…
The life story of Lili Damita (Â Liliane Marie-Madeleine Carré, 1904-1994) resolves into nice, discrete chapters for convenient consumption. She made quite a journey. The daughter of a Fr…
In the unlikely event that you didn't get the memo, the Coney Island Circus Sideshow is up and running Fridays through Sundays throughout the summer season. They have a killer core cast this…
We have a sort of theme emerging today: first this celebration of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and now a eulogy to a character who dates from that era of experimental theatre in the Off-Of…
Today we spotlight the too little celebrated (and too little understood) contributions of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and its founder R.G. "Ronnie" Davis (b. 1933). There are struggles and…
Far be it from me to recommend any vaudeville book above my own (and I'm not, I stand by it as the best of its kind available, though I am also champing at the bit to do a revised, updated e…
There was a stretch there, from the late '60s through the early '70s when Kim Darby (Deborah Zerby, b. 1947) was very "flavor-of-the-month". I associate her especially with the title role in…
Having mentioned him a couple of dozen times on this blog, today some attention for George Dewey Cukor (1899-1983). "Cukor" is Hungarian for sugar, an apt brand, given how so many of his mov…
I was watching The Vikings (1958) on TCM the other day (and a surprisingly entertaining picture it is, if a preposterous one) but I feel compelled to to report that one of my main unanticipa…
Hollywood director and producer Richard Donner (Richard Donald Schwartzberg) has passed away at age 91. I've written about a few of Donner's films, as it happens: Salt and Pepper (1968), Sup…
Today we salute actress Barbara Weeks (Susan Kingsley, 1913-2003). Weeks is often confused with another actress of the same name who appeared in five Broadway plays from 1927 to 1936, was a …
Tonight on TCM at 8PM Eastern, Yankee Doodle Dandy, one of the very best of Hollywood show biz bio-pics, as well as one of the best onscreen snapshots of vaudeville, directed for Warner Brot…
Long time readers of this blog know that its author possesses no shame and will brag on the smallest pretext, Our pride this morning stems from the near certainty that I have appreciated the…
The sad tale of Trent "Junior" Durkin (1915-1935) is normally told in the form of a footnote to Jackie Coogan's life. Today, we'll let Junior be the star. Durkin was the son of an Atlantic C…
A brief bow of the head to honor Thomas A. Dorsey, a.k.a. Georgia Tom (1899-1993), not to be confused with the later big band leader Tommy Dorsey. This Dorsey was a minister's son, who grew …
This may be the only complete biographrical article on multi-talented Jack LeMaire (1911-2011, sometimes rendered "Le Maire") that you will find on the internet. His interesting career broug…
Virginia Vance (1902-1942) was in nearly 100 comedies between 1922 and 1929, almost all of them, naturally, silent. Born in Chicago, raised in Toronto, Vance was 20 years old when she made h…
Myron Cohen (1902-1986) performed the sort of act that's largely extinct from the mainstream entertainment landscape nowadays. The closest I can compare him to from his own time is George Je…
As some of you know, I am a huge aficionado of the disaster movies of the 1970s (we have a whole section devoted to the genre), and well, this one seemed rather timely, wot? Heatwave! (1974)…
The perennial family classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was released on June 30, 1971. A rather dismissive article in The Guardian prompts me to add my voice to the chorus of the …
Richard Lewis (b. 1947) is an extremely funny guy (I've been a fan almost since the beginning) yet I can't help but talk about him in terms of other comedians. He seems primarily influenced …
Ruth Attaway (1910-1987) enjoyed an amazing career, beginning with her role as Rheba in the original Broadway production of You Can't Take it With You (1936-38) and concluding with the pivot…
Good news of a kind today " Broadway re-opens with the resumption of Springsteen on Broadway at the St. James Theatre. Normally I write about artists on their birthdays….which makes it pro…
Billy Curtis (Luigi Curto, 1909-1988) may have the most impressive resume of screen credits of any professional little person of his time. As it happens, I saw him just yesterday in Alfred H…
