11,537 stories by "Trav S.D."
I may have eventually got 'round to a post on director Stan Dragoti (1932-2018) but probably not as soon as today. The fast track is accounted for by the fact that he was an old friend of my…
I have long been amused that the name "Chubby Checker" is similar to those of Fats Domino and Leonard Chess " this faction of the early rock and roll pantheon sounds like the game shelf. It …
This morning's subject is not to be confused with the other Johnny Burke the minor film comedian. This Johnny Burke (1908-1964) was a tin pan alley songwriter, usually a lyricist. A graduate…
Classic comedy fans may know Matthew Coniam as one of the presenters of the Marx Brothers Council Podcast. But his interests and research are wide ranging (from Jane Austen to Egyptomania) a…
October 1 is the natal day of the late Tom Bosley (1927-2010) and we're just a couple of weeks shy of the 10th anniversary of his death, and we've dropped his name here on Travalanche about …
It's just so weird and uncanny that Mac Davis died on the same day as Helen Reddy " they were both the same age, they came to fame at the same time, they both had similar careers (encompassi…
Almost as if I KNEW I would be cooped up in my house for a year, just about a year ago I stretched my legs a bit and traveled to San Francisco and environs and western New York and some othe…
I selected the photo above not because it is the best representation of George Bancroft (1882-1956) but because it represents the film role of his which I know best, the part of Marshall Cur…
I had already been planning a post on Helen Reddy (b. 1941), her birthday is in less than a month, but upon learning of her passing yesterday, we elevate her to where she was during much of …
It is inevitable that I will do a post on Deadwood, which I rate the highest TV western series ever made (at least in terms of production values; arguments can be made about the writing). Am…
If you're reading this blog you no doubt hold the late Madeline Kahn (1942-1999) high in your esteem already; but now that I look at her career in its totality I am fairly agog. Like most, I…
Sometimes your good luck is also a Trojan horse for your bad luck. Brooklyn born Beryl Wallace (Beatrice Heischuber, 1912-1948) was plucked from the chorus by impresario Earl Carroll to be h…
40 years ago, PBS launched its wildly popular series Cosmos, brainchild of the much-missed Dr. Carl Sagan (1934-1996). Sagan was an astrophysicist, among many other things, but as far as the…
As a New Englander who loves Jewish comics, satire and good girl art, and whose father was both a conservative hillbilly and a closet cartoonist, there is precisely EVERYTHING to fascinate m…
Thanks be to Immortal Ephemera for gathering together more info about Wally Van (Charles Wallace Van Nostrand, 1880-1974) than I might otherwise have easily gotten. Born in New Hyde Park, Va…
There are more reasons to know the name Basil Dean (1888-1978) than you have fingers. but I'm betting you don't (as I once didn't). We'll cut to the chase, then give you his background. Dean…
Philippe Nicole (1881-1940) was a small-statured native of Montreal who worked for the sideshow of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus between the ages of 12 and 15. In 1906 he me…
Most classic cinema buffs inevitably think of Edmund Gwenn (Edmund John Kellaway, 1877-1959) as a loveable, even cuddly English senior citizen, due to the sorts of roles he played in Hollywo…
Today some overdue sunlight on silent comedian Al Cooke (Albert Gallatin Cooke, 1880-1935). Cooke was a moneyed Los Angeles local who'd been educated in Switzerland and had been a rancher an…
An overdue announcement to current and future Travalanche Patreon Patrons! I have now set up giving levels, with gifties at each tier, by way of thanks for your support and involvement. I'm …
Seems strange and unjust to live in a world in which Phil Hartman (1948-1998) is the answer to a trivia question about pop culture two decades ago, when all of his contemporaries continue to…
Some remembrance today for Ham Fisher (Hammond Edward Fisher, 1900-1955) and his celebrated creation, Joe Palooka. This cartoonist brings up a wonderful chain of associations: there's Ham…
Just got word that Gale Sayers (b. 1943) has finally followed his old NFL roommate Brian Piccolo to the Great Gridiron in the Sky, almost exactly 50 years behind his friend. Sayers and Picco…
I neither know nor care what polls or charts say, I know through a combination of instinct and experience that the musical performer with the most universal appeal of the late 20th century i…
It's rare if not unprecedented for me to use a late paragraph photo of a classic star, but this is how I always think of Walter Pidgeon (1897-1984). Pidgeon was in plenty of movies when I wa…
