11,537 stories by "Trav S.D."
Three cheers today for James Millhollin (1915-1993), a character actor mostly associated with supporting roles as nervous, sweaty, punctilious, uptight, and pop-eyed clerks and bureaucrats. …
Buster Keaton fans know this well but it may be news to the wider public: Buster's younger brother Harry, a.k.a "Jingles" (1904-1983) was in the family vaudeville act for a time and also…
Today we raise a pint bottle to Hal Smith (1916-1994), best remembered for playing Otis, the town drunk on The Andy Griffith Show (1960-66). The gag was that he was generally the only regula…
Autumn is soon upon us and that means Old School is back in session " virtually, like all the other schools. Today being the 3rd anniversary of the passing of Jerry Lewis, seems a propitious…
Pete Hamill passed away on August 5. Like many New Yorkers, I had read his columns and articles for years in the Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, New York Magazine and the Village Voice, …
It's National Aviation Day! To observe the occasion, I thought I would take a look at a genre that specifically celebrates professional aviators and those that support them: pilots, mechanic…
Today we celebrate suis generis Caucasian comedian and kindred spirit Martin Mull (b. 1943). Can I say enough good things about Martin Mull? No. No, I can't. Originally from Chicago, as w…
It is the 100th birthday of Maureen O'Hara today and TCM has made her the focus of today's Summer Under the Stars programing. It is especially remarkable that she was born in 1920 when you r…
And now a tribute to a giant of a man, whose stance was so great it straddled two genres: Glenn Strange (1899-1973). Classic horror fans know him as the man who was tapped to replace Boris K…
Actor Reni Santoni (b. 1938) passed away a couple of weeks ago. I had long planned a post on him and kept kicking the can down the road. I didn't eulogize him on August 1 (the day he pass…
Billie Rhodes (Levita Axelrod, 1894-1988) started as child performer in vaudeville and melodramas in her native San Francisco. By age 17 she was appearing in films (mostly comedies) for Kale…
A six gun salute today to Charles Burton "Cowboy Charlie" Irwin (1875-1934), a.k.a. C.B. Irwin, a legendary figure in rodeo and Wild West culture. Irwin was a second generation blacksmith fr…
Wonderfully, the origin of this post was the photo above, which I came across on the internet while searching for something else. One doesn't just stumble across the films of Pauline Frederi…
Just got the news from TMZ that African American comic actor Raymond Allen (b. 1929) has passed on. From Kansas City, Missouri, Allen garnered his first film credit at the young age of 17…
In a little over a week we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. In observation of that…
It turns out that instead of being dead, as any reasonable person might have assumed, Eric Bentley was merely 103 years old! Older even than Shaw at the time of his passing. But now Bentley …
The title of this post derives from the fact that it is not about the most important and most criminal Paul Kelly (and shame on you if you never heard of him). The original "Paul Kelly" (bor…
As far as I'm concerned, the jury is out on Dustin Hoffman's 2017 sexual misconduct allegations, and if they are true, I think we can safely talk about his work as an actor as an independent…
A mash note today to comic actress Nita Talbot (Anita Sokol, b. 1930). Being of a certain age, I know Talbot chiefly from what might be called her "middle period". I almost certainly first s…
This being International Cat Day, and a Saturday Morning to boot, I thought I'd give a brief nod to an important animated Saturday morning kids show of my nonage, Josie and the Pussycats.…
Pete Hampton (1871-1916) was a ground-breaking African American singer, actor, harmonica player and banjoist from Bowling Green, Kentucky. After several years with medicine shows, all-black …
Speak of the devil! I was only just expressing the need for more attention paid to W.C. Fields' silent pictures in my review of Arthur Wertheim's most recent book on the life and art of t…
The first week in August is always National Clown Week, first inaugurated crazily enough by President Richard Nixon in 1971. Be that as it may, I'll be honoring the day tomorrow with a speci…
I became intrigued with Laura Lee (1910-1981) on account of her fetching appearance in three Joe E. Brown comedies, all made in 1930: Top Speed, Maybe It's Love, and Going Wild. IMDB to the …
If you're like me, your impression of singer and songwriter Paul Anka (b. 1941) went something like this: "Couple of hits in the fifties, couple of hits in the seventies, then nostalgi…
