11,542 stories by "Trav S.D."
Here's a true fact that tells you everything you need to know about gender relations in America. I don't believe I've ever met an American woman for whom Little Women is not a sacred text. T…
African American actress Theresa Harris (1906-85) was both gorgeous and highly trained, but given the tenor of the times, was rarely given the opportunity to show all that she could do onscr…
Bonita Granville (1923-1988) has a special place in the hearts of classic movie buffs and old time show biz fans. As a child, she specialized in playing bratty, precocious or otherwise bothe…
Cissy Fitzgerald (1873-1941) was a performer who understood the wisdom of playing the hand you are dealt. Educated in an English convent, she came to fame in the British music comedy A Gaiet…
When I first moved to NYC in the dim, dark years of the 20th century, what is now the Stephen Sondheim Theatre was still known as Henry Miller's Theatre, after the man who built it. I gave i…
Chicago native Little Billy Rhodes (1895-1967) was a rare little person actor who actually got to play some decent film roles. Having started out in vaudeville and circuses, he played the ti…
African American performer Esther Lee Jones, billed variously as Baby Esther or Li'l Esther, started out in her native Chicago as a child performer in the 1920s, singing, dancing, and perfor…
Charleston native Helen Chandler (1906-1965) was only eight years old when she began acting professionally in New York. She was still a girl when she was acting in Shakespeare with both of t…
A genuine pleasure to be writing about our second lady western star of the day (following Joanne Dru): Olive Carey (Olive Fuller Golden, 1896-1988). Olive was the daughter of vaudeville grea…
There are one or two points of interest that induce us to write about actor John Ireland (1914-1992). He was the stepson of Irish vaudevillian Michael Noonan, and half-brother of Tommy Noona…
Strange to contemplate a universe in which Peter Marshall is better remembered than his older sister Joanne Dru (Joan Letitia LaCock, 1922-1996), but that is the universe as we find it. Dru …
To grow old is to witness the unthinkable many times. And "unthinkable" was the word that first popped into my head when my friend Heather Quinlan just dropped the bomb that the 116 year old…
I've written about almost every other major cast member of my second favorite movie, the first one I ever saw in a cinema The Poseidon Adventure (1972) except perhaps the most important o…
2020 marks 100 years since Buster Keaton hung out his own shingle as an independent comedy auteur. The first fruits of his efforts didn't make into cinemas until late summer, but Keaton was …
Here's a salute to a performer I should have appreciated more in her heyday (the 1980s), but will ever after, Ann Jillian (Ann Jura Nauseda, b. 1950). Both Jillian's life and the core of her…
Today a brief tip of our leather motoring helmet to pioneering race car driver Barney Oldfield (Berna Eli Oldfield, 1878-1946). Originally a bicycle racer, Oldfield switched to the greater t…
The day after Holocaust Remembrance Day, we are in the right frame of mind to do a brief tribute to character actor John Banner (Johann Banner, 1910-1973). The central irony about Banner is …
Somehow I didn't get the memo that author/critic/journalist Stefan Kanfer passed away a year and a half ago. The years are flying by now. We'd exchanged some correspondence over the years…
Full disclosure: the majority of the intelligence in this post comes from Brent Walker's indispensable reference Mack Sennett's Fun Factory. Only with great restraint do I not spill all the …
Paterson native Charlotte Parry (1873-1959) attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, then went into vaudeville as a mimic or impersonator, doing a repertoire of celebrity impressio…
Bernice Claire (Bernice Jahnigen, 1906-2003) was a star of operetta and vaudeville, which translated into a brief movie career in the early days of talkies. Originally from Oakland, Californ…
Walter Stull (1879-1961) was a silent screen comedian, best known as "Jabbs" or "Jabs" in the Pokes and Jabs comedies, in which he was partnered with Bobby Burns, with a young Oliver Hardy a…
It's a wonderful fact: whenever I have no post planned for the day something always falls into my lap anyway. I've long been interested in Philly's Mummer's Parade, drawing as it does from M…
A wink and a nod to silent screen actor/director Rupert Julian (Percival Hayes, 1879-1943). How appropriate that his birthday falls on Australia Day eve, for, though he was actually from New…
In response to nationwide release today of The Turning, a little post on Henry James' 1898 The Turn of the Screw, the novella on which it is based, and it's previous film versions. The Turn …
