11,542 stories by "Trav S.D."
Happy Chinese Year of the Rat! Today seems an ideal time to announce the imminent emergence of a show I have been working on for years with composer David Malamud, The Twisted Tale of the Ra…
In the midst of all chaos and drama happening down in Washington, a benchmark will happen this year. November will mark the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock. Throug…
Three Cheers for Florence Halop (1923-86) whose career in radio and television spanned five and a half decades. A native of Queens, Florence was the younger sister of Billy Halop, one of the…
To the best of my knowledge, burlesque star Betty Rowland (b. 1916) is still with us at age 104. When she hit the century mark a few years ago there was much hoopla, as in this Leslie Zam…
Today a long overdue post on the terrific Hollywood star Randolph Scott (1898-1987). Scott is someone you can use as a sort of litmus test: if you meet someone who is someone is familiar wit…
We are very sorry to hear we have lost Monty Python's Terry Jones at only age 77, although of course we lost him several years ago to the aphasia from which he suffered. I often thought of J…
Tribute today to the delightful music hall performer Leslie Sarony (Leslie Legge Frye, 1897-1987), who kept audiences tickled for a remarkable SEVEN decades. Our subject was from an artistic…
Brooklyn born performer Lee Dixon (1914-1953) performed in vaudeville and was only 18 when he danced in the chorus of the Vitaphone short A Modern Cinderella (1932) starring Ruth Etting. He …
Jack Coogan (1886-1935), originally from Syracuse, started out in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian. In 1913 he married fellow performer Lillian Dolliver. Their child John Leslie "jackie" …
Some days a theme emerges on Travalanche and today it is sideshow. Having just written about little person actor John George and plus-sized comedian "Fat" Karr, we take the occasion of carto…
A tribute today to little person/actor John George (Tutie Fatella, 1898-1968). While George had over 225 screen credits, it is fitting that one of his biggest and best known parts was in a f…
Hilliard "Fat" Karr (1899-1945) is today best remembered as one third of the plus sized silent comedy team Tons of Fun, but he had a thriving solo career before, during, and after that popul…
The career of Johnny Haymer (Haymer Lionel Fileg, 1920-1989) is kind of small fry but I do like the arc of it. Though he might be best remembered as Sgt. Zale on M*A*S*H (1974-79), it was hi…
Dolly Parton (b. 1946) is a one-woman industry at this stage. A true biography naming all of her accomplishments would need to be book-length. But the rationale for this post can be summed u…
This is Part Five of Carolyn Raship's Agatha Christie series launched here. Almost everyone has heard of Agatha Christie's characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, as they're constantly re…
There is no particular occasion for this post on the Pink Panther movies today, other than that I had nothing else in the pipeline and this one, which I've been picking away at for months, w…
It speaks a lot to how far ahead of her time Eartha Kitt was (Eartha Mae Keith, 1927-2007), given that she was widely regarded as an "exotic character" even unto her last years, and, in retr…
How I love a story like Harry Carey's (1878-1947). Considered the quintessential western star back in the day, Carey's origins couldn't have been more Eastern. He was a generation younger th…
Though a distinctly minor show biz figure, we find ourselves interested in Mary Stewart (1913-1995), not just because we share a surname, but we also have mad respect for the sheer breadth o…
Time has buried the Aces, as will happen when the fields you've conquered are such things as radio stardom, television writing, and magazine humor. But make mistake, they were well known in …
We spent an entertaining hour at Pangea on Saturday in a room full of Melody Jane fans, to see and hear the second iteration of her Violet Hour series. I've known Melody Jane in a few contex…
Her son Buck Henry having just passed away, and her birthday falling today, it would seem to be the perfect moment to bestow some attention on Ruth Taylor (1908-1984). Raised in Oregon, Tayl…
At this writing Mitzi McCall (b. 1932) and Charlie Brill (b. 1938) are both still with us, although unavoidably one can't help thinking of them in their heyday several decades ago. Peppy, pe…
Appropriate for such a complicated topic, I expected very little from the 2016 documentary Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown (2016), and was rewarded with unexpected riches. The film sho…
The career of silent screen comedian Ethel Teare (1894-1959) was brief but way prolific: over 150 credits during her decade of activity. Originally from Phoenix (back when Arizona was still …
