The career of Dorothy Gibson (Dorothy Winifred Brown, 1889-1946), is full of hair raising twists and turns, and not just the one that took place on April 15, 1912. A Hoboken native, she sang…
As Jane in the Tarzan movies (1932-1942), Maureen O'Sullivan (1911-1998) seemed the epitome of the upper-crust colonial Brit, but that was just a matter of study and accident. She was as …
On May 16 was born the enterprising serial killer Dr. H.H. Holmes (1861-1896). Naturally we do not celebrate the day; we abjure the man and his deeds (just put yourself in the shoes of one o…
Bull Montana (Luigi Montagna, 1887-1950) was a funny professional wrestler who became a heavy in silent and early sound comedies. Because he made such a scary impression, there was something…
Just a few words of tribute for one of my favorite Pre-Code stars, Constance Cummings (Constance Cummings Halverstadt, 1910-2005). The daughter of a concert soprano, Cummings started out in …
Bald-pated, bespectacled character actor Richard Deacon (1921-1984) was one of the great comic foils of all time, and one of the first to spring entirely from the television era. For over a …
Lew Lehr (1895-1950) is someone many classic comedy and animation fans know about…without realizing that they do. Homage was paid to him in no less than 8 Warner Brothers cartoons between …
The unthinkable has happened: Doris Day has passed away at age 97. Most of us, I think, had assumed she'd never die. The woman had been retired for nearly a half century! We've blogged about…
Just to make one's life hell, not only is there a Betty COMPSON, but there is also a completely different Betty COMPTONÂ (Violet Halling Compton,1904-44), roughly contemporary, also in sho…
For Edward Lear's (1812-1888) birthday: some brief jottings on a topic I've been turning over in my head for years. At a talk I gave on the Marx Brothers and their influences a few years ago…
I've always felt a personal connection to Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003), because where I lived when I was growing up she was local. The Hepburn family beach house, where the star spent a lot…
The roll call of stage and screen personalities contains many child actors. A lucky and talented few of them managed to continue acting or performing throughout their entire lives. The vast …
Everyone else will be writing about the 50th anniversary of Abby Road and the Let It Be sessions this year, but I'm only now catching up with Revolver (although I did manage to squeeze Rubbe…
Richard Barthelmess (1895-1963) was a second generation thespian. His mother Caroline was a stage actress; he got his first professional experience as a child actor in her productions. He al…
Missouri born Robert Melvin (1920-1995) was afflicted with a condition known as neurofibromatosis, which caused distorting tumors on the right side of his face. He didn't literally have two …
I've been starting to beat the drum for this on social media, but wanted to have some more facts before I linked to it from Travalanche. Exciting news, that's what it is! The new Archeophone…
Claire Anderson (Claire Mathes, 1895-1964) came from Detroit to Hollywood in 1914, where she began appearing in melodramas for D.W. Griffith's Reliance-Majestic studio opposite stars like Wa…
Russell Hunting (1864-1943) was an actor with the Boston Theatre Stock Company when he got in on the ground floor of an exciting new medium " sound recording. Starting in 1891 he began makin…
This is a truncated version of a talk I gave at the Coney Island Museum on May 4, 2019. In many cases I've already posted articles about different subjects mentioned in the post. Just click …
The story of the great clown George Carl (1916-2000) is a lesson in hangin' in there. Born in Ohio, Carl joined the circus as a teenager. By the early 1950s he had established himself in an …
Totie Fields (1930-1978) occupied a perfect show biz niche. A stand-up comedian and singer, her act was basically that she was an overweight Jewish woman, which was much more of an iconoclas…
Full disclosure: the Tribeca Film Festival closed yesterday! So you'll have to seek these movies out in your nabe or when they stream. Somehow I managed to see three films in the festival th…
In honor of Admiral Peary's birthday, today we pay tribute to several classic comedies set in or near the Arctic Circle. Shame on you if you don't know who Robert Peary (1856-1920) was. Pear…
Bernard "Toots" Shor (1903-1977) operated one of the more legendary show biz night spots in New York in the mid 20th century. After a decade of being a bouncer and manager at various establi…
Happy birthday, Willie Mays (b. 1931)! Known as the "Say Hey Kid", Mays spent almost the entirety of his career (1951-72) playing for the (first New York, then San Francisco) Giants, framed …