11,552 stories by "Trav S.D."
It’s a testament to how badly I wanted to see Stan and Ollie that it only took me a week and a half (and not a year or ten years) after opening day to see it. By now you’ve alrea…
Born this day in 1925 Ramon and Royce Perez Blackburn: the Blackburn Twins. I see many partial biographies of this interesting team of tap dancing twin brothers on the internet; you are read…
Please to join me, host Ayun Halliday, Riley Kellogg, Elia Bisker of Sweet Soubrette, Daniela Paiewonsky, Kyra Sims, Mike Andrews, Christine Schisano, and Sam Soghor one week from today as w…
While I have already done a post on Adam West, oddly that will not serve as my Batman post. It’s too mired in the special problems of being Adam West, a subject related but not iden…
Tonight on TCM! A tremendous line-up of some of Laurel and Hardy’s best comedies (only one turkey in the bunch — see if you can guess which). Here’s what they have pl…
When Bob Einstein passed away the other day, I had nothin’. Not only had I already written two other obituaries that same day (Gene Okerlund and Daryl Dragon) but I knew far less about…
I have already written about Zora Neale Hurston, whose birthday it is, here and here, but my wife, knowing how much I admire the writer and cultural preservationist, bought me a copy of a &#…
It is beyond bizarre that I seem not to have done a post yet on Joey Adams (Joseph Abramowitz, 1911-1999). I feel like perhaps I had done one here years ago and now it seems to be missing. A…
Brief tribute to character actor Billy Sands (1911-1984). Comedy kingpins loved to have Sands around, but he could also hold his own in heavy drama. Sands started out as a stage actor, appea…
January 6 is the birthday of one of the few WAMPAS Baby Stars we haven’t written about yet Ruth Hiatt (1906-1994). Interestingly, Hiatt was born on the exact same day as another leadin…
Young Dorothy Appleby (1906-1990) won a Portland, Maine beauty contest and translated it into a 20 year career in show business, notably as a supporting player in classic comedy shorts. Appl…
Some brief words of appreciation for countrified character actor Tom Fadden (1895-1980). Born in Iowa, Fadden was the son of a mining engineer. Travel was part of the job, so parts of his ch…
January 5 is the birthday of my favorite of all the Supermans, George Reeves (1914-1959). Well I say that, but I have some catching up to do. I’ll be comparing all versions up to the p…
Like most classic comedy fans I first became aware of Cora Witherspoon (1890-1957) from seeing her as W.C. Fields’ henpecking wife Agatha in The Bank Dick (1940). (“Don’t y…
January 4 was the birthday of Sorrell Booke (1930-1994). Those who know Booke only as “Boss Hogg” will be startled by aspects of his background. He’s a Yankee from Buffalo,…
Orpheus McAdoo (1858-1900) was a terrifically successful African American minstrel show impresario, back in the era when “genuine” all-black minstrel shows were the rage, paving …
Today appears to be a day for profiling lesser-light younger brothers. Just now we did something on Harry Gribbon’s brother Eddie. Now we look at Jack Donahue’s younger brother J…
Today, a tribute to Eddie Gribbon (1890-1965), younger brother to the better known but still obscure Harry. Eddie broke into silent comedies a couple of years after his brother, playing …
Everything goes in three: today we lost wresting announcer Gene Okerlund, comedian Bob Einstein (son of Harry), and also musician Daryl Dragon (1942-2019), better known as the “Capt…
We are saddened to hear of the passing today of Eugene “Mean Gene” Okerlund (1942-2019), straight man to an entire sports league. The news took me aback, for I had no idea that: …
George “Beetlepuss” Lewis (1901-1955) started out in vaudeville but achieved his greatest fame in burlesque, where he was one of the most popular comedians. Lewis appears to have…
Dublin-born Tom Dugan (1889-1955) grew up in Philadelphia and was a manual laborer before breaking into show biz as an Irish tenor. He worked in minstrelsy, medicine shows, big time vaudevil…
In the Middle Ages, the Feast of Fools, a burlesque religious festival, was celebrated on or near New Year’s Day. In many places a Lord of Misrule, or a Boy-Bishop, or an Ass, ruled ov…
I’m tempted to dub 2018 “the smallest year ever”, for it was a year in which, for a variety of reasons, I was compelled to “work small”, to perform close-up mag…
Full confession: I was a huge John Denver (1943-1997) fan at the height of his full John Denver-dom (the 1970s). I was a child at the time and I naturally disavowed all that as a teen…
