11,554 stories by "Trav S.D."
For someone whose name is a household word, Bram Stoker (1847-1912) remains pretty much incorrectly known, or incompletely known to the millions who associate the name with his best remember…
The name Al G. Field or Al G. Fields (1848-1921) pops up in many a former minstrel’s** biography. His birth name was Alfred G. Hatfield, the G. standing either for Griffin or Griffith.…
Those of a certain age will recognize in the title a sly reference to the 1976 TV movie Sybil, a shift in direction in the career of Sally Field (b. 1946) of which there have been many. We d…
We naturally watched the long-awaited released of Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind on opening day (November 2) and were delighted when it it turned out not only to be up to Wel…
My copy of the the Sobel’s Pictorial History of Vaudeville features the above right picture, and informs us it is Charles Daly and Dan Healy in the Montgomery and Stone parts (roughly)…
Funny thing about Ray Walston (Herman Raymond Walston, 1914-2001): the second half of his career was supposedly overshadowed by his stint as Martin the Martian on My Favorite Martian (1963-6…
It’s National Authors Day! I guess I would be remiss in my duties indeed if I did not use the opportunity to recommend my favorite author and two favorite books. Here’s how to ge…
A few weeks back I had the chance to tour a brand new tourist attraction that suddenly appeared in our midst: Chelsea’s Museum of Illusions. I’d been offered the chance to tour t…
Tonight at Dixon Place, Cardone’s Spook Show, The House of Ghostly Haunts. I saw an earlier incarnation of this at the Canal Street Playhouse several years ago, and loved this knowing …
One of the largest and longest-lasting acts in vaudeville began in the 1920s with Utah music and vocal teacher William King Driggs Sr. (1885-1965) who formed a family orchestra with his wife…
. It’s not well known that Coney Island USA’s founder and artistic director Dick Zigun (the man and the organization behind the Mermaid Parade, the Coney Island Circus Sidesho…
I found myself appropriately distressed at the prospect of seeing Tammy Faye Starlite’s tribute to the Rolling Stones’ 1967 album Their Satanic Majesty’s Request without be…
Today is National Mule Appreciation Day. Believe it or not, I cooked up this post a few months ago and held it in reserve ’til now. Stubborn as a mule and crazy like a fox! By the way,…
Having written about Gavin MacLeod (Captain Stubing) and Bernie Kopell (Doc) as well as executive producer Aaron Spelling, and scores of the actors who guest starred on the show, today we se…
We don’t know if the Halloween-season timing of Jody Christopherson’s presentation of her spooky solo work St. Kilda at Torn Page the other night was by design, but it sure was p…
It’s Gummo Marx’s birthday today (and also that of the Marx Brothers’ father Frenchie) and that seems a MOST apt occasion on which to plug The Marx Brothers Council Podcast…
With Halloween near upon us today we take a look at a minor but powerful horror subgenre, that of the wax museum based murdering madman. At least since Pygmalion and Galatea, storytellers an…
Though I like him a great deal, as with Jerry Orbach, whom we profiled here a few days ago, I’m not sure I’d be doing a tribute to stage and screen actor Tony Roberts (b. 1939) i…
Stan and Ollie is due to have its world premiere tonight at the BFI Film Festival. To mark the occasion, we contribute this post on the first leg of their career as a comedy team — the…
When Jerry Orbach (1935-2004) started attaining new heights of prominence in the late 1980s/ early 1990s, I found it hard to reconcile the guy I saw (a sort of thuggish, streetwise New York …
The late Robert Reed (John Robert Rietz, Jr, 1932-1992) was born on this day. A trained Shakespearean actor who’d studied at RADA and was a member of the Actor’s Studio, with man…
We choose Pam Dawber’s birthday for a Mork and Mindy post because we already wrote about Robin Williams on the occasion of his sad passing. In the ’70s, pretty, nice, bland ̶…
An appreciation today for histrionic Hollywood hotsy-totsy Miriam Hopkins (Ellen Miriam Hopkins, 1902-1972). Don’t read too much into that description, I just like alliteration. On the…
The name of New York born playwright Sidney Kingsley (Sidney Kirschner, 1902-1995) is no longer a household word, if it ever was one, bit it ought to be. Kingsley invented not one but at …
How appropriate that magician and spook show innovator El-Wyn (Elwin Charles Peck, 1902-1956) was born during the Halloween season. We have already written about guys like Dr. Silkini and Bi…
