11,827 stories by "Trav S.D."
Elizabeth Montgomery (1993-1995), born on April 15, that unlucky calendar date when the Titanic Sank and Abraham Lincoln succumbed to his gunshot wounds. I suppose it’s a bias but I…
Czech American director Milos Forman died today at the age of 86. The Eastern Bloc, much as Nazi Germany had before it, enriched American culture by causing its great artists to flee to our …
A tribute today to the great character actor Rod Steiger (1925-2002). One of the most famous proponents and exponents of the so-called Method, there is a wonderful surprise in the late actor…
The late Don Adams (Donald James Yarmy, 1923-2005) was born on this day. I have blogged about him before, very purposefully NOT writing much about his most famous vehicle on that occasion, i…
We fulfilled a long term objective last night be seeing Tammy Faye Starlite do her Mick Jagger interpretation (a better descriptive noun, I think that the less complex “impression̶…
Happy birthday, Mason Reese (b. 1965)! I have been looking forward to this post for days, as only someone my precise age would. Reese is just a few months older than me. He was a child ac…
Born today: Avery Schreiber (1925-2002). With comedy partner Jack Burns (b 1933), Schreiber was a familiar sight on television variety shows in the 1960s and ’70s. Burns and Schreiber …
Happy 90th birthday to one of the few people to have been both a show biz genius and an actual genius, Tom Lehrer (b. 1928). Lehrer is the only American I can think of who became famous as a…
Paul Robeson (1898-1976) was practically Superman: Class Valedictorian at Rutgers, All-American football player, was playing in the NFL when he got his law degree from Columbia, and was so t…
Tempting though it be to do an entire post about one of the most awesome tv shows ever, The Rockford Files (1974-1980), it would be unfair to the late James Garner (James Bumgarner, 1928-201…
Today we celebrate a familiar face and voice with a less familiar name: Phil Leeds (1916-1998). Short statured, chinless, with huge nose and ears, and somewhat buggy, fishy eyes, Bronx-born …
Just some scraps on chorus girl and actress Dorothy Leeds, whose name I came across in Marjorie Farnsworth’s Ziegfeld Follies book. Her first credit is the 1915 Vitagraph film The Awak…
April 5 is the natal day of Gale Storm (Josephine Cottle, 1922-2009). Storm was a major movie star in the 1940s and a major television star in the 1950s, but the break that led to both was a…
Ironically I only came to Bea Benaderet’s (1906-1968) biggest, best and best-known role only recently. Instead, I discovered her in a series a satisfying revelations over the years. Sh…
Happy birthday, Tony Orlando (Michael Anthony Orlando Cassavitis, b. 1944). When Orlando and his pseudo-group “Dawn” burst on the scene in the early 1970s, I imagine few people k…
You’ve all heard the story, right? How Doris Day’s husband and manager Martin Melcher died one day in 1968, whereupon Day learned that she had horrible debts and that she was com…
Hi, Loyal Friends and Neighbors! A quick little notice to let you know that just because I’ve been quiet on the theatrical end of things, that’s been far from a planned, permanen…
I have already written about a couple of his shows, but have not yet paid proper tribute to the great Jack Webb (John Randolph Webb, 1920-1982). By all accounts, Webb was everything he seeme…
Tap dance paragon Charles “Honi Coles” (1911-1992) was born on this day. Like the Nicholas Brothers, Coles hailed from Philadelphia. Schooled in the rigorous methods of street ta…
Thanks to reader Suzanne Stone, who let me know about her relative Ira H. Morgan (1889-1959), who was born on April 2. I rarely write about cinematographers, but on occasion I have given att…
Happy birthday to Jane Powell (b. 1929). Not to be confused with Eleanor Powell or for that matter Jane Russell, Jane Wyatt, Jane Wyman or Jayne Mansfield, not is she related to William Powe…
Happy birthday and Chag Sameach to Gabe Kaplan (b. 1945). I was a tween during his pinnacle years, the perfect age at which to appreciate his youth-oriented sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter w…
Shirley Jones (b. 1934) was one of those many people who were on television in the 1970s about whom I, a child at the time, had no idea regarding an illustrious background. Though Jones̵…
Thanks to Travalanche’s top benefactor Bruce Schaffer for relating the sad news that theatre scholar/author Mel Gordon has passed on at age 71. To clarify: this is not the swing era so…
Passover begins at dusk, so there’s still a few hours left to be sacrilegious. And by that, I mean irreverent towards the worship of cinema. Well do I remember the poster advertising W…
