Today is the traditional birthday of William Shakespeare (see our earlier article about him here). Recent years have been exciting ones for Shakespearean scholarship. Computer analysis has b…
April 22 is the birthday of Bettie Page (1923-2008). I feel sort of Bettie Page cult-adjacent, near but not of the intense widespread worship of this iconic pin-up girl of the 1950s. So many…
April 21 is the natal day of British actor/ comedian/ director Walter Forde (Thomas Seymour Woolford, 1898-1984). Forde was the son of music hall comedian Tom Seymour, joining his father …
Sundays at Noon, Gary Dreifus presents his long-running family-oriented magic show at Coney Island USA, featuring a different line-up  of expert illusionists every week. Today, Gary gives…
Lina Basquette (Lena Copeland Baskette) was born on April 19, 1907. Basquette was a star of stage and screen through several different phases, but is perhaps best remembered today for her ei…
April 19 is the birthday of Arthur Pat West (1888-1944). Today West is best remembered among vaudeville fans for his 1929 Vitaphone short Ship Ahoy, in which the stout little man comes ou…
Well, here’s a wonderful surprise: familiar character actor Bob Hastings (1925-2014) had an old school show biz background as a kiddie performer. First: you recognize him, right? The f…
Born today in 1896 in Salamanca, Spain: the great ventriloquist Wenceslao Moreno, better known to American audiences as Señor Wences. After having written about a couple of th…
Holidays in the western world are a Pagan thing, a Roman Thing. The earliest Christians (the last true Christians, the kind of people who gave their lives rather than deviate from their prin…
This year Tax Day fell on Easter Eve, and the timing was fortuitous; the Resistance was in need of some renewal and regeneration. After attending constant protests in the first two months of…
Harvey Lembeck (1923-1985) was born on April 15. Â Lembeck is a wonderful illustration of a transitional time in American show business. As with Gabe Dell of the Dead End Kids, there is su…
Today is the birthday of the great American painter Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975). Benton was the namesake and great grand-nephew of the five term Missouri Senator who was one of America…
Today is the anniversary of the 1912 sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic. The disaster took place in the Atlantic, far from New York City, but NYC has always had a strong connection to the event. …
Please join the campaign to vote for Man on the Flying Trapeze as the next W.C. Fields film added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Go to to www.wcfields.com where th…
We have been following the progress of Jennifer Harder’s The Wild Party’s Over with great avidity ever since she won the well-deserved First of May Award from the Bindlesti…
The career of Gene Carroll (born this day in 1897) is a really good illustration of what happened to the average working vaudevillian after vaudeville went away. The younger brother of Broad…
Happy birthday, Jane Withers (born 1926). Though I had seen many of her performances over the years, I didn’t particularly take notice of her until a year or two ago when I watched the…
David Letterman’s birthday is today. We wrote a couple of earlier posts with some thoughts about this influential show biz figure (here and here), so today, I thought I’d plug Ja…
April 11 is National Barbershop Quartet Day. It commemorates the day on which The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America was founded in 1…
Twin sisters Beverly and Betty Mae Crane were born 100 years ago today on April 11, 1917. Originally from Salt Lake City, the sisters were talented dancers who were hired by Hal Roach to spe…
It’s National Siblings Day, and to my shock I haven’t done a post yet on the countless classic show biz brothers and sisters who either had professional relationships or were in …
Happy Birthday, Marty Krofft, the younger of the duo invariably known by their trade-name Sid and Marty Krofft. While these amazing television creators downright dominated the entirety of my…
‘Tis well to remember sometimes in this forum that not everyone loved vaudeville back in the day. Some were too elitist, “Victorian”, or bigoted — any number of thing…
Just a few words on Spencer Tracy (1900-1967) since IÂ just saw him the other night for maybe the two dozenth time in the first film I ever saw him in (It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Worl…
Jack Davis (1914-1992) has a birthday of April 5. Not to be confused with another famous Jack Davis, the Mad Magazine illustrator, whom we’ll undoubtedly get around to celebratin…