11,832 stories by "Trav S.D."
Bette Davis (1908-1989) was born on April 5. Having just given a good deal of attention to her rival Joan Crawford (an antagonist beyond the grave thanks to Feud: Bette and Joan) I herewi…
We’ve been laying low since our last big endeavors Fields Fest and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians in November and December — but we haven’t been idle! We’ve been p…
It’s MLB opening day; time finally for our survey post on baseball centered movie comedies. It is meant to a part of a series on sports comedies; we did one on football, and one on …
We enjoyed the pilot of Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel a great deal — in fact, enough to write our own review. But we knew someone who could write a better one: multi-talente…
After years of navigating this treacherous terrain myself, today I felt it was high time to share this little road map of the great comedians of the studio era, and the factories in which th…
Our Gang’s Bobby “Wheezer” Hutchins (1925-1945) was born on this day. Wheezer was part of the Gang from 1927 through 1933, which, if you’ll do the math, takes him fro…
HAPPY BOITHDAY! Like most people my age and younger, I have always known Jackie Vernon (Ralph Verrone, 1924-1987) for one thing: his voice-over performance as the title character in Rankin-B…
I believe The Wizard of Oz put it best: “A heart is judged not by not much how you love, but by how much you are loved by others.” The phrase never made a lot of sense to me unti…
One of the questions I have been frequently asked in the context of having written No Applause is “Did you have relatives in vaudeville?” and my usual answer is along the lines o…
To be born in the modern age is to discover many of the great figures of past ages backwards. We encounter them by reputation or in classrooms and we usually are introduced to them at their …
Time once again to celebrate the birthday of Leonard “Chico” Marx (1887-1961). Today seems to me an appropriate time to float a notion I came up with the other day, a way of look…
Rock in Peace, Chuck Berry! I have little to add to the tribute I wrote in 2010, except 90 is a damn good run, Rudolph. One good measure of the value of a songwriter is the number and qualit…
Born on this date in 1863: Charles Chaplin the Elder: the father of his better known namesake, comedian and movie star Charlie Chaplin. It’s not as well known today that in his time th…
March 17 isn’t just St. Patrick’s Day; it also happens to be the birthday of Frank Buck (1884-1950). What an interesting American character! Born and raised in Texas, Buck sta…
Filed under: Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: Bingo-a-Go-Go, Dandy Dillinger, DJ La Linda, Ethyl's
This new series of posts came out of the realization that I have relatives and roots in all 50 U.S. states. My ancestors lived in 13 of them (all on the eastern seaboard or adjacent), and I …
On March 14, 1913, New York’s Princess Theatre opened for business. Aside from a couple of exceptions (e.g., the Palace, Niblo’s Garden) we don’t typically write about spec…
We all associate Coney Island with summer (it’s a beach and amusement park after all), but it may be a lesser known fact that there’s stuff happening at Coney Island USA all thro…
Originally posted on Silent-ology: There is much to love about Georges Méliès. He was a technical wizard, a delightful performer, and an artist whose gorgeous work can still inspire awe. Å
Today’s a good a day as any to tell you about Albert Carroll, an extraordinarily talented and well-known guy in his day to have become so obscure in ours. Carroll was a Broadway act…
Filed under: Frenchy, PLUGS, Singers Tagged: cabaret, French, Gay Marshall, Gay's Paree, Pangea, singer
Billie “Buckwheat” Thomas was born on this day in 1931. Thomas was all of three years old when he began to appear in Hal Roach’s Our Gang (Little Rascals) comedy shorts …
Filed under: Broadway, PLUGS, Television Tagged: Alfred Molina, Broadway HD, BroadwayHD, Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey, streaming
Filed under: Contemporary Variety, Magicians/ Mind Readers/ Quick Change Tagged: Cheating Death, magic, Nelson Lugo, The Tank
Tomorrow, March 11, 2017 at 2:30pm, at Lincoln Center Library, the Silent Clowns Film Series will present the hilarious Raymond Griffith feature Hands Up! (1926). Griffith’s stoc…
