11,836 stories by "Trav S.D."
Tonight as part of their Friday night horror series for the Halloween season, Turner Classic Movies will show several classic horror films inspired by books: 8:00am (EST): Dr. Jekyll …
There’s something so inherently fascinating and magnetic the first time I heard the name The Last Great Circus Flyer. It’s one of the seven documentaries playing at TCFF I look f…
Today is the birthday of Jimmy Aubrey (1887–1983). The son of an American-born gymnast, Aubrey was born and raised in Lancashire, England. He got his start in music hall with KarnoR…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the 1926 silent comedy The Better ‘ole, starring Syd Chaplin, and directed by Chuck Reisner.  This World War One comedy has a …
Today is the birthday of Armand Kaliz (Armand Kalisz, 1887-1941). Kaliz was born in Paris; of Polish Jewish parentage. By 1907 Kaliz was in New York appearing in both vaudeville and the Broa…
Today is the birthday of Sally O’Neil (Virginia Louise Noonan, 1908-1968). Â Bayonne-born O’Neil started her performing career as “Chotsie Noonan” in vaudeville. He…
Today is the birthday of Lilyan Tashman (1896-1934). The daughter of Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York she began as a model in high school and broke into vaudeville during her teenage …
And now, the latest in our month long series about classic horror which we launched here, This post came about because I noticed a little mini subgenre within classic horror — several …
Filed under: Hollywood (History), Horror (Mostly Gothic), Movies, PLUGS Tagged: Loew's Jersey, werewolf, Wolf Man
And now, the latest in our month long series about classic horror we launched here, this one devoted to werewolf films of the classic era. While the core of this post will concern the 1941 U…
Today is the birthday of high-wire artiste Bird Millman (Jennadean Engleman, 1890-1940). Born in Colorado, she started out with her parents in small circus an act called the Millman Trio. By…
Today is the birthday of Hungarian-American actor Bela Lugosi (for my biographical post on Lugosi go here). Since his birthday falls so conveniently during the Halloween season, I thought…
Today is the birthday of Tor Johnson. Most folks who know him at all are aware that Johnson was a Swedish wrestler who appears in a handful of Ed Wood films and other grade z horror movies. …
Filed under: BROOKLYN, SOCIAL EVENTS
And now a post in our month long series about classic horror we launched here, this one concerning giant monsters. We qualify our title with “phase one” for the obvious reason th…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Paramount film Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934), directed by Norman Taurog. The ostensible star of the film is the stage actre…
Tonight (tomorrow morning) at 1:15am (EST) on Turner Movie Classics: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s first feature film The Round Up (1920). Arbuckle was one of the firs…
Today is the day of the NYC Zombie Crawl, a fitting day to do this post about zombies as part of our month long series on classic horror films we launched here. Most modern zombie production…
Today is the birthday of the great Irene Ryan. Today she is best remembered for playing Granny on the hit CBS sit com The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-1971), although she had long career in vau…
Today is the birthday of Jean Arthur (Gladys Georgianna Greene, 1900-1991). It was only this week that I learned that I am distantly related to her! We are both descended from the early Virg…
 Today is the birthday of Spring Byington (1886-1971). I associate her primarily with playing silly old fussbudgets and society women in comedies but a reflection on her career reveals th…
Tonight at 11:30pm (EST) Turner Classic Movies will be showing Vincent Price in The Baron of Arizona (1950). A brief capsule review of the film below, and then, as part of the month…
Apparently, as of today we are mid-way through something called “Family History Month”. To what extent that holiday designation is merely an advertisement for certain web sites I…
Tonight on Turner Classic Movies — a slate of movies about very, very bad children. 8:oopm (EST) The Nanny (1965) Who is the one to hate and fear in this Hammer film? The disturbed hel…
Continuing our month-long series of classic horror posts launched here, today we look at Universal Pictures original Invisible Man series. While the first picture in this series is …
