11,836 stories by "Trav S.D."
Filed under: Contemporary Variety, PLUGS, Vaudeville etc. Tagged: Brevities, Carol Bradshaw, Proctors, Schenectady, vaudeville
“It’s just like comedy!” Todd Robbins always quips in his act, and hearing about his new show True Nightmares , which premiers on Investigation Discovery next Wednesd…
Filed under: Uncategorized
Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. In honor of Nance O’Neil’s birthday and the Halloween season upon us, I thought I would do a little post about great screen a…
Filed under: Burlesk, PLUGS, VISUAL ART Tagged: Drink and Draw, The Parlor
Today is the birthday of Nance O’Neil (Gertrude Lamson, 1874-1965). O’Neil was a major stage and screen star of her day, called “the American Bernhardt“, managed by M…
Tomorrow at 6:00am (EST) on Turner Classic Movies, to kick off their day-long program of train movies, they will be showing Buster Keaton‘s The General (1927). Unthinkable as …
Today is the birthday of Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875). Â I learned about this astounding person through genealogical research. I am distantly related to him through our mutual ance…
Continuing our month-long series of classic horror posts launched here, today we survey Universal Pictures’ Frankenstein franchise. As we know there have been countless reboots o…
Today is the birthday of Richard George “R.G.” Knowles (1858-1919). Technically, Knowles was Canadian by birth, though his parents were American and he was raised in America (his…
Continuing our month-long series of classic horror posts launched here, today we survey Universal Picture’s Dracula franchise. As we know there have been countless reboots of the…
When I said yesterday that the Americans didn’t take a back seat to the Germans in the business of morbidity and horror  even during the 1920s, I was thinking chiefly of director To…
Far be it from me to lay all the morbidity of the world at the feet of the Germans (after all, neither the English nor the Americans take a back seat to them in the category we are discussin…
Burlesque being what it is, there aren’t many dancers who came up through its ranks during the classical era who broke through to mainstream fame. Lili St. Cyr was one of the few who d…
Today is the 100th anniversary of the release date of the Charlie Chaplin comedy Shanghaied (1915). In this funny Esssanay comedy, Charlie plays a poor shlub who loves the daughter (Ed…
As we have observed, it is Buster Keaton‘s birthday today. But it’s also the Halloween season, and so (we think) what better way to explore it than by celebrating some of Keaton&…
Tonight (tomorrow morning, really at 12:45am Eastern) Turner Classic Movies will show the 1925 horror classic The Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney. This seemed a fitting day to…
Tonight on Turner Classic Movies: two classic westerns directed by William Wyler. 8:00pm (EST) The Big Country (1958) Big sprawling epic of the late ’50s type, co-produced by Wyler and…
This post grew out of the introduction to a talk I gave at Clay McLeod Chapman’s Fear Mongers panel series a few years ago. The bulk of my talk was about a favorite tv show of mi…
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the release date of W.C. Fields’ second film, the 1915 silent short His Lordship’s Dilemma. Sadly, this movie is thought lost and v…
Today is the birthday of actor  Alan Dinehart (1889-1994). Originally from St. Paul, Dinehart dropped out of school to act in repertory theatre and vaudeville, eventually making his way t…
Tomorrow at 11am, as part of their Film Forum Jr. series, the Film Forum in New York will be showing the Abbott and Costello  comedy Hold That Ghost (1941) This is the first of A & C&…
Today is the birthday of the indispensible Henry Hull (1890-1977) . Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, he was one of a trio of thespian brothers, the other two being Shelly Hull …
Tonight on Turner Classic Movies, in celebration of the Halloween season: several films set in haunted (or otherwise evil) houses. 8:00pm (EST) Two on a Guillotine (1965) If you’d aske…
Today being the birthday of Bud Abbott AND the early days of the Halloween season today we thought we’d do a little post on the horror comedies of Abbott and Costello. And, no, A…
