11,843 stories by "Trav S.D."
Filed under: BROOKLYN, Burlesk, Coney Island, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: Bleach at the Beach, burlesque, Coney Island USA, Sideshows by the Seashore
Today is the birthday of Bobby Dunn (Robert V. Dunn, 1890-1937). A Milwaukee native, Dunn started out doing acrobatic high dive stunts at amusement parks and other outdoor shows starting at …
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: burlesque, Nurse Bettie, Shelly Watson, Turn for the Nurse
 Today is the birthday of Victor Heerman (1893-1977), best known today as the director of the Marx Brothers‘ Animal Crackers. Later dissed in interviews by Groucho, Heerman …
Today is the 100th anniversary of the release date of the Charlie Chaplin comedy The Masquerader (1914). The film is one of many Keystone and Chaplin comedies to be set in an actual mo…
On this day in 1919, comedian Harold Lloyd suffered a most grievous accident while taking some publicity photos for his new series of two-reelers. Lighting what he thought was a prop fus…
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: Calamity Chang, Grace Gotham, Metropolitan Room, One Enchanted Evening, Shelly Watson
Filed under: Music, PLUGS Tagged: Spin NYC, Sweet Soubrette
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Laurel and Hardy feature Bonnie Scotland (1935). In this classic, the boys break out of jail and stowaway on a cattle boat to get to…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the classic W.C. Fields short The Golf Specialist (1930). This was Fields’ first talking film, and the provenance of it is most fa…
 Today is the birthday of film director Jean Yarbrough (1901-1975). Though I don’t know that they ever had anything to do with one another, I mentally associate Yarbrough with Will…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle comedy His Wedding Night (1917), also featuring Buster Keaton and Al St. John. Fatty plays a puc…
Today is the birthday of the great (and beautiful) Russian actress Olga Baclanova (1896-1974). People of her day would be flabbergasted to know that in 2014 her best known screen performance…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Laurel and Hardy comedy Block-Heads (1938). Originally intended to be their last Hal Roach film (and it was their last Roach film fo…
As we head into our last week of our announced run of I’ll Say She Is, I thought it would much behoove us to pay tribute to the man who wrote the book to the show, and co-wrote its …
Today is the birthday of famous Hollywood ne’er-do-well Jack Pickford (John Charles Smith, 1896-1933). Not a significant artist himself (although considered by his peers to have been q…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Harry Langdon comedy The First 100 Years (1924) I’d always been perplexed by this title. There are a couple of comedies with t…
Filed under: Burlesk, Music, PLUGS, Singers Tagged: burlesque, Duplex, Foxy Vermouth, Swing and Strip
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the 1925 Harry Langdon comedy Lucky Stars, directed by Harry Edwards. This is easily one of Langdon’s craziest comedies for Mack …
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Douglas Fairbanks comedy Down to Earth (1917), written by Fairbanks, Anita Loos and John Emerson, directed by Emerson. An ingenious veh…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the 1926 silent comedy The Show Off. Directed by Malcolm St. Clair, it was an adaptation of George Kelly’s 1924 Broadway stage hit. T…
Filed under: Contemporary Variety, Dance, PLUGS Tagged: Jersey Tap fest, Tap 'N Time
 Today is the anniversary of the release date of Laurel and Hardy’s first feature length film Pardon Us (1931), directed by James Parrott. The title is a joke"it's a prison c…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the MGM comedy Speak Easily (1932), directed by Eddie Sedgwick. Though it is billed as “A Buster Keaton Production” and only…
Today is the 100th anniversary of the release date of the Charlie Chaplin comedy Recreation. Though amusing in spots, it’s one of Chaplin’s less distinctive efforts, being…
