11,862 stories by "Trav S.D."
Today is the birthday of the great stage and screen star William S. Hart (1864-1946). Hart is best remembered today as the pre-eminent star of movie westerns during the silent era. But he wa…
A brief follow-up  to this morning’s birthday post on Lynn Fontanne. While there’s very little tv or film record of her or husband Alfred Lunt’s in performance, copio…
Today is the birthday of Lynn Fontanne (1887-1983). Fontanne and her husband and acting partner Alfred Lunt are wonderful modern anomalies. They are among the last of the great stage actors …
Here’s a classic  – and typically surreal — bit of 70s television. I really don’t think we get culture clashes like this anymore in today’s show biz environm…
Another in our series of Christmas themed posts. This Christmas themed episode of Eddie Cantor’s Time to Smile program aired in 1941, featuring announcer Harry Von Zell and special…
Today is the birthday of Sonny Boy Williamson II (1912-1965), not to be confused with the original Sonny Boy Williamson. Nor is this one the son of the original Sonny Boy Williamson. This is…
Today is the birthday of “Little Richard” Penniman (b, 1932). Richard’s life and career are an example of the perils and pitfalls of Manicheanism, his life perpetually  …
Today is the birthday of Walt Disney (1901-1966). The highlight of my short NYU career was the course I took on Disney taught by the world’s pre-eminent Disney scholar John Canemake…
Today is the birthday of Lige Conley (Elijah Crommie, 1897-1937). Initially billed under his birth name, Crommie started out in vaudeville and stock companies and worked as a newspaper carto…
Perhaps best known as the Muriel Cigar girl (“Why don’t you pick one up and smoke it sometime”?), Edie Adams was a Tony Award-winning actress (for her performance as Daisy …
I have followed Matt Zoller Seitz’s writings “ever since the dark days before Pearl Harbor” when he was one of the principal film critics for the New York Press. Toda…
Christmas is usually associated with brightness: Â the North Star over Bethlehem, the lights on a Christmas tree, the whiteness of snow, the silver of tinsel. Fairy tales, on the other han…
Another in our series of Christmas themed posts… This is one of many episodes of The Jack Benny Program (both the radio and tv editions) in which Benny drives the store clerk crazy wit…
This early 1910 version of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol produced by Thomas Edison exceeds nearly all subsequent versions in atmosphere and charm. It is not, however, the ea…
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: Calamity Chang, Dandy Wellington, Gin MInsky, Repeal Day
Continuing our Christmas themed series of posts… Here is the 1947 Christmas edition of Phil Harris and Alice Faye’s radio show. For more on this famous couple of the airwaves go …
Today is the birthday of Dennis Wilson (for my previous article about the ill-fated Beach Boys drummer go here). Today I thought I would share some Christmas themed communications from the c…
Today is the birthday of Monte (sometimes rendered as “Monty”) Collins (1898-1951). You may think you don’t know him, but if you’re a comedy fan you have definitely s…
Nobody is more Jewish than Al Jolson — the real son of a cantor, as well as the fictional son of a cantor in The Jazz Singer. On the other hand, no one is more secular than Al Jolso…
Today is the birthday of the late Andy Williams (1927-2012). Since it falls during a season he is much associated with. and you’re having his Christmas songs dunned into you anyway, we…
While I go to museums pretty frequently, it’s been ages since I’ve been to the Museum of Modern Art (and ages before that since I’ve gone there to do anything but look at f…
Happy Cyber Monday! Never mind your friends’ and relatives’ wish lists! I know what they want! I Know what they want! Trust me! This page of my  blog is the only catalog you&#…
Today is the birthday of Charles Edward Ringling (1863-1926), a somewhat random and yet reasonably appropriate time to perform a much delayed unpacking of the complicated story of the Ringli…
Today is the birthday of Richard Pryor (1940-2005). Here’s my infallible capsule assessment of Pryor: a histrionic genius at the art of storytelling on the stand-up stage, with a film …
Today is the birthday of Virginia Mayo (Virginia Cara Jones, 1920-2005). A Saint Louis native, she was taught acting and dancing at her aunt’s dramatic academy and began her career as …
