11,864 stories by "Trav S.D."
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, Illusionists, PLUGS Tagged: Cardone, Joe the Shark, R Bar, Sharkbite Sideshow
Originally posted in 2010. When I was about four or five years old, my dad brought us to a company picnic that featured a funny magician and puppeteer to entertain the children. For some…
Originally posted in 2009 Aside from being a great magician, Blackstone is noteworthy for bridging the gap between the classical age of magic at the beginning of this century, and the televi…
Today is the birthday of the great Tin Pan Alley songwriter Vincent Youmans (1898-1946). The privileged son of a prosperous hat manufacturer, he attended Yale briefly then worked on Wall Str…
Originally posted in 2011 Ella Shields (born this day in 1879) was a male impersonator and a rare American export to the British music halls. A Baltimore native she started out in a sister a…
Originally posted in 2010 Born this day (according to some, including himself) circa 1867-1871, cartoonist Winsor McCay is much revered today for his highly whimsical, dreamlike comic strips…
Not-So-Tough Guy Raft Dancing with Carol Lombard Originally posted in 2010. Like fellow Hollywood tough guy James Cagney, George Raft started out as a hoofer. And before that? Let…
Originally posted in 2012 Today is the birthday of the great George Gershwin (1898-1937). Surprisingly, Gershwin’s own career bypassed vaudeville (our usual subject on this blog) almos…
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: New York Burlesque Festival
Today is the birthday of the great radio singer Vaughn DeLeath (Leonore Vonderleith, 1896-1943). Plus-sized DeLeath dropped out of Mills College in the 1910s to sing professionally in vaudev…
Wednesday, September 25, 7pm Brooklyn Public Library, Central Branch (Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn) Vitagraph: Brooklyn’s Own Movie Studio In the early years of cinema, Brooklyn (Midwood…
Leaping Dog acts were all the rage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the best of the lot was said to be Meehan’s Leaping Dogs. I find many references to them an…
Today is the birthday of the great dancer Harriet Hoctor (1905-1977). A native of rural Hoosick Falls, New York, at age 12 she was sent to New York City to live and study with a Russian ball…
Today is the birthday of pathbreaking black comedian Spencer Bell (1887-1935). Originally from Lexington, Kentucky, Bell started out in minstrel shows and vaudeville before breaking into pic…
Today is the birthday of the late Anthony Newley (1931-1999). I have no idea why I’m writing about him today apart from the fact that he had an interesting career, and helped perpetuat…
Today is the birthday of blues legend Lemon Henry “Blind Lemon” Jefferson (1893-1929). Born blind to a sharecropping family in East Texas, Jefferson learned to play in his teens,…
Re-posted from earlier this year in honor of Fitzgerald’s birthday today. I risked the fate of Myrtle Wilson this morning as I walked down the street re-reading The Great Gatsby…
Today is the birthday of the great puppeteer and impresario Jim Henson (1936-1990). As I’ve often said, he is someone who ought to be included amongst the New Vaudevillians; he is of t…
Today is the birthday of the great juggler Lester “Larry” Weeks (b. 1919). Weeks is one of the very few bridges between the original vaudeville business and the phenomenon of …
Though I ended my monthly column for the Community Media papers a few months back, I have been keeping a hand in with the occasional feature, and, as of today, the futuristic medium known as…
We’re very excited back here at Trav S.D. Laboratories about the two talks we have lined up this week, one more connected with my first book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book …
Filed under: Dixieland & Early Jazz, Music, PLUGS Tagged: jazz, Rudy Wiedoeft, saxophone
Today is the birthday of one of my favorite screenwriters, Charles B. Griffith (1930-2007). Almost the entirety of Griffith’s career was spent working for Roger Corman from the mid 195…
Originally posted in 2010 This photo of Mickey Rooney was taken just last week. No, no… Judy Garland's pal from the Andy Hardy movies was also in vaudeville with his vaudevill…
Today is the birthday of Typhoid Mary (Mary Mallon, 1869-1938), the Irish cook who stubbornly plied her trade, eluding authorities and infecting dozens of people with Typhus. A fitting time …
