11,865 stories by "Trav S.D."
Next Monday, 12 August 2013 at 4pm, the Hudson Branch Library (66 Leroy Street) will be the site of a special Mae West 120th birthday tribute. Actress Darlene Violette will r…
Today is the birthday of Lew “Bud” Bloom (Ludwig Pflum, 1859-1929), billed in vaudeville as “The Society Tramp”. Originally from Reading, Pennsylvania, he started out…
Today is the birthday of that legendary Siren Margaretha Geertruida ”M’greet“ Zelle MacLeod, better known as Mata Hari (1876-1914). Her career as a spy working …
Today is the birthday of Randall James Hamilton Zwinge (b. 1928), better known as the Amazing Randi. A native of Toronto, he was turned on to magic as a teenager when he saw a performance by…
Today is the birthday of Mary William Ethelbert Appleton “Billie” Burke (1884-1970). American-born, she was the daughter of singer and clown Billy Burke, and grew up on the road,…
Today is the birthday of Sam Lucas (1839-1916), actor, comedian, singer and songwriter, known as “the Grand Old Man of the Negro Theatre”. Born to free black parents in Ohio, he …
Today is the birthday of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). In my teenage years I acquired a 19th century copy of his complete works and it remains one of my most treasured possessions, as h…
Today is the birthday of Lucille Ball (1911-1989). People older and younger than me know her primarily for and initially from her groundbreaking tv series I Love Lucy (1951-1957). But tho…
Today is the birthday of the great Leo Carrillo (for more on this pioneering entertainer go here). My first exposure to Carrillo was on the tv show The Cisco Kid, one of the very first te…
Originally posted in 2009. One of the first tv shows I remember watching as a kid was a western called The Cisco Kid. The episodes were 20 year old reruns at the time, but it was perfect …
Today is the birthday of Anna Swan (1846-1888). Eighteen pounds at birth, the Nova Scotia native was four and a half feet tall by her fourth birthday and reached seven and a half feet in her…
Today is the birthday of George A. Whiting (1884-1943), the co-writer of the song “My Blue Heaven”. In 1911 he formed a two act in San Francisco with Sadie Burt (1893-1966), who …
Today is the birthday of pioneering female comedy writer Selma Diamond (1920-1985). Raised in Brooklyn, her first professional credits were cartoons and humor pieces for The New Yorker. I…
Today is the birthday of Joseph Merrick (sometimes known incorrectly as “John”, 1862-1890). Born normal, the physical deformities that gave him his nickname began to emerge in ch…
Today is the 102nd birthday of the still-living John Calvert (b. 1911). The Indiana native was inspired to take up magic by a boyhood trip to see the legendary Howard Thurston. He began his …
Today is the birthday of The Great Leon (Leon Levy, 1876-1951). This vaudeville magician was best known for his illusion “Fire and Water”, in which an assistant was wrapped in pa…
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: burlesque, Lone Star Follies, Texas, Triad
Originally posted in 2011. August 4, 1901 is the birthday of the great Louis Armstrong. (He gave it out himself as July 4, 1900, but the records tell differently). He never played vaudeville…
Originally published in 2010. Helen Kane was one of those figures — like Josephine Baker, Eddie Cantor, and Texas Guinan - -who defined the spirit of the 1920s. With he…
\ Today is the birthday of Abe Lyman (Abraham Simon, 1897-1957). Lyman started off in his youth as a drummer in Chicago night clubs. By 1919 he had his own nine piece band that was popular i…
Today is the birthday of the great showman William Cameron Coup (1836-1895). An Indiana native, Coup worked first as a printer and then (starting in 1853) managed the side show of Mabies Gra…
Today is the birthday of music hall star Charles Coborn (Charles Whitton McCallum, 1852-1945). Coborn was largely associated with two songs: “Two Lovely Black Eyes” (1886) and…
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: Chris McDaniel, Gal Friday, Gotham Burlesque, Triad
Today is Tony Bennett’s birthday (Anthony Bennedetto, b. 1926). I worked for him as a factotum in the early 1990s (hence the above, taken at the Performing Arts tent in Beverly, Mass).…
Today is the birthday of Bill B. Van (William Webster Van de Grift, 1878-1950). He got his start as a child actor in a Philadelphia production of H.M.S. Pinafore, moved on to blackface mi…
