11,867 stories by "Trav S.D."
Today is the birthday of Lena Horne (1917-2010). She got her start singing in Harlem’s Cotton Club and other swank New York night clubs, performing with the likes of Adelaide Hall and …
Today is the birthday of the brassiest of broads, Susan Hayward (1917-1975). Stunningly gorgeous for the first decade of her career (which had begun in 1937 when the former fashion model cam…
Today is the birthday of George Chandler (1898-1985). Chandler began his show business career in vaudeville in 1915, billing himself as “The Musical Nut”. He arrived in silent fi…
Last Wednesday night we were sitting in our living room watching tv and suddenly heard a terrifying rumbling sound coming from our front room. We ran in and found that this had happened: Und…
A series wherein we record and chronicle contemporary busking performers for fun and very little profit. This hombre passed through the C train with his squeeze box yestiddy: Filed under: Bu…
Filed under: African American Interest, Blackface & Minstrelsy, Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: Brown Girls Burlesque, Dirty Honey Shake, Joe's Pub
Today is the birthday of Frank Loesser (1910-1969). It’s a little known fact that the composer of Guys and Dolls, Where’s Charley?, How to Succeed in Business Without Really T…
Today is the birthday of the Fearless Frogman, Paul Boyton (1848-1924), showman, daredevil, and one of the early founders of the Coney Island amusement district. Boyton served in the navy as…
Today is the birthday of Tihany (Franz Czeiler (b. 1916). Originally from Hungary, he took magic lessons from Alfred Uferini and learned to pick pockets by watching Dr. Giovanni, a German pe…
Shortly after its birth, jazz made its way to the industrial north on riverboats puffing up the Mississippi. This 4th of July, celebrate America’s independence and her musical voyage, …
Today is the birthday of the divine Gilda Radner (1946-1989). I’m sad at how she’s fallen by the wayside in people’s memories — Belushi, too, but Gilda even more so. …
Today is the birthday of Mel Brooks (Melvin Kaminsky, b, 1926). Oy! Mel Brooks is 87! That’s practically 1,000! That he is one of the greatest comic minds of the 20th century (and a li…
 Filed under: Burlesk, Circus, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS, Vaudeville etc. Tagged: Casa Mezcal, Loose Caboose, vaudeville'variety
MORE RARITIES FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS A large number of the surviving silent comedies are held by the worldÊ»s film archives. One of the foremost is the Library of Congress. Since the…
Like most posts on this blog, this one really isnt about its advertised subject matter, it’s really about me. Today is the birthday of Henry VIII (1491-1547). On our first date, the Du…
Filed under: Hollywood (History), Movies, PLUGS, Silent Film Tagged: Broncho Billy, California, Essanay, festival, Niles, silent film
Polly Moran is probably best known today for a series of comedies she co-starred in with Marie Dressler in the late twenties and early thirties. In the years before this she was a key …
Originally from South Africa, Billy Gould was a former newspaperman who became a comedian and song-and-dance man in vaudeville and music hall  in the 1890s. With his first partner Nellie …
Today is the birthday of one of the great vamps, Valeska Suratt (1882-1962). I find it notable that her first work was as an assistant in an Indianapolis millinery shop — her knowledge…
Today is the birthday of Max Gordon (Mechel Salpeter, 1892-1978). The younger brother of “The German Senator” Cliff Gordon, Max too went into vaud, but not as a performer. At the…
Today is the birthday of magician and ventriloquist Colonel Stodare (1831-1866). There are several versions of what his real name might have been: Joseph Stopddart, Jack Inglis and Alfred En…
Today is the birthday of the great Bob Keeshan (1927-2004). In No Applause I spoke of children’s entertainment as one of the last places you could find vestiges of pure vaudevill…
Today is the birthday of the great African American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906). The first African American poet to gain widespread acceptance in America, he wrote a dozen books …
Originally posted in 2009 MAY IRWIN, "Madame Laughter" Mae Irwin spent her career alternating between the legit theatre and vaudeville, but her most lasting legacy is the fact that she is on…
(originally posted June 27, 2010) Yes, Helen Keller was in vaudeville, and, no, she didn’t do Helen Keller jokes. She and her teacher Annie Sullivan had done the Chautauqua lecture cir…
