11,867 stories by "Trav S.D."
This gender bending performer is one we are presenting in a series to celebrate NYC Pride Week. There is a dismaying dearth of biographical information readily available on female imperso…
Filed under: Music, PLUGS, Singers Tagged: Barnum Festival, Batnum Museum, Bijou Theatre, Bridgeport, Jenny Lind
If I had a cultural bete noir in my youth without a doubt it was disco. A revolution? Perhaps, but one can’t help thinking of the French Revolution as characterized in A Tale of Two…
Today is the birthday of Wiljalba Frikell (Friedrich Wilhelm Frickell, 1817-1903). The German magician began performing professionally at age 16. By the early 1840s he was travelling with an…
Today is the birthday of Peter Lorre (Laszlo Lowenstein, 1904-1964). Categories are hard; Lorre doesn’t fit into most of my regular content streams, never having been in American vaude…
Today is the birthday of Big Bill Broonzy (Lee Conley Bradley, 1893-1958). An Arkansas sharecropper, he originally played a fiddle made out of cigarbox, but switched to guitar in 1920 when h…
Today is the birthday of one of the great impresarios, con artists and flim flam men of all time, Colonel Tom Parker (1909-1997). A former carnival worker and sideshow talker, he gradually w…
Today is the birthday of Neal Burns (1892-1969). Originally a stage actor, Burns transferred his skills as a light comedian to films at Nestor in 1915 with Nellie the Pride of the Fire Ho…
Today is the birthday of Viola Dana (Virginia Flugrath, 1897-1987). A child actress since the age of 3 she played in melodramas on the legit stage and in vaudeville, including a vaud tour wi…
Today is the birthday of Grady Stiles, Jr. (1937-1992). Stiles was the sixth in the bloodline of a family prone to ectrodactyly, a condition in which the extremities are hardened and fused, …
Be sure to tune in tomorrow, June 26 at 3pm E.S.T. to The Halli Casser-Jayne Show, when I’ll be joining Halli and fellow guests Rob McClure (Chaplin the Musical, Tony Award Nomin…
This gender bending performer is one we are presenting in a series to celebrate NYC Pride Week. Gilbert Sarony (sometimes rendered Saroni) was remembered as one of the earliest and funnie…
In 1943, Rodgers and Hammerstein created the role of Aunt Eller in Oklahoma! for stage veteran Charlotte Greenwood, a testament to her popularity on the stage over the previous four de…
Today is the birthday of Jimmy “J.J.” Walker (b. 1947). The jury is still out — did he set the cause of civil rights back 30 years? One thing is certain in retrospect: in t…
I caught these chaps in my local subway stop again this morning. A pleasant way to start the day… Filed under: American Folk/ Country/ Western, Buskers, Contemporary Variety, Music Tag…
Today is the birthday of Phil Harris (Wonga Phillip Harris, 1904-1995). Most people today know him only as a Disney voice-over actor in such films as The Jungle Book (1967), The Ari…
Today is the birthday of one of my favorite American writers, the great Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913?). One thing I find very interesting about his work is that, despite the fact that it is spr…
This gender bending performer is one we are presenting in a series to celebrate NYC Pride Week. According to vaudeville encyclopediast Anthony Slide, Herbert Charles performed in vaudevil…
Today is the birthday of the lovely Georgia Hale (1905-1985), today almost exclusively known for her role as “Georgia” (very imaginative!) in Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold …
This gender bending performer is one we are presenting in a series to celebrate NYC Pride Week. Everett Stewart billed himself as “Stuart, the Male Patti”. (After the great op…
This gender bending performer is one we are presenting in a series to celebrate NYC Pride Week. Bobby Kimber (Ronald Victor Kimberly, 1918-1993) was a female impersonator and ventriloquis…
Dempsey fools around with Houdini Originally posted in 2010. Unlike Jake LaMotta, who only worked in night clubs when he was way, way down (remember Raging Bull?), World Cham…
Today is the birthday of songwriter Gene Austin (Lemuel Lucas, 1900-1972). He started out at age 15 playing piano in a local Houston, Texas vaudeville house. After serving in World War One h…
This gender bending performer is one we are presenting in a series to celebrate NYC Pride Week. Walter H. Lambert (1869-1949) was a British female impersonator and ventriloquist whose mos…
This gender bending performer is one we are presenting in a series to celebrate NYC Pride Week. Ray (Rae) Bourbon (Hal Waddell, 1893-1971) was a modern style drag performer with risque, r…
