11,870 stories by "Trav S.D."
Today (according to historian Brent Walker) is the birthday of silent movie comedy actor and director Henry “Pathe” Lehrman (1884-1946). Some other sources give March 30. I reall…
Eko and Iko were actually George Muse (1893-1971) and Willie Muse (1892-2001), two Albino African American twin brothers from Roanoke, Virginia. The lore is that they were kidnapped from the…
Today is the birthday of Harold Lloyd (1893-1971).  Lloyd did not start out to become a comedian, but an actor. After a few years doing theatre with amateur and stock companies, he …
Today is the birthday of the great jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton (1908-2002). Here he is with his band in a variety film called “The Rhythm and Blues Revue” taken at the Apoll…
Peppino “Baron Paucci” Magro was billed as the “World’s Smallest Perfect Man”. Born in Sicily in 1894, he garnered some publicity at age 15 when he survived bei…
Today is the one year anniversary of the passing of Levon Helm (1940-2012), drummer/ singer for The Band.  Tonight, Cinema Village is  marking the occasion by opening the documentary…
I’m a little slow on the uptake. I’ve had the screener for Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Rickey Jay sitting at my house for days, not realizing it had already …
Today is the birthday of the late Dudley Moore. Just found this hilarious clip of him and comedy partner Peter Cook on the British music program “Ready, Steady, Go”. I can’…
Today is the birthday of the High Priestess of camp, Jayne Mansfield (1933-1967). I’d like to take a moment and express my concern about the circumstances of the photo above. Does that…
Tonight, the Pearl Theatre is opening a bill of one acts by J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan) called This Side of Neverland. One of the plays on the bill, The Twelve Pound Look” …
Filed under: American Folk/ Country/ Western, Contemporary Variety, Music, PLUGS Tagged: 2013, Brooklyn Folk Festival, Jalopy
Today is the birthday of Constance Talmadge (1898-1973), the youngest of a silent movie acting clan that also included sisters Norma (1894-1957) and Natalie (1896-1969). Raised in poverty by…
Today is the birthday of Virginia Fox (1902-1982). A native of Wheeling, West Virginia, she was a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty by 1919. Within a year, she had become Buster Keaton’s …
Today is the birthday of Leonard Harper (1897-1943). A second generation performer, he got his start as a child with medicine shows in the rural south. For a time he traveled with a small st…
Today is the birthday of Vivienne Segal (1897-1992). Originally from Philadelphia she was classically trained in voice and made her debut in Carmen in 1915. The following year she went strai…
“Happy” Jack Eckart (1874-1937), the son of a Fort Wayne cigar maker, weighed 19 lbs. at birth. At the time of his passing at age 63 he weighed 739 lbs and had to be buried in a …
Today is the birthday of Arthur Lake (Arthur Silverlake, Jr., 1905-1987.) His father and uncle had a circus trapeze act called The Flying Silverlakes. Then his father and his mother (Edith G…
Caveat: contains spoilers. You’ve two weeks left to see Mass, Robert Honeywell’s ambitious, thought-provoking rock musical at the Brick Theater. Inspired by the tempestuous r…
A series wherein we record and chronicle contemporary busking performers for fun and very little profit. This chap gave his rendition of “House of the Rising Sun” last night at t…
Today is the 100th birthday of Bill Durks (1913-1976), the “Man With Three Eyes”. The irony is that his third eye was painted on with make-up, but he was easily unique-looking en…
Today is the birthday of the heavenly Dusty Springfield (1939-1999). I have nothing to say about her but that just watching this clip and listening to the tune (which she admittedly only lip…
Today is the birthday of the Polish Prince, Mr. Bobby Vinton (b. 1935). In the clip below Clive Davis calls Vinton a performer in the “vaudevillian” tradition, which is true, alt…
Today is the birthday of the original Mademoiselle Fifi. For my full bio on this interesting chanteuse go here. And here she is in a clip from The Girl from Calgary (1932): For m…
Hubba hubba! Snarl, snarl! Today is the birthday of of Edie Adams (1927-2008). With her birthday falling on the same day as Christine McIntyre’s, today we are essentially a porn site f…
Born into unimaginable poverty and obscurity, by his mid-twenties Charlie Chaplin was one of the richest and most famous men in the world. One of capitalism's great success stories, he was e…
