11,870 stories by "Trav S.D."
Today is the birthday of the head-turning Christine McIntyre (1911-1984). Trained as an opera singer, her film career began in 1937, for the next seven years appearing in RKO musicals and B-…
Paul, Inez and Trinidad Rodriguez were a trio of midget siblings from Spain (they also had twelve normal sized brothers and sisters). Paul, the smallest, was 19″ in adulthood. Carmen, …
Today is the birthday of Empress of the Blues Bessie Smith. For the full skinny on her, see my essay here. And here she is singing the rather naughty “I’m Wild About Tha…
Today is the birthday of Gale Henry (Gale Trowbridge, 1893-1972), one of American cinema’s first truly funny comediennes. A California native, she began he career at the Temple Opera C…
Roger Imhof (1875-1958) was part of the John Ford stock company, appearing in Judge Priest, Steamboat ‘Round the Bend, Three Godfathers, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Grapes of Wrath, an…
An interesting divergence of opinions of the origins of the performer Che Mah Che Sang (1838-1926). One source says he was originally from a farm in Ningpo, China; another says that he was a…
Today is the birthday of Jay Robinson (b. 1930). I learned something about myself today, dear reader. I was about to attach the words “unspeakably awesome” before RobinsonR…
Today is the birthday of Sir Arthur John Gielgud (1904-2000). Through one of the great peculiarities of our culture and the “industry” which entertains it, I (like so many oth…
Today is the birthday of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), probably the twentieth century’s greatest and most influential playwright, also much admired for his essays, fiction and poetry, bo…
Today is the birthday of Don Adams (Donald Yarmy, 1923-2005). It’s inevitable that I’ll write about the television perfection that was Get Smart. I just watched an episode a coup…
Today is the birthday of one of my heroes, Charles Ludlam (1943-1987). I consider it one of the great ironies of my life that I moved here just a few weeks after he died. I would have been a…
Don’t be so smart. When I say “forgotten” I’m not talking about his current CBS night-time show, or even the long-running  NBC late-night show that preceded it. Th…
Two Great Silent Comedy Screenings in New York This Weekend You Shouldn’t Miss! On Saturday, April 13th at 2:30, The Silent Clowns Film Series presents a 90th anniversary screening …
Today is the birthday of David Cassidy (b. 1950). Son of the actor Jack Cassidy and step-son of his wife, Shirley Jones, Cassidy co-starred with Jones on the hit series The Partridge Fami…
Today is the birthday of that Holy Saint of the neo-vaudeville movement, Herbert Khoury, ak.a. Tiny Tim (1932-1996). Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish he could be alive today to see what God Hath W…
Today is the birthday of Virginia Cherrill (1908-1996), one in a long line of young women Charlie Chaplin plucked from obscurity in order to co-star with him in films. From rural Illinois, s…
Unlike our contemporary Serpentina, snake-charming star of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, the original Serpenta (possibly named Irene Ferrill, b. circa 1898), was billed to be boneless, l…
Thanks to one and all who came out to Dixon Place for our Chain of Fools launch event. I was so grateful to all those who braved the rains to come out. It proved to be a veritable who’…
Today is the birthday of Louise Lasser (b. 1939). Some may know her as Woody Allen’s first wife and the co-star of his early films through 1972. (Very few) others of you may know he…
Clico (1857-1940) was actually Franz Taabosh, a Bushman native of what is now South Africa. Fond of, and skilled at, his native Khoisan folk dances, the four foot tall Taabosh was first pres…
Today is the birthday of Rosa Richter (1862-1922), known professionally as Zazel, one of the first of the human cannonballs. Born in England, she was already an acrobat and tightrope walker …
Hello and welcome again to Vaudephone, your one stop shopping for all the best contemporary variety acts! Today we feature — me! With a very special message for  – you! (Wa…
Henry Darrow (b. Enrique DelGado, 1933) is best known for his role as Manolito Montoya on the hit tv western The High Chaparral (1967-1971). The good looking Darrow was one of tv’…
We most this one today in conjunction with our post on the new book about Henry Darrow. The High Chaparral (1967-1971) is one of the very first tv shows I can remember watching. (I have a…
Low, Hite and Stanley was a highly vaudevillian act of the post vaudeville era who performed together from the mid 1930s through 1961. Amusingly, Roland Picaro Low was not the little person:…
