11,881 stories by "Trav S.D."
Tomorrow the Royal Hanneford Circus opens for a three day run in White Plains. And drat! Wouldn’t you know it, but this book project won’t even allow me even a few hours to go se…
Oh it makes me very happy to work on this post. For many reasons. One: Kathleen Freeman has been in everything. Go to IMDB and you will find about a thousand credits there. You already know …
This post is one of a series honoring Black History Month. Ida Forsyne was a largely self-taught dancer who started out performing for pennies on Chicago street corners. She joined up with a…
That's Chester Conklin on the left. I shudder to speculate what he is teaching his class.
Eddie Peabody (born today in 1902) was known as the “King of the Banjo” and the “Happiness Boy”. A Massachusetts native, he broke into vaudeville after being released…
Today is the birthday of the great ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (see here for his full bio). In honor of the day we share with you his 1936 Vitaphone short subject “Nut Guilty”. No…
Ed Sanders was a key member of one of the seminal rock bands of the 1960s, The Fugs, and the author of The Family, one of the best books about the Manson Family, and one of my many sources f…
February 15th – April 8th I have to agree with the Irish Rep’s assessment that O’Neill is America's greatest playwright. Furthermore, I'm very much not in accord with the m…
 Junie McCree (born Gonzalvo Macrillo this day in 1866) earned a good living writing jokes, sketches and song lyrics for other vaudevillians, and performing on variety, vaudeville, burle…
And now, here’s the divine songstress Rebecca Joy Fletcher , the next installment in our Vaudephone series. The tune she sings was written in Warsaw in 1937 to make fun of a crazy gove…
The Castles Today being the official day to celebrate romance, I thought it might be fitting to tip a hat to some of vaudeville’s great couples. There are just a handful of famous, lon…
Today is the birthday of Benjamin Kubelsky, a.k.a Jack Benny. For my full biographical article on him, go here. Benny was still around when I was a kid and I loved him even then. Here…
An inspirational post with which to begin your day. This is from the awesome vaudeville collection of the Library of Congress. To find out more about the history of vaudeville, consul…
Today is the birthday of the great English music hall star Marie Lloyd (for her full bio go here). Now here is the little dear performing “When I Take My Morning Promenade”: To f…
The extent of vaudeville’s power and cultural reach can be attested to by the fact that the greatest names in every performing arts field were booked for its stages: Sarah Bernhardt fr…
Joe Howard (born this day in 1867) started out as a kid performing in Bowery concert saloons, writing and singing his own songs. Later he brought these skills with him into vaudeville, where…
Today is the Great Emancipator’s birthday. In honor thereof, we present one of our favorite movies, D.W. Griffith’s beautiful, bizarre Abraham Lincoln, one of only two talkies th…
This post is one of a series honoring Black History Month. The Four Step Brothers were a team of dancers, “brothers” in name only, with an ever shifting line-up. The original cor…
Today is the birthday of boxer Max Baer. Read about his vaudeville and show biz connection here. And here’s Baer and Joe Louis being interviewed by that famous sports journalist Lou Co…
Today is the birthday of the Mills Brothers dad and manager John Mills (not to be confused with the English actor!) My full article on the family act is here. And now here they are singi…
Return, Liza Johnson’s new film (opening today), is that proverbial small canvas upon which huge themes are projected. Linda Cardelinni plays a returning Iraq vet whose half-hearted at…
If you’re like me, a Marx Brothers perfectionist, you hate with a passion what happened to their careers after they left Paramount. My pal Noah Diamond is a fellow traveler in that reg…
Today is the birthday of the great Jimmy Durante. For his full bio go here. And now here’s his famous closer from his tv show in the 1950s: To find out more about the history of va…
Over the past few months I have been exchanging emails with an art conservator in Washington about a fascinating project she undertook a few years ago. Dawn Rogala spent two years traveling …
I labored long and hard* (and happily) on the liner notes for this new album, my second for Archeophone Records (the first was Nat M. Wills). Van and Schenck were BIG, man — they were …
