1924 was the year James E. Strates (1893-1959) bought out his partners to become sole proprietor of his traveling carnival midway; December 20 was his birthday. Strates was a Greek immigrant…
Phil Ochs (1940-1976) is often (maybe usually) spoken of in relation to Bob Dylan, and that's unfortunate. Not because Dylan is such a giant that anyone else suffers in comparison, which is …
Friends have been circulating a petition to block plans by developers to build a hotel/casino/retail complex in Coney Island. Based on the rendering above I would have to join my voice to re…
Many lovers of vaudeville are also lovers of Yiddish theatre and culture, so I take the liberty of plugging these upcoming presentations by some friends and colleagues. This year, the first …
December 18 was the birthday of the great comedy writer Danny Simon (1918-2005). The success of Simon's younger brother Neil as a Broadway playwright and Hollywood screenwriter has tended to…
I'm quite confident in asserting that Wes Studi (b. 1947) has had the most enviable career of any Native American actor in the history of motion pictures in terms of plum assignments. After …
Born of a December 17, John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892). Whittier is the fourth of the so-called Fireside Poets I have treated of here, the others being Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Willia…
We fudge this a little bit so HOLD YER HORSES, all ye Warner Brothers cartoon expert varmints. While it's true that the official introduction of the Yosemite Sam character didn't make his de…
December 15, 1974 was the release date of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. Very often, I cite Young Frankenstein as my favorite Mel Brooks comedy, but I actually have three, because Brooks ha…
The date December 15 has a dual significance; it was the birthday of actor and playwright John Augustus Stone (1801-34) and it was also the date of the premiere of his best known play by far…
December 14 has been designated Monkey Day, and who am I to argue? By now I have done many designated posts on various animals, mostly ones known to have performed in circuses and vaudeville…
In celebration of National Day of the Horse, we add to our existing store of equine related posts with this little gallery of top eight horse stars of the days of silents, serials, and kid o…
It's been a joy assembling all the various pieces of the multipartite career of producer Lou Adler (b. 1933) who managed to remain on the leading edge of pop culture for a quarter of a centu…
I'd like to have more to tell about character actress Evelyn Sherman (Eva Mae Spear, 1882-1974), but I consider that what is known is of sufficient interest to rate a post here. Sherman was …
I'm pretty sure I'll never undertake a single comprehensive post about Francis Albert Sinatra (1915-1998). The idea of writing a piece that includes all of his hit songs and all of his movie…
We got a triple whammy of death notices yesterday. Typically when we learn of a death and we've already written about the subject, rather than penning a new obit I'll go ahead and share the …
This post on Scottish author and clergyman George MacDonald (1824-1905) may be a Travalanche first: a post about an artist whose work I don't know it all. We take the risk on account of the …
I don't know who needs this information (it certainly slipped by me) but this morning I accidentally stumbled across the intel that so-called "midget wrestling", which had been declining in …
What a delightful coincidence! Liam Le Guillou's new documentary A Cursed Man opened yesterday at the Regal Union Square and the film begins with a quote from Milton (whom we just blogged ab…
We have just passed the 350th anniversary of the passing John Milton (1608-1674). Milton died on my birthday (November 8), a nugget I intend to dine out on going forward, as is the fact that…
Irene Lentz (1901-1962), often known professionally simply as "Irene", or later sometimes "Irene Gibbons" after her second marriage, has over 200 screen credits as a Hollywood costume design…
We've just learned from the Herald of Quietus Eve Golden that film producer Paul Maslansky has passed (1933-2024). The Maslankian oeuvre is a motley one; but in light of the fact that his mo…
By my headline, I don't mean television programming during World War Two, though believe it or not there was such a thing. The major combatants all had some version of TV up and running duri…
There were at least a half dozen other people I might have written about today. I keep a daily tickler, and today's entry contained several folks I haven't written about, nearly all of whose…
Having just done a post on his battlefield opponent Sitting Bull, and this year marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book My Life on the Plains (1874), we thought this mig…