11,794 stories by "Trav S.D."
February 18 is the birthday of Billy DeWolf, Adolphe Menjou, "Little Angie" Rossitto, Hugo Haas, Allan Melvin, Edward Arnold, George Givot, George Kennedy, George Kirby, Jerry Fujikawa, Jack…
Few are the American actors as significant and solid yet as unknown and forgotten as Arthur Kennedy (1914-1990). Kennedy's chief claim to enduring fame is his having created key roles in the…
Back in 2016, some P.A. on a documentary asked me if they could use a clip from one of my old vaudeville shows at Surf Reality circa 1998 in a new film about burlesque, and I said yeah and p…
February 15 being National Wisconsin Day, we now add it to the small number of American states to which we are paying tributes in a series, making a sort of midwestern trilogy with our two r…
Comic strip artist Carl Thomas Anderson (1865-1948) was born of a Valentine's Day, just like Jack Benny, Gregory Hines, and tellingly, Teller of Penn and Teller. Teller is just as silent as …
The big year for Susan Oliver (Charlotte Gercke, 1932-1990) was 1964: in that one year she was the female lead in Jerry Lewis's The Disorderly Orderly, the Hank Williams bio-pic Your Cheatin…
This ad was the best image I could find recording the existence of vaudeville harmonica player Ted Waldman (1899-1987), who was born of a February 12. You can see him and his brother Al ment…
Four Marxes, Three Dimensions
Australian country singer Chad Morgan (1933-2025) passed away last month, and thanks Eve Golden for my belated introduction to him. Australian country music is very much a thing, and it make…
Mia Farrow's birthday is February 9; February 10 was the birthday of her father, the less remembered writer and director John Farrow (1904-1963). John Farrow's self-reported early life sound…
I apologize in advance because for the rest of the day and surely for several days afterward your head will be full of the songs of Gerry Goffin (1939-2014) and Carole King (b. 1942) " I mea…
This one goes to my favorite Iowan, Lynn Berg! It's National Iowa Day. In writing this blog, I've been aggregating things I like about this state for years, believe it or not. As a member of…
This is a public apology " published permanently into the public record for all to see. Ten years ago a very good friend launched a monthly theatrical series and cast it with about two dozen…
We are kvelling big time for our friends Rich Martin and Meagan Hennessey of Archeophone Records, for chalking up two Grammy Awards for the album I told you about last August Centennial: Kin…
February 6 is the birthday of singer and actor Fabian Forte (b.1943), known to audiences of his own day merely as Fabian. Fabian lives at the center of a Venn Diagram including two sets of m…
I'm always late to the party! Somehow I never got word that Stewart F. Lane, visionary Broadway producer, author of Black Broadway: African Americans on the Great White Way (2015), and part-…
February 5, 1969 was the air date of the one and only broadcast episode of the TV comedy sketch show Turn On. Turn On has become legendary as the shortest-lived tv series ever, because not o…
Though he was a major star in Great Britain, here in the States movie lovers are apt to know Norman Wisdom (1915-2010) from just one film, The Night They Raided Minsky's (1967). Born right a…
I was raised to believe that the good guy in any David vs. Goliath scenario was David. Intrinsically. As far as I know, that used to be the American Way. Until a few decades ago, most of our…
Here's one all Brits of a certain age know about, but few Yanks will know at all. Val Doonican (Michael Valentine Doonican, 1927-2015) was an Irish crooner in the vein of Perry Como or Bing …
Well, what do you know about that? A theme of sort emerges today. February 2 is the birthday of Betsy Gay (b. 1929), a cornfed child performer who sang, danced and yodeled, and it's also the…
I chose the photo above to head this post on Emmett Miller (1900-1962) because it's the one I could find that will be least offensive to modern sensibilities. Notwithstanding, Miller was an …
Purv Pullen (Almy Purves Pullen, 1909-1992) was a voice-over artist for animated films, radio and records, a comedian, ventriloquist, and puppeteer. His specialty was bird calls, which had b…
For Black History Month, a brief introduction to the Hyers Sisters, pathbreaking black singers and actors, whom I only just learned about while putting together my recent post on bandmaster …
Clap hands, it's Eddie Cantor's birthday! In celebration we have spent all day sprucing up the Eddie Cantor section of Travalanche, and present you now with this handy finding aid to help yo…
