11,510 stories by "Trav S.D."
October 31 being Ethel Waters' birthday, I thought I'd give you an early head's up about an exciting upcoming musical show that celebrates her life and work. Bread and Gravy: The Songs and L…
Over the past several months we have essayed what amounts to a series of light pieces exploring the many mutt holidays America inherited from Western Europe. There are more of them than migh…
That which you see here, with its conveniently timely Halloween color scheme, is my much-thumbed, frequently highlighted copy of Robert Brustein's seminal 1964 book Theatre of Revolt. Helen …
I re-read the Dover edition above recently in preparation for the Halloween season, but it emerges that the post in question will treat not only of its author but his esteemed ancestor. I ha…
This one goes to the two Turks in my life (that I know of) one is a nice puppeteer friend whom I was honored to marry to her husband at the marionette cottage in Central Park a few years bac…
October 29 is National Cat Day. Ironically though it is two days before Halloween, it is somehow not National BLACK Cat Day, that's August 17, so a black cat related post will follow at that…
October 28 is the birthday of multiple sit-com mother Susan Harris (Susan Spivak, 1940). Harris is the step-sister of film editor and producer Marion Segal Freed, who was married to George S…
Obviously, the sand bar we know as Coney Island is uncountably old, and was trafficked by Native Americans long before the Dutch and English began poking around out there. But according to t…
Thank you Edward Parker Bolman for the hot tip that today marks the 101st birthday of the still-living performer and designer Juli Lynne Charlot (Shirley Ann Agin, b. 1922). As you can see f…
October 25 is World Opera Day, and not coincidentally the birthday of both Georges Bizet and Johann Strauss II. The bicentennial of the birth of the latter composer is in just a couple of ye…
October 24 is World Kangaroo Day; naturally we observe it with a look at the Australian marsupial's old-school show biz niche: kangaroo boxing. I was startled to learn some time ago that it …
It seems nothing but meet and right that they should be a silent screen star named Gloria Grey (Maria Dragomanovich, 1909-47), there also having been a Gloria Swanson, a Gloria Stuart, a Glo…
Lucy Monroe (1906-1987) was called "The Star-Spangled Girl" and "The Star-Spangled Soprano" not merely to indicate that she was patriotic, a la the girl in the eponymous Neil Simon comedy. S…
I snapped the above at the late Mari Lyn Henry's place just over a year ago. She was a big Sarah Bernhardt buff, and today being Bernhardt's birthday, I thought I would share this wonderful …
A MINOR comedy auteur to be sure, but one nonetheless, and some of his films are rated as modern classics by some. Howard Zieff (1927-2009) first gained fame for advertising photography and …
And why not? We've done as much for most of the other major classic comedians here, and this will help you navigate your way through the many posts we've done about the team. And, anyway, It…
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is surely our second most notable English opium eater, after Thomas de Quincey, though certainly the one whose artistic productions are the more celebrate…
Happy Bela Lugosi's birthday! We've amassed several posts about the Hungarian heart-breaker here on Travalanche over the past few years. In honor of the day we introduce this new hub to help…
October 20 was the birthday of the man credited with devising the modern stage revue, Édouard Marchand (1859-1905). In 1886 he was hired by the Folies Bergère to devise stage shows for …
October 19 was the birthday of actor George Nader (1921-2002). Lebanese-American Nader was a local L.A. kid who studied theatre at Occidental College, got experience at Pasadena Playhouse, a…
I'm just the kind of sucker who can be taken in by a screen name like Bob Custer (Raymond Glenn, 1898-1974). I literally did wonder whether the western star was related to the ill-fated Gene…
I stopped doing "bundled" biographical posts a very long time ago, but this week three Hollywood actresses passed away within days of each other, adding up to a theme of sorts. It's possible…
October 16, 1923 was the release date of Alice's Wonderland, the film that set 21 year old Walt Disney on a successful career track as a professional animator. Previous to this, Disney had r…
50 years ago today (October 16, 1973) was the first time the acronymic band name ABBA was put to paper. It stands for the initials of its four members Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus,Â…
40 years ago today, The Right Stuff (1983), Philip Kaufman's quicksilver adaptation of Tom Wolfe's book about the American space program, premiered (appropriately) at the Kennedy Center. The…
