11,803 stories by "Trav S.D."
Maurice "Muzzy" Marcellino (1912-1997) was a singer, musician, big bandleader, and professional whistler. We'll obviously get to the latter accomplishment, it's the most vaudevillian thing a…
Tina Turner (Anna Mae Bullock, 1939-2023) passed away back on May 24. This was too momentous for a hasty, ad hoc memoriam, so I opted to wait and do a more thoughtful tribute on her birthday…
Harley Granville-Barker (1877-1946) was a pioneer of the modern English-speaking theatre, with important contributions to nearly every discipline within that compound art form: acting, direc…
Author Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) was born on this day. For those tracking 18th century English (or Anglo-Irish) comic wits, this makes him a bit younger than Swift, slightly younger than F…
"Thanksgiving" (1935) is the most famous painting of American artist Doris Lee (1905-1983). I thought it worth contemplating today for a couple of reasons. One is that it is from that very s…
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It's the date we tend to think of when honoring this President. No one remembers his birthday (May 29). They remembe…
Mae West passed away on this day in 1980. If she were alive, she would be 143 and couldn't even pull off Sextette. Yet on this particular November 22, Westian mourners may have some new/old …
November 21 was the birthday of James T. Drummond (1834-1897), the founder, 150 years ago, of the Drummond Tobacco Company. And that would probably be of little interest here but for the fac…
Oh, fiddlesticks, the most important movie ever made is The Wizard of Oz. Anyway, thanks, Kevin Maher, for reminding me that today marks the 40th anniversary of the original broadcast of the…
Today, we shine a light on Evelyn Keyes (1916-2008), not to be confused with Evelyn Kaye, who played the violin, or Jerry's Piano Girls, who played the keys. Keyes was a Hollywood chorus gir…
This is the farthest thing from a timely post: it contains some old news and some even older news, and is (seemingly) irrelevant with regard to the crisis news of the day, although I believe…
A shout-today to actor Steve Railsback (b.1945). As Bela Lugosi is to Dracula, so is Steve Railsback to Charles Manson, for better or worse. Having played the sixties cult maniac in the defi…
Released to cinemas 40 years ago this very day, the unlikely holiday classic A Christmas Story (1983). I've never met anyone who doesn't love this movie, ranging from people old enough to no…
Loring Smith (1890-1981) was a veteran of vaudeville, Broadway, film and television, with a career spanning around 50 years. A native of Fairfield County, Connecticut, Smith first took the s…
The Rolling Stones are very much alive in our house at the moment. Not just because the remaining members of the band released their first new album of original music in 18 years only a mont…
Learned about this just in the nick of time! Tomorrow, Nov 18 at 3pm EST, Cleveland burlesque artist Bella Sin is offering this free and timely talk which invites you to challenge the way yo…
This one goes out to friend Edward Einhorn, longtime champion of the work of Vaclav Havel, both through his own Havel Festival and now as the newly appointed artistic director of the Rehears…
How appropriate that the birthday of voice-over actress Joan Gardner (1926-1992) was in the lead up to the holidays? Her best known credits were in holiday specials. She was Tiny Tim in Mist…
Irish-American comedian Paddy McGuire (born ca. 1884) died this day in 1923 " a century ago today. McGuire's career was short but prolific: nearly 80 films in a little over five years. But i…
November 15 was the birthday of humorist, columnist, radio personality and Algonquin wit Franklin P. Adams (Franklin Pierce Adams, 1881-1960). In his day, Adams was best known as a regular o…
While I have long known the most famous work of regionalist painter John Steuart Curry (1897-1946), I'm quite sure I never knew the name of the artist, because if I had I would have taken no…
I know not whether Gertrude Olmstead (1897-1975) was related to the famous designer of city parks, but I do know that, astoundingly, she is far from the only bygone star named Gertrude, what…
Everything goes in threes, so they say, so this is our third big post in honor of the late Mari Lyn Henry. The first was in the aftermath of our very fortunate meeting last year, wherein she…
A tribute today to the memory of of Brother Theodore (Theodore Gottlieb, 1906-2001). For years and years, long after he passed away in fact, there was a sign advertising Brother Theodore's l…
It is characteristic of this specialized age that appreciation for Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) seems to have declined over the past century. And yet it is the very eclecticism of his undert…
