11,855 stories by "Trav S.d."
Most show biz buffs know one important thing about June Taylor (1917-2004): that she was the choreographer and dance captain of Jackie Gleason's various variety shows from 1950 through 1973.…
The Great Nicola (William Mozart MacNicol, 1880-1946) was a third generation Scottish magician, born in Burlington, Iowa, the son of immigrant John MacNicol, who billed himself as Nicoli, an…
Attention paid today to stage and screen star Dan Dailey (1915-1978). No relation apparently to earlier star Dan Daly, but like his differently spelled namesake, Dailey performed in minstrel…
Given that my ordinary beat is old time performers, I learned about Elyse Knox (Elsie Kornbrath, 1917-2012) the wrong way 'round. One of her daughters married Ricky Nelson and gave birth to …
Having had many occasions to mention Van Heflin (Emmett Evan Heflin Jr, (1908-1971) on this blog, we shine a lantern upon him on this his natal day. My first Heflin film was George Stevens' …
The above photo is of Dan Daly, most famous of six Daly siblings hailing from Revere, Massachusetts. It's an Irish name, and a common one, although this brood seems to be unrelated to either…
The media is abuzz today with the sad news that the 21 Club is the latest victim of Covid-19. Staff are to be laid off as of March, and there are no plans to reopen for the foreseeable futur…
Some readers may remember that back in mid-2016, I contributed to the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors' tremendous "Windows on the Bowery" project, which placed descriptive historical placards i…
Like something from out of one of his films, Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso (1905-1994) was the son and grandson of bullfighters who was forced to flee an invasion of his native Chihuahua,…
Your average conscientious classic movie buff knows Victor McLaglen (1886-1958) as a key member of John Ford's stock company (in particular the Cavalry Trilogy and The Quiet Man, though much…
Today we pay homage to the late Kirk Douglas with a look at some of his westerns. Funny to think of a a Jewish ragman's son from New York faring so well in oaters, but he did. It may not be …
I am old enough to have seen my first Douglas Fairbanks Jr (1909-2000) movie in a cinema on its first release; it was Ghost Story (1981), which also had Melvyn Douglas, Fred Astaire, and Joh…
An appreciation today for character actor John Qualen (Johan Mandt Kvalen, 1899-1987). Qualen is best known for playing Scandinavians in films, although he played a wide variety of character…
I love that Louis Prima's (1910-78) birthday falls during the Christmas season. He sang on one of my favorite Christmas records when I was a kid, which I wrote about here. Prima was a favori…
T.S. Eliot was such a fan of British music hall comedian Ernest "Ernie" Lotinga (1875-1951) that he once wrote to Virginia Woolf, calling him "Â "the greatest living British histrionic art…
The career of Frances Gifford (1920-1994) is an illustration of the weird vicissitudes of fortune. Good luck struck from out of the blue to begin her career; bad luck did the same to end it,…
My advice to anyone with half a brain and/or a serious grounding in Hollywood lore is to watch Mank for its gorgeous images, but turn the sound down. Director David Fincher seems to be attem…
We undoubtedly learned about star jazz trumpeter Bob Effros (1900-1982) through his granddaughter Barbara, who maintains a blog devoted to his legacy and is working on a book that treats of …
Just got the news that David L. Lander (b. 1947) has passed away. I'd known about Lander's MS for a while; Michael McKean's amazing turn on Better Call Saul led me to wonder what had had hap…
I find myself increasingly interested in the work of Nunnally Johnson (1897-1977) who combined the cracker-scribe identity of guys like William Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe with the journalisti…
Fans of the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts (1929) may be astonished to learn that the homely, rather unimpressive actor who plays the schemer Harvey Yates was anybody, anybody at all. But he w…
Character actor Warren Berlinger (b. 1937) has just passed way. I don't know that I'd have felt the need to eulogize him, but for the fact that, par usual, the entertainment obit writers (or…
Ordinarily, I restrict what's essentially local news to posts on social media, but I think you can see that there's a dimension to this story that will be of interest to vaudeville lovers th…
Mark Robson (1913-78) directed many of my favorite movies but until recently I never knew his name. His is not a name-above-the-title, and many of his best known films are associated with st…
A few words on the legacy of Frank Joslyn Baum (1883-1958), sometimes billed as "L. Frank Baum, Jr" or "Col. Frank Baum". The son of the famous author of The Wizard of Oz, Baum Jr is known f…
