11,914 stories by "Trav S.d."
Today is the birthday of “Big Joe” Roberts (1871-1923), best known as the heavy in 16 Buster Keaton shorts and Keaton’s first two features. Roberts was a family friend of t…
And, no, wisenheimer, I’m not referring to a show that hasn’t yet happened. I’m talking about literally the first show I was ever in, my first performance experience in the…
Today is the 100th anniversary of a major benchmark; the release of Charlie Chaplin’s first movie Making a Living. Chaplin had been starring in vaudeville with Fred Karno’…
Filed under: Jazz (miscellaneous), Music, PLUGS Tagged: Aeolian Hall, Gershwin, Nighthawks, Paul Whiteman, Rhapsody in Blue, Town Hall, Vince Giordano
I just got wind (thanks Andrew Martin) that Christopher Jones has died, a fitting time to pay tribute to one of my favorite movies Wild in the Streets (1968). This movie was a major in…
Today is the anniversary of the murder of Hollywood film director William Desmond Taylor (1872-1922). This was one of the many topics that General Jinjur and I bonded over on our first da…
On this day (February 1) in 1976 there occurred one of the great events in television history (for eleven year olds): the FIRST bigfoot episode of The Six Million Dollar Man. This was an …
Today is the birthday of the great American humorist S.J. Perelman (Simeon “Sidney” Joseph Perelman, 1904-1979). Because of his association with The New Yorker he is often …
Louis Sunlin (born February 1857) was a clown and comedian who worked with a succession of trained animals, both in vaudeville and circuses. A second generation performer, he was born in Ohi…
Happy Chinese New Year! It is the Year of the Horse! A fitting time methinks to give a shout-out to the many Chinese vaudeville and sideshow performers we’ve profiled on Travalanche. Ã…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the hilarious Harry Langdon short Saturday Afternoon (1926). I think it’s safe to say this film is the most widely seen of Lang…
Warning: I absolutely always include spoilers, so now’s the time to turn back if you must. Is The Baby the weirdest movie you will ever see? Let’s just say it’s likel…
As part of TCM’s month long salute to Joan Crawford, tonight and tomorrow morning they will be showing three camp classics starring the high strung actress, from her late, “thick…
Today is the birthday of Mary Eaton (1901-1948), best remembered today as the ingenue in the Marx Brothers film The Coconuts (1929) and as the sister of the “Last Ziegfeld Girl&#…
Today is the birthday of Mary Boland (Marie Anne Boland, 1880-1965), best known and loved for playing ditzy and/or dumb wives and mothers, usually wealthy ones in high society (or pretentiou…
February 15, 2014 at the Brooklyn Lyceum February 2014 marks the centennial anniversary of Charlie Chaplin’s first movies! To celebrate this landmark, Trav S.D. will screen Chaplin's f…
I was excited to complete a piece of my education today. Like all good classic comedy fans I’d long since seen all of Mae West’s pictures through My Little Chickadee (1940)…
One of about a half dozen movie vehicles of the radio comedy team Lum and Abner (Chester Lauck and Norris Goff ), Two Weeks To Live (1943) is one of those strange animals that just wig…
Oggi è il compleanno del più eccellente attore caratterista Vito Scotti (Vito Scozzari, 1918-1996). I know I say everyone is one of my favorite character actors, but Vito Scotti truly is…
Tonight at midnight on Turner Classic Movies, a particular favorite of many New York City loving silent comedy fans, Harold Lloyd’s Speedy (1928). Counterintuitively, given that …
No assessment of 20th century screen comedy would be complete without some mention of character actor Charles Lane (Charles Levinson, 1905-2007). I call him the original one, because there i…
We found ourselves mostly disappointed by the much-hyped Lifetime movie Lizzie Borden Took an Axe staring Christina Ricci as the titular (accused but acquitted) axe murderer. We can be…
 Tonight (tomorrow morning really) at 12:15am on Turner Classic Movies Rollercoaster. One of the last of the original 1970s cycle of disaster movies, owing debts especially to Earth…
Filed under: SOCIAL EVENTS Tagged: Flute, Red Hook Ramblers, Wit's End
Filed under: AMERICANA, Indie Theatre, Music, PLUGS Tagged: Hard Times, Larry Kirwan, Stephen Foster
