11,919 stories by "Trav S.d."
Another post in honor of Boris Karloff’s birthday. Not surprising that he was frequently in demand as a radio actor in the 30s and 40s, with his musical, rumbling, mysterious vo…
Another post in honor of Boris Karloff’s birthday. Amazingly I never heard of this show until recently; they play it on Sunday nights on ME-TV. This was apparently a show cooked up…
Another post in honor of Harpo’s birthday. I first had the privilege of seeing this one at Slapsticon a few years back. Made in 1925, Too Many Kisses is a silent romantic comedy …
For someone of my age (I grew up in the 70s and 8os) Amos ‘n’ Andy is both a bellwether and a lightning rod. It was used as short hand in public dialogue about race in repr…
Today is the birthday of John Swor (1877-1965). Like his brother Bert Swor, he started out as a blackface minstrel, performing in the companies of Lew Dockstader, Honey Boy Evans and others.…
I often do a lot of soul searching about why I am such a backward-glancing person, why my sights seem so rigidly set on the past. And the answer I often come up with is the event that happen…
Filed under: Contemporary Variety, Dance, PLUGS Tagged: Dolly Sisters, Ziegfeld Society
All of us too young to have been Baby Boomers or older missed a joke in the movie Grease (1978) and its sequel (1982). The casting of veteran Hollywood character actress Eve Arden as t…
Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. Certainly the spark driving this series of posts is that I am part Cherokee. 1/64th, in fact, possibly more. It m…
Originally posted in 2009 Today is the birthday of Eleanor Powell (1912-192). This Hollywood hoofer paired off with the best of them (Ebsen, Astaire, Bolger) but always worked best whe…
Over the course of her long career, Mink Stole has been associated with many shocking projects, but the big shock about her new music CD Do Re Mink is how tasteful it is. After a…
Today is the birthday of Marlo Thomas (b. 1937). It may be ironic, but it’s likely that Ann Marie’s Quixotic attempts to be a successful Broadway actress in New York would have b…
Here’s Bing Crosby and co-star  Judy Garland in an episode from his NBC radio program which originally aired Thanksgiving week 1946. For more on the history of show business cons…
A few days ago we wrote a post about Raymond Dandy, a.k.a. Kri-Kri (see post here.) Today marks the 100th anniversary of the release of his film Kri Kri Domestico a.k.a. Bloomer Man…
Today is the birthday of Eagles’ guitarist Joe Walsh (b. 1947) Every so often I’ll do or say something and the Duchess will look at me and say “Who are you?”…
Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. The Wild West Show was a unique and popular branch of popular entertainment, akin to the circus, the sideshow, th…
Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. When I was a very young kid (perhaps the years between kindergarten and second grade) my sister and I would have …
Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. A couple of days ago, we posted Don Knott’s The Shakiest Gun in the West,  a 1968 re-make of the much…
Today is the birthday of Reginald Denny (1891-1967). Many know him as a third and fourth billed English character actor of the classic studio era. But he was a much, much bigger star during …
Today is the history of yokel comedienne and singer Judy Canova (for more on her, see our full essay here). In addition to her stage and screen performances Canova was a constant presence on…
Today (according to IMDB) marks the 100th anniversary of the release of one of the most well known of the pre-Chaplin Keystone comedies, A Muddy Romance. This is the famous one whe…
Today is the birthday of Steven Quincy Reeder, a.k.a S.Q. Reeder a.k.a Eskew Reeder, a.k.a. Esquerita (1935-1986). WHO?, you ask. Well that is why we are doing a post on him! I have been …
Very excited to report that our old pal Red Bastard (Eric Davis) is back in town, taking a few days off from his world travels with Cirque du Soleil to tickle and terrify us once again. (Rea…
Hats off (top hats and derbies mostly) to our old pal Ben Model who has just released yet another hot-lookin’ DVD collection. And when I say hot-lookin’, I mean  — well,…
 Here’s another post in honor of Native American Heritage Month. It’s not surprising Native American Indians would be a recurring theme in Buster Keaton’s comedy…
