11,841 stories by "Trav S.d."
Lulu (Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie, b. 1948) turns 75 today, which means that she has been a pop star for 60 years. She was only 15 years old when she broke into the biz! It can be awful…
Born November 2, jazz genius Bunny Berrigan (1908-1942), very much not to be confused with Bunny Breckinridge. Here on Travalanche, we have many bunnies. Singer and horn player Berrigan head…
We pause now from our unceasing torrent of self-promotion to engage in a little…indirect self-promotion! I've been working with Gary Hardcastle for months on the audio-book version of my 2…
John Adams (1735-1826) was born on October30. Around 1990, I began a three year stint working in New York's greatest bookstore, Brentano's Fifth Avenue. Assigned to the history section, I re…
As promised a couple of days ago, a thing on Fay, the very short lived 1975 sit-com starring Lee Grant (Lyova Haskell Rosenthal). Grant is top-of-mind at the moment because my wife recently …
How flipping cool is it that Michael J. Anderson (b. 1953) was born on HALLOWEEN? The "J" is very important so as not to confuse him with the movie director or his son. The guy I mean is the…
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 …
