12,173 stories from Trav S.D.
A wunderbar time was had by all at our special launch event for Archeophone Records' recent release of century-old Weber and Fields recordings, featuring myself, along with Archeophone's …
Here's a story about an unjustly forgotten vaudeville veteran who made good " all the way to the Oscars. Seymour Felix (Seymour Simon, 1892-1961) started out in vaudeville as a hoofer at age…
Little People are statistically rare among the general population; so are good actors, to my mind. It stands to reason that individuals who answer to both descriptions would be rarer than ra…
So authentic was LaWanda Page (Alberta Peal, 1920-2002) in her role as the hot-tempered, pious Aunt Esther on Sanford and Son and its various sequels (1972-1981) that many must have assumed …
I happen to be in Maine at this writing, which also happens to be the birthday of Dame Angela Lansbury (b. 1925), so how I could I NOT do a post on Murder, She Wrote? (1884-1996). I caution …
We mentioned him briefly in our Hall of Plus Sized Comedians, but today a little attention for Frank "Fatty" Voss (1888-1917). Chicago born Voss was hired by Henry Lehrman in 1914 to be his …
There is an irony in Oscar Shaw (Oscar Schwartz, 1887-1967) being best remembered in the end for his less than stellar turn in the movie version of the Marx Brothers The Cocoanuts (1929). To…
Readers, many apologies for not posting here as frequently over the past couple of weeks, and apologies in advance for the next couple. I'm on the road, doing what amounts to a Travalanche r…
I was honored to be invited to take part in the Harry Langdon Film Festival at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum on September 28-29. Apart from a certain three year period, the Little Elf…
I was honored to be the guest speaker at this year's Fredonia Marxonia, an annual event celebrating the Marx Brothers at SUNY Fredonia (and so named because the 1933 film Duck Soup takes pla…
I've been living out of a trunk the past couple of weeks, just like the vaudevillians of old, and I've been keeping a log! If you're interested in these rambles, just follow the links below.…
I fulfilled a long-standing ambition a few days ago (September 27-29) by making a pilgrimage to the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, in Niles, California (we blogged about the town itself s…
A few tantalizing fragments on comedian Charlie Crafts (1895-1974). A Boston native, Crafts first comes onto our radar as Jack Haley's vaudeville partner around 1923, specializing in songs, …
50 years ago this day the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus aired on BBC. Though it debuted in Britain in 1969, the influential sketch comedy program didn't air in the the U.S. u…
October 2 is Groucho Marx's birthday, and this may be my most memorable Groucho-Birthday ever, as I am spending it in Fredonia New York, for their annual Freedonia Marxonia event. I've writt…
October is German-American Heritage Month, which is as appropriate time as there can be for a program celebrating the greatest of all vaudeville "Dutch" comedians, Weber and Fields. I was pr…
Apparently October 1 is National Hair Day…which calls to mind a certain Hanna-Barbera cartoon of my extreme youth, Help…It's the Hair Bear Bunch! (1971-72). Hippies are naturally associa…
It's funny what you remember and what you don't (until you do). When William Windom (1923-2012) passed away a few years ago, I remembered in particular a memorable Star Trek performance he g…
Our Gang fans in the L.A. area: A friend writes to let everyone know that there is headstone laying ceremony for, and program about,  Mickey Daniels (1914-1970) on Friday. Here are the…
I originally posted this review in 2010. We re-post today in memory of Jimmy Nelson, who passed away yesterday at the age of 90. Of all the odd phenomena anthropologists study " cargo cu…
A dubious birthday gift for the late Christopher Reeve (1952-2004). I'll confess to never having been a fan of the actor. His main positive attribute seems to have been an uncanny resemblanc…
Louis Sorin (1893-1961) is well known to Marx Brothers fans as Roscoe W. Chandler a.k.a. Abe Kabibble a.k.a. Abie the Fish Man in Animal Crackers (1930). But Sorin had a long stage and scree…
Born 100 years ago today, comedian and voice-over actor Dayton Allen (Dayton Allen Bolke, 1919-2004). Bolke got his start on local radio in NYC when he was still a teenager in 1936. One of h…
 The story of singer, dancer, choreographer, actress Toni Basil (Antonia Christina Basilotta, b. 1943) is so broad-ranging and worthy of respect that I am going to bury the logical and c…
I stumbled across something great today while preparing my many talks for my San Francisco junket. It's something I'd wanted to share for years, but misplaced. When I was researching No Appl…
