12,210 stories from Trav S.D.
This summer will mark the 50th anniversary of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Our most avid readers know this is a subject near and dear to my heart. I have blogged previously about the c…
The foregoing is adapted from my book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube: Douglas Fairbanks' early career is today overshadowed by his later r…
Today, as we warned a few months ago, is the final performance ever of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus The circus world will carry on. But RBBB was an institution, the only Am…
Tom Lewis (Thomas Lewis McGuire, 1867-1927) was born on May 17. Originally from New Brunswick, NJ, he was a comedian who played both in vaudeville and on Broadway, and later in silent films.…
It’s film director Frank Capra’s birthday. This post has come about because in recent years I’ve filled out my Capraducation some — I’ve seen a bunch of his mor…
Eddie White (Michael Weintraub, 1898-1983) was born on May 18. White comes to the attention of modern buffs almost entirely from his 1928 Vitaphone short called I Thank You, after his oft…
A few scraps on Florence Brady (Florence A. McAleer, ca. 1902- ca. 1943) We first learn of her in the 1920 Broadway show Her Family Tree, with Nora Bayes and Julius Tannen. She appeared in v…
Joseph Cotten (1905-1994) was born on May 15. The late year of his death surprised me. Cotten’s last film had been in 1981 and I couldn’t imagine him ever not acting. But a strok…
When I was in my late teens, my buddies and I, fans of Walter Hill’s recent hit 48 Hours (1982), somehow stumbled upon his earlier not-such-a-hit Southern Comfort (1981). I…
Silent film star Billie Dove (Bertha Bohnny 1903-1997) was born on this day. Born to Swiss immigrant parents in New York City, the stunningly beautiful teenager began her working life as a m…
I’ve only managed to gather a few scraps about cowboy singer Oklahoma Bob Albright, who has managed to rise from beyond the grave thanks to his 1929 Vitaphone short Oklahoma Bob Alb…
I was unprepared for how much I would love Kevin Fitzpatrick’s latest guidebook World War I: A Guide to the City’s Enduing Ties to the Great War. I shouldn’t have been; I l…
I discovered Doodles Weaver (1911-1983) by a path that might confound his long time fans. But then, his was a most confounding life and career. I noticed him in the 1971 low budget exploitat…
Ringling Brothers! Big Apple! Cole Brothers! The Venice Beach Freak Show! The age old art form of the circus is in trouble from coast to coast and we’ve got to do something to stem the…
“Sic Semper Tyrannis” With those immortal words, John Wilkes Booth ruined his acting career. In an exceedingly strange and ironic way, when Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, he…
Probably best remember today as a western sidekick in B movies, John “Fuzzy” Knight (1901-1976) came to acting through show biz. Surprisingly he started out as  LAW STUDENT (!…
I first became aware of Connie Russell (1923-1990) when I saw her as the femme fatale in the extremely cool noir thriller Nightmare (1956) with Edward G. Robinson and Kevin McCarthy. I sa…
Great news! Now through Friday you can get a copy of my critically-acclaimed book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube for one third off the usua…
Several years ago I acquired a box of old theatre books that someone was discarding. Tucked in the pages of one of them, presumably as a bookmark, was a xeroxed program for a show called …
The Four Aristocrats were Bert Bennet, Eddie Lewis, Tom Miller, and Fred Weber. This vocalizing quartet played vaudeville in the 1920s and ’30s, and recorded frequently for the Vict…
I attended an amazing edition of LaMama’s Coffeehouse Chronicles yesterday, devoted to the memory of John Vaccaro, founder of the Playhouse of the Ridiculous, who passed away last Augu…
Mel Klee was born Moses Lefkowitz in New York City in 1892. Klee illustrates a peculiar phenomenon of late era vaudeville, something almost Medieval in a way. Klee started out as a song-plug…
May 6 is apparently something called “No Diet Day”, which must mean, to my alarm and astonishment, that every other day is one on which we were supposed to have been dieting? I g…
Last night, we got to check out Axis Company’s exciting revival of Sidney Kingsley’s Dead End. I’d gotten to see a portion in rehearsal for my feature about the show …
It took surprisingly long for word to trickle down to me that Jean Stein has left us (she died April 30, The New York Times reported on it on May 2). It was an apparent suicide; she was 83 a…
