12,217 stories from Trav S.D.
Today is the birthday of Roy D’Arcy (Roy Francis Giusti, 1894-1969). I am wracking my brains this morning as to how he ever got onto my radar — and I think it is because I saw hi…
Today is the birthday of the great midwestern humorist, author and playwright George Ade (1866-1944). I’ve already blogged here about his Fables in Slang and other humor, incl…
Today is the birthday of Alma Rubens (Alma Genevieve Reubens, 1897-1931). Originally from San Francisco, Rubens started out when still a teenager as a chorus girl in musical comedies. There …
 Today is the birthday of Valerie Bergere (Valerie Zenobia de Beaumont Lieb, 1867-1938). Borne in Alsace-Lorraine, she moved to to the San Francisco area with her family some time prior t…
Today is the birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), a distant cousin of mine via our mutual ancestor Edmund Ingalls (1586-1648) of Lynn Massachusetts, my (10th) great grandfather. …
1910 Mardi Gras revelers on Frenchman Street, New Orleans photographed by John N. Teunisson, (via Trashy Diva).
Today is the birthday of Pat Harrington, Sr. (1901-1965). Â This performer came onto my radar just a few weeks ago, when his better known son Pat Harrington, Jr. (of The Steve Allen Show a…
There is apparently a maxim in the genealogy field, something along the lines of “Genealogy without documentation is fairy tales.’ It’s meant to be an aspersion, but frankl…
Filed under: Contemporary Variety, Indie Theatre, PLUGS, Valentine's Day Tagged: Ten Foot Rat Cabaret, Under St. Marks
Today is the birthday of S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall (1883-1955). Like most film buffs, I knew this performer well, but never learned his name until our friend Nora mentioned it one da…
Today is the birthday of Berta Beeson (Herbert “Slats” Beeson, 1899-1969). Billed as the Julian Eltinge of the Wire, Beeson was a cross-dressing tightrope walker. It is not known…
Today is the birthday of the great Hollywood film director John Ford (John Feeney, 1894-1973). Ford is too large a topic for a single blogpost. I’ve done a few smaller ones on him to d…
Jules Bledsoe (Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe, 1897-1943), was an operatic baritone, one of the first African Americans to gain acclaim on the American stage. Much like Paul Robeson, in additio…
Today is the birthday of the great American humorist S.J. Perelman (1904-1979): see my original essay on him here. One of the perks of having written a popular book is that you develop many …
Sam Hague (1828-1901), was one of the first impresarios to present African American performers onstage in the United States. A native of Sheffield, England, Hague started out as a clog dance…
A reader sent me this picture today, and it made my day. It seems to symbolize where I am at the moment. It’s a New Year, I’m starting my second half-century, getting married soo…
Today is the birthday of Charles F. “Zit” Zittel (1877- 1943) Long forgotten today, during the vaudeville era, Zit was thought of as one of the principal competitors of Variet…
Filed under: BROOKLYN, Music, PLUGS Tagged: BROOKLYN, music, The Grand Victory
Today is the birthday of baby-blue eyed, Method acting, cinematic charmer Paul Newman (1925-2008). We thought we would mark the day with a look at several of his western pictures: The Left H…
Being snowed in today and all, I took the opportunity to do a little busy work, and wound up entering all my year’s expense receipts into a spreadsheet in preparation for my tax return…
My friend the broadcast journalist, comedy buff and once and future Woody Allen impersonator Barry Mitchell is a sharing sharer. Though there are many aspirants I would imagine to the mantle…
We had a great time last night at the Actor’s Fund’s tribute in honor of Broadway Producers Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley in the upstairs event space at Sardi’s. The ev…
Today is the birthday of the great Ann Sothern (Harriet Arlene Lake, 1909-2001). Sothern didn’t appear in vaudeville, which is why we haven’t done a post on her yet. But she had …
Filed under: BROOKLYN, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS, Vaudeville etc., Women Tagged: BROOKLYN, Bushwick, Cobra Club, Force Majeure, Lady Weirdo, Tanya Solomon, vaudeville
Today is the birthday of Sylvester Schaffer (1885-1949). Schaffer was a second generation star of the Berlin variety stage. His father was the Austrian-Bohemian juggler and painter George Sy…
