12,228 stories from Trav S.D.
Today is the birthday of Louis Jean Lumière (1864-1948). Along with his brother Auguste (1862-1954), he was one of the principal inventors of the art of cinema. If a practical joke or pr…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Eddie Cantor movie Whoopee! (1930). Cantor’s first talking feature, it was an adaptation of his hit 1928 Broadway stage show; …
 Today is the birthday of silent film comedian Jimmie Adams (1888-1933). Originally from Paterson, New Jersey, Adams had started out in minstrelsy, musical comedy and melodrama before be…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of Eddie Cantor’s first film Kid Boots (1926). We previously had a good chuckle upon learning that the Marx Brothers had originally c…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Wheeler and Woolsey comedy Half Shot at Sunrise (1930). In this one, the boys are a couple of dough boys AWOL in Paris during Wor…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Charlie Chaplin comedy Shanghaied (1915). In this funny Esssanay comedy, Charlie plays a poor shlub who loves the daughter (Edna Pur…
Today is the birthday of Frederick Chase Taylor (1897-1950), a.k.a Colonel Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle. His partner on radio from 1930 through 1937 was Wilbur Budd Hulick (1905-1961). Together t…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of W.C. Fields’ second film, the 1915 silent short His Lordship’s Dilemma. Long thought lost (and still thought lost by many), a p…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the great musical comedy film Palmy Days (1931) starring Eddie Cantor, Charlotte Greenwood and the Goldwyn Girls (Toby Wing, Betty Grable, Pau…
One week from today! Can you think of a better way to observe the Halloween season than watching a play about a murderous ventriloquist, staged in an eerie sideshow? Featuring not only ventr…
Today marks the anniversary of the release of the classic Charlie Chaplin short The Pawnshop (1916). This comedy was made at the peak of Chaplin’s Mutual period and is full of br…
Today is the anniversary of the Hollywood premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s 1923 melodrama masterpiece A Woman of Paris. A Woman of Paris was Chaplin’s first film for United…
In October 1922, Buster Keaton released his silent comedy short The Electric House. Hired accidentally by the dean of a college to wire his house for electricity, Buster (a botanist by tr…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Harry Langdon comedy feature Heart Trouble (1928). Heart Trouble is one of the great lost silent films — no surviving copy of …
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Douglas Fairbanks feature Manhattan Madness (1916), directed by Allan Dwan. Doug plays a wealthy young man who returns to New York f…
The lights hadn’t even dimmed on our Fringe production of the Marx Brothers I’ll Say She Is (coming back your way in 2015) when I got the joyous assignment to direct Dick D…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Comique comedy short Oh Doctor! (1917) starring Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and featuring Buster Keaton and Al St. John. …
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Stan Laurel solo comedy short Roughest Africa (1923). Laurel’s best solo comedies tend to be parodies; this one is a send-up o…
Today is the anniversary of the released date of the early Harold Lloyd “glasses” comedy By the Sad Sea Waves (1917). The title may refer to any of the By the Sad Sea Wa…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Douglas Fairbanks comedy The Man from Painted Post (1917). The movie is a clever twist on the usual Fairbanks formula. Instead of playi…
Tonight and tomorrow night, Alan Safier stars as George Burns in the one man show Say Goodnight, Gracie at the Queens Theatre. For info and tickets go here. Filed under: Comedy, …
Filed under: BROOKLYN, Hollywood (History), Movies, PLUGS, VISUAL ART Tagged: BROOKLYN, Cartoon Carnival, Shoestring, Tom Stathes
Filed under: Contemporary Variety, Music, PLUGS, Singers Tagged: Hunter College, Jolson, Lang Recital Hall, mark York, My Dad & Me, Walter Willison, Ziegfeld Society
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Buster Keaton talking feature Sidewalks of New York (1931), co-directed by Jules White and Zion Myers. This movie was Keaton's own leas…
Earlier this summer I was interviewed by Barry Mitchell of CUNY-TV’s  Arts in the City at the Coney Island Museum. We talked about Coney, my most recent book Chain of Fools, silent …
