Saturday, April 13, 2024
When I was a kid, grown-ups spoke of a fabled time long before I was born when there were as many as FOUR American tv networks operating simultaneously, keeping me spellbound in much the sam…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:32AMFriday, April 12, 2024
April 12 was the birthday of the film actor known as Chief Thundercloud (1899-1955). As it happens, there is a “thundercloud” surrounding the actor’s true identity. His real name has b…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:06AMThursday, April 11, 2024
If I look crazy in the photos above it’s because I must be! I booked two very involved and very different events back to back in two geographical locations that are both far from my house …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PMWednesday, April 10, 2024
I went to my local woods to witness the eclipse a couple of days ago vaguely hoping something magical would happen. Something most assuredly did, though nothing so crassly obvious as, say, a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:42AMTuesday, April 9, 2024
With the exception of Charles Manson, surely no public figure has ever looked so unhinged in so many photographs as Valerie Solanas (1936-1988). You can actually feel the simmering intensity…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:02PMMonday, April 8, 2024
I try, very consciously, never to glamorize guns, but this is the only picture of our subject I could find that made me pay attention to what I was looking at. John Gavin (1931-2018) was a v…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:02PMSunday, April 7, 2024
I’m fairly ecstatic at the advent at Morgan Neville’s new two-part documentary about Steve Martin, not just because it filled me with such mirth and pleasure to reconnect with memories o…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:42AMSaturday, April 6, 2024
The title of this post of course because yesterday in the Northeast we experienced an extremely rare earthquake that measured 4.8 on the Richter scale, which is roughly a once in a century e…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:24AMWarning: I include spoilers. Chronic back pain combined with the flu (ugh!) sidelined me yesterday so I took the opportunity to finally catch up with Killers of the Flower Moon. To my mind i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:12AMApril 6 was the birthday of stage and screen actress Victory Bateman (1865-1926). She was named after the triumph of the Grand Army of the Republic over the Confederacy; Lee’s surrender wa…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:54AMFriday, April 5, 2024
A reference on Robin Williams’ 1979 album Reality…What a Concept was my first introduction to Lord Buckley (Richard Buckley, 1906-1960). Buckley was gone long before I came into the worl…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:48AML.A. Friends, this jumped out at me as something worth attending, and, as Wilford Brimley used to put it, “the right thing to do”. Today at 1pm Pacific time the remains of Hungarian-Amer…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:24AMThursday, April 4, 2024
We’ve had call to mention Craig T. Nelson (b. 1944) a half dozen times or more here — I’m an unabashed Craig T. Nelson super-fan and I don’t care who knows it! And, happily, I can op…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:02AMWednesday, April 3, 2024
Exciting news for lovers of sideshow and the variety arts! The Sideshow Hootenanny (previously known as the Southern Sideshow Hootenanny), now celebrating its tenth year, and making its NYC …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMTuesday, April 2, 2024
The title of this post is to clarify that it’s not about Janicza Bravo’s terrific 2020 road movie with Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nicholas Braun, and Colman Domingo, which is highly…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:06AMMonday, April 1, 2024
There’s something highly appropriate about Edmond Rostand (1868-1918), having been born of an April Fool’s Day, given the holiday’s history in his native country and Rostand’s reviva…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:42PMSunday, March 31, 2024
March 31 was the birthday of blues piano player Big Maceo Merriweather (1905-1953), and 2024 (as I write this) marks the centennial year of when he moved from his native Georgia up to Detroi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:42AMSaturday, March 30, 2024
A decade has passed since my initial stab at a post on Warren Beatty (b. 1937). It is focused on one of his more obscure movies, Mickey One (1965) mostly because this blog was narrowly focus…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:06PMGreta Thyssen (1927-2018) lived at the center of a Venn Diagram that included the overlapping categories of a) Hollywood blonde bombshells of the Marilyn Monroe / Jayne Mansfield/ Mamie Van …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:24AMFriday, March 29, 2024
Good Friday seems the ideal time for this post, and though there’s still a good deal of uncertainty around the topic, I’m going to forge ahead anyway. It concerns a different long-haired…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:18PMBorn this day, King of the Hillbilly Piano Players Aubrey Wilson “Moon” Mullican (1909-1967). Fittingly, in some years, his birthday falls on World Piano Day. Mullican is one of those mu…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:54AMThursday, March 28, 2024
Yes, it’s true — it’s MLB opening day…and shaping up to be a rain day here in NYC. But it seemed like a good time to let you know about an upcoming new biography of pro baseballer an…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:01PMMarch 28 was the birthday of Jimmie Dodd (1910-1964), a.k.a. Jimmie from The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-1959). Don’t get any funny ideas! I’m about a decade too young to have watched this c…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:22AMWednesday, March 27, 2024
Singer Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990) was born 100 years ago today. Vaughan is often characterized on the short list of great 20th century jazz and blues singers, along with Billie Holiday, Ella …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:34AMTuesday, March 26, 2024
I had no fewer than FIVE show biz people I might have written about today, and got perhaps a third of the way though a post on one of them, but it has been like pulling teeth. When that happ…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:24PMMonday, March 25, 2024
This exceedingly rust-colored creature is Belgian-born actress, singer, model, and dancer Monique Van Vooren (1927-2020). Van Vooren first came to my notice in her over-the-top performance a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMSunday, March 24, 2024
For the birthday of slapstick screen comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, a little aid to navigating his posts on Travalanche: People Main Biographical Post on Arbuckle Minta Durfee (wife) …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:32PMBorn 150 years ago today: the great Harry Houdini! Houdini’s the only magician to whom I’ve devoted an entire section on Travalanche. We thought we would observe this benchmark birthday …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMThanks, Matthew Coniam, of The Marx Brothers Council Podcast and The Annotated Marx Brothers, who made me aware of Charlotte Mineau (1886-1979). I’d noticed her in Monkey Business (1931) a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:18AMSaturday, March 23, 2024
We celebrate World Bear Day by bestowing upon the ursines similar attention to that which we have directed toward dogs, cats, rabbits, horses, mules, birds, ducks, lions, tigers, elephants, …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:32AMPaul Valentine (William Daixel, 1919-2006) comes to our attention (just barely) because he plays one of the principals in the late Marx Brothers movie Love Happy (1950). Unfortunately, after…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:32AM 
