Saturday, July 5, 2025
P.T. Barnum’s birthday is always a big day for me, a kind of semi-holiday riding on the coat-tails of the Glorious Fourth, the day before. To a considerable extent, Barnum invented modern …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:36AMFriday, July 4, 2025
This is taken from a book project I’ve been working on for a number of years. I’ve tailored this section for the present moment and the 50th anniversary of the events described. Be warne…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:06PMOn this, the morning after the passage of legislation that may well end the nation founded 249 years ago today, I definitely have some better warranted remarks waiting in the wings. But I am…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:36PMI seldom share media clips on Travalanche any more, both because I got frustrated with the links dying (I don’t have the bandwidth for that kind of maintenance, this is a very large websit…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:32AMThursday, July 3, 2025
There’s a logic, if a tortured one, for my scheduling this post for today. Jaws turned 50 this year, and of course that movie has a big Fourth of July weekend scene. But I’ve already wri…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:48PMJuly 2 was the birthday of Leonard Landy (1933-2017), one of the later and lesser Little Rascals. Landy appeared in 21 Our Gang shorts between 1938 and 1941, starting at the age of five and …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:32AMJulie Klausner is most definitely not a part of show business past — she’s out there in the fray thrashing around right now, same as always. But, like us (that’s the Royal “we”), s…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:18AMOriginally posted in 2011. Born today in 1825, George L. Fox comes way too early to have been in vaudeville as we usually think of it, but he is a crucial figure in American variety histor…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:54AMIn the context of my current spate of posts celebrating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, I had an internal debate about whether of no I should include the painter John Singl…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:54AMWednesday, July 2, 2025
So here’s a real true story. In my kidhood, I was a huge HUGE fan of Star Trek, the version now usually asterisked, of necessity, as The Original Series. It was one of the many things my b…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:48PMSurely you know that face! Barbara Colby (1939-1975) was a ubiquitous character actress in the early to mid 1970s. I am just the right age to have seen almost all of her work, and to recall …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:36AMCountry and rockabilly singer/songwriter Marvin Rainwater (1925-2013) was born 100 years ago today. I first learned about Rainwater when I looked into that Paul Revere and the Raiders song �…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:24AMTuesday, July 1, 2025
Pamela Anderson (b. 1967) is younger than me so you can see why I’ve been in no rush to include a post about her in my blog on tradition show biz. But her recent film The Last Showgirl (20…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:48PMJuly 1, 1985 saw the debut of the Nickelodeon network’s programming initiative Nick at Night. The revolutionary concept of this nightly block in Nickelodeon’s schedule was “television …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:32AMDeborah Harry (Angela Trimble, b. 1945) turns 80 years old today — yet another sign post on the road ahead en route to The Twilight Zone. I’m one of the millions who worship her. I have …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:32AMBe careful what you wish for — you just may get it! In my 2013 post on Dan Aykroyd I had suggested just this kind of show for the comedian, whose interest in bizarrerie has been well known…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:18AMMonday, June 30, 2025
For the last day of Pride Month — a few fragments on Harry Caro (1899-1963), who billed himself in show business as the He/She (hermaphrodite) Albert/Alberta. Scant info is available on th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:06PMWell, there you have it: Pride Month concludes with the birthday of John Gay (1685-1732). Today, Gay is known for but one of his many works for the stage and the page, The Beggar’s Opera (…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:32AMSunday, June 29, 2025
It just so happens that June 29 is the anniversary of Jayne Mansfield’s fatal 1967 car crash. My 2013 article on Mansfield is one of my top posts, the fifth highest in popularity out of 9,…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:06PMToday is Pride Day in NYC — I was going to march in the parade this afternoon with the Lambs, but a hot tooth is keeping me anchored to the domicile. In lieu, I offer this plug for Zachary…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:54AMYou surely have your own ways of observing the Fourth of July but we wanted to make you aware of some other activities happening in the NYC area beyond the usual parades, cook-outs, firework…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:42AMSaturday, June 28, 2025
It’s been a while since we’ve done a new post on a Saint-based or seasonal Feast Day within the Pagan-Christian cultural continuum. (Previous examples: St. John, St. George, St. Bartholo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:02AMSeveral great comedians were born on June 28: Mel Brooks, Gilda Radner, John Byner. But we’ve already written about them so today we treat of someone frankly less hilarious: stand-up comed…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:42AMFriday, June 27, 2025
80 years ago today (June 26, 1945), 45 nations signed the charter that founded the United Nations. Today it has 193 member states, nearly all the nations of the earth. It has done much good,…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:36PMTemperatures spiked into the triple digits in NYC this week. To escape it, we did what folks from hereabouts used to do around the turn of the last century, which is spend a few days by the …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:36PMWith apologies to Paul Simon! Back on May 19 we told you about the swell launch party for the new arts mag Slips Slips. Today, the publication’s substack sister posted a four question inte…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:06AMThursday, June 26, 2025
I have scant intel on ventriloquist Roy Douglas other than he was popular during the 1940s and ’50s, other vents respected him and bought dummies from him, and his most famous gimmick was …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:02AMWednesday, June 25, 2025
Thanks, Eve Golden, for the reminder that June Lockhart’s 100th birthday is upon us. June was born the day before Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush was released! I’m on vacation at the m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:36PMAs vaguely promised in our post on Harvey Lembeck eight years ago, a piece finally on his son Michael Lembeck (b.1948) whose work may be better known to those of my generation. Oddly, I grew…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:54AMTuesday, June 24, 2025
I learned of Jack Sterling (Jack Sexton,1915-1990) whilst research Electric Vaudeville, my upcoming book on radio and tv variety. Sterling was the ringmaster and host of the CBS children’s…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AMMonday, June 23, 2025
Back in the day it was a matter of course that you could see more than one sideshow presentation in Coney Island on the same day, and by that I mean different presentations by different orga…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:48AM 
