Saturday, February 1, 2025
For Black History Month, a brief introduction to the Hyers Sisters, pathbreaking black singers and actors, whom I only just learned about while putting together my recent post on bandmaster …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMFriday, January 31, 2025
Clap hands, it’s Eddie Cantor’s birthday! In celebration we have spent all day sprucing up the Eddie Cantor section of Travalanche, and present you now with this handy finding aid to hel…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:42PMThis may shock even the few living people who remember stage and screen star Eddie Cantor at all, but he was a briefly in silent movies! We associate Cantor with musical comedies, of course,…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:18PMThursday, January 30, 2025
January 30 was the birthday of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945). This is far from the best photo of FDR. It depicts his last address to Congress, in March, 1945, and he looks as old and…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:42AMWednesday, January 29, 2025
Not to worry, this is not a post about the lame ’70s rock group — you can sleep soundly in your beds knowing I’ll never waste time writing about that. Rather, this is the latest in my …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMTuesday, January 28, 2025
Barbi Benton (b.1950) has been retired for nearly 40 years, so I will forgive spring chickens for not recognizing this omnipresent 1970s television celebrity. But I assure you, there was a t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:32AMMonday, January 27, 2025
The sentiment “Never Forget” seems to be in deep jeopardy these days, both home and abroad, on countless fronts. People hearts have grown hard. Is it possible that they’ve forgotten th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:54AMI am proud to realize that I have been a fan of James Cromwell (b. 1940) for over 50 years now. The 6’7″ actor played practical joker Stretch Cunningham on All in the Family starting in …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:32AMJanuary 27 was the birthday of writer George Randolph Chester (1869-1924). We’ve had many occasions to mention his principal works on this blog, for they were adapted for stage and screen …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:32AMSunday, January 26, 2025
That’s right, ladies and other lovers of Paul Newman — he was born on this day in 1925. Another Newmanian benchmark recently passed a few weeks ago: 70 years since his first movie The Si…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:12PMSaturday, January 25, 2025
January 25 is Robert Burns Day, a.k.a Robbie Burns Day a.k.a. Rabbie Burns Day, obviously in celebration of the birth of the Scottish National Poet (1759-1796). Apparently Burns Day has edge…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:12AMFriday, January 24, 2025
Once in a blue moon, the subject of one of our centennial posts is being celebrated elsewhere. Maria Tallchief (1925-2013) is being remembered in a program of dances associated with her this…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:24AMThursday, January 23, 2025
This morning finds me in an ever-worsening funk of several days standing. Though there are about a half dozen notable show biz professionals born on January 23 I might conceivably add to our…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:03PMWednesday, January 22, 2025
When the screen version of Conan the Barbarian starring Arnold Schwarzenegger hit screens in 1982, most people who thought about it all, I’ll wager, made the understandable assumption that…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:54PMTuesday, January 21, 2025
And so one black day succeeds another, and so it shall be for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t surprise me that Jules Feiffer (b. 1929) endured but one day of the restored Trump monarchy…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12PMMore examples of the ephemerality of fame in the broadcast media: the largely forgotten pair of John Reagan “Tex” McCrary Jr. (1910-2003) and Eugenia Lincoln “Jinx” Falkenburg (1…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:48AMMonday, January 20, 2025
Through some miracle of Divine Providence, Scottish comedian Janey Godley (Jane Godley Currie Storrie, 1961-2024), most famous for greeting the 45th President of the United States to her cou…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:54AMSunday, January 19, 2025
Lilian Harvey (Helene Lilian Muriel Pape,1906-1968) was in many ways the perfect international star — until the disease of nationalism arrived to divide the world. (If her name sounds vag…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AMSaturday, January 18, 2025
January 18 is the birthday of Oliver Hardy. We observe it this year with an overdue roadmap to posts relevant to the team of Laurel and Hardy, including the nearly 70 in the dedicated sectio…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AMFrom a certain standpoint, Harrison Greene (1884-1945) had one of the most impressive film careers I have encountered: over 250 screen credits in talking films spread across a mere 15 year p…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:54AMFriday, January 17, 2025
Yes, I am very much aware that “Eskimo” is no longer the preferred term for certain native denizens of the Arctic. It was however part of the name of a jazz band a century ago; to tell t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:32AMThursday, January 16, 2025
An experiment — I wrote this piece (linked above) last year, and tried to circulate it today using the increasingly exhausted method of social media, with little success, so I now reblog i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:42PMThis unusual post arises because I was amused to notice a few years ago that three unrelated female performers of the Victorian/Edwardian stage and screen shared a January 16 birthday and ha…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:42AMWednesday, January 15, 2025
Avid readers of Travalanche have encountered the name of silent film comedy authority Steve Massa here in some 62 posts. We’ve plugged his invaluable books, and cited his research and insi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:32PMWe had occasion to mention Lloyd Bridges (1913-1998) and his offspring yesterday — their family house was one of the casualties of the still burning L.A. fires. Lloyd’s birthday was Janu…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:24PMTuesday, January 14, 2025
The L.A. fires of 2025 still burn as I write this, though it appears that the worst has passed (knock wood). Dozens of my friends and colleagues live out there, actors, writers, critics, cre…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:24PMSure! Thurlow Bergen! Wanna make something of it? There are better known names with January 14th birthdays I could add today, having already done posts on Hal Roach, Bebe Daniels, Russ Colum…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:03PMMonday, January 13, 2025
The screen career of Gregory Walcott (Bernard Wasdon Mattox, 1928-2015) is nicely bracketed by projects connected to Grade Z exploitation and horror auteur Ed Wood. Walcott is one of the lea…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:12PMSunday, January 12, 2025
January 12 is the birthday of British singer and actress Shirley Eaton (b. 1937). Eaton was a student at the Aida Foster Theater School who was already performing professionally on stage and…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:06PMSaturday, January 11, 2025
January 11 was the birthday of Native American actor Monte Blue (Gerard Montgomery Blue or Bluefeather, 1887-1963). Blue was part Osage, Cherokee and French on his father’s side, Irish on …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:54AMFriday, January 10, 2025
This started out to be a simple post about Florence Reed (1883-1967) the woman who played Miss Havisham so memorably in the 1934 screen version of Dickens‘ Great Expectations, but it turns…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:18PM 
