Saturday, September 28, 2024
Tomorrow, September 29 (2024, for those of you who don’t look at the dates of things, after all this post won’t always be new) is National Silent Movie Day! Lots of exciting things are h…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12PMHaving paid tribute to David Sarnoff and the founding of the NBC empire, in the name of equal time today we give a respectful nod to William S. Paley, honcho of CBS (1901-1990). Paley’s mi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:48AMFriday, September 27, 2024
September 27, 1954 marked the premiere of NBC’s The Tonight Show. That is a startling statistic. Several related superlatives amplify the impressiveness: it is the world’s longest runnin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMThursday, September 26, 2024
Counterintuitive but true: if you were to cross Shug Fisher (George Clinton Fisher, 1907-1984) with Fuzzy Knight, the result would not be Suge Knight. Fisher was a rustic character actor, co…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMWednesday, September 25, 2024
Happy National Comic Book Day! We sieze the occasion to present you with a handy finding aid for all the comic book series we have written about on Travalanche. (Did your grandmother used to…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:24PMSeptember 25, 1974 was the release date of the horror film The Mutations a.k.a. Freakmaker. The Mutations is the farthest thing from a classic, even (arguably) a horror classic, but it has i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMLeah Hing (1907-2001) was the first female Chinese-American pilot. The Oregon aviatrix got her pilot’s license in 1934, and she definitely stunted with flying circuses, but the real reason…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMTuesday, September 24, 2024
September 23 is World Gorilla Day, and to mark it, we add to our growing store of posts bundling our many posts related to particular animals. The gorillas of animals on stage and screen are…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:42PMWe plugged this book a couple of days ago; time to lean into that a little more for Jim Henson’s birthday! This is our seventh post about the Muppet mogul and/or his felt companions, and i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:32AMMonday, September 23, 2024
Folks in the New York area! Please join me, Wednesday, October 2, 7pm for a simultaneous celebration of Groucho Marx’s birthday and the release of my new book The Marx Brothers Miscellany.…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:06PM“They seek him here, they seek him there/ Those Frenchies seek him everywhere/ Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel.” Baroness Orczy (Emma Magdalena Rozália M…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:54PMSunday, September 22, 2024
Got the word from Ms. Eve Golden that Bette Bourne (Peter Bourne, b.1939) passed away last month. It being just a few weeks prior to his natal day, I opted to wait to do a tribute. How I wis…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PMBorn this day, yet 50 years gone, actor Allan Lane (Harry Leonard Albertshardt, 1909-1973). We cut to the chase to let you know that of Lane’s over 125 screen credits, the best known are t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:18AMSaturday, September 21, 2024
OMG! So….um, I can now say I did a project with Mr. Mandy Patinkin. I just had the thrilling experience of hearing him say my name in that Mandy Patinkin voice. A podcast I recorded many m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:18PMWe first became aware of (or took note of) actress Dawn Addams (Victoria Dawn Addams, 1930-1985) from her prominent role as “Ann, the TV specialist” in Charlie Chaplin’s A King in New …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:54AMFriday, September 20, 2024
Happy birthday to Ben Ohmart of Bear Manior Media! And good news for lovers of show biz books! Ben is offering 20% off the cover price for all Bear Manor Books through Sunday (September 22, …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:12PMThursday, September 19, 2024
I had been a fan of filmmaker Mary Harron (b. 1953) for years before I realized (quite recently) that I had also been a fan of her father for many decades. I grew up watching her dad Don Har…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:03AMWednesday, September 18, 2024
Annette Funicello got her own post here a couple of years ago, and well it just feels lopsided not to give equal time to her screen partner. And also, Frankie Avalon (Francis Avallone, b. 19…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMTuesday, September 17, 2024
This year National Voter Registration Day falls on Constitution Day — the stars are alligned to send a message: vote November 5 to save the U.S. Constitution. Well into the 20th century we…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:36PMSeptember 17, 1944 was the premiere date of The Baby Snooks Show on CBS radio (it later switched to NBC, hence the call letters on the mic in the photo above). We’ve done many a post on Sn…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AMMonday, September 16, 2024
I first learned the story of Mildred Fish Harnack (1902-1943) with Erik Larson’s 2011 book In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. Harnack was t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:02PMThis has always been my favorite photo of Lauren Bacall (Betty Perske, 1924-2014). I like the fact that it appears uncharacteristically candid, with almost nothing observably artifical about…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:32AMSunday, September 15, 2024
For the life of me I can’t recall how I stumbled upon the existence of Janelee “Twinkle” Watts (1933-2018), and I only know the public part of the story, but it seemed worth sharing. B…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:32AMSaturday, September 14, 2024
Yes, it’s true! The birthday of Joey Heatherton (b. 1944) is a couple of days after that of Lola Falana (b. 1942). I don’t know if Catherine O’Hara knew that when she cooked up her sat…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:32PMFriday, September 13, 2024
How rare is it for the public to know the name of ANY network television executive? We know the stars, and sometimes some of the writers/producers/showrunners, but the guys who make the deci…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:42PMThursday, September 12, 2024
There were a couple of famous singers born on this day, but I find myself much more jazzed to write about this fellow Bruce Mahler (b. 1950) than about either of them. I also find that he ra…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:42PMWednesday, September 11, 2024
Well, I don’t know if it’s true that Lola Falana (b. 1942) is more alive than others as this advert claims, but she is still alive. The reason we haven’t heard much from her since the …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:24AMTuesday, September 10, 2024
September 5, 1774 was opening day of the First Continental Congress, and the odds are very good that the only place you’re hearing about it is HERE. I might have missed it myself if not fo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:42PMA celebration today of burlesque queen Georgia Sothern (Hazel Anderson, 1909-1981). She was no apparant relationship to Ann Sothern, but I can see where it might cause confusion, as the latt…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMMonday, September 9, 2024
September 9 was the birthday of silent screen actress Marguerite Snow (1889-1958). Snow was second generation showfolk, her father being the old time minstrel performer Billy Snow (ca. 1855-…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:32AMSunday, September 8, 2024
A brief celebration today of country crossover singer Patsy Cline (Virginia Hensley, 1932-1963). Her birthday falls on the same day as country pioneer Jimmie Rodgers, who also died young, an…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:48PM 
