Sunday, April 13, 2025
This is the second time I’m felt the need to single out Bill Maher for conspicuous bad-acting. (The first was about five years ago). Now that he’s been to the White House to kiss the Kin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:06AMSaturday, April 12, 2025
This will make an interesting companion piece to yesterday’s post, which concerned major players in the birthing of jazz. The music has no end, one hopes, but today’s post discusses a ma…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AMFriday, April 11, 2025
And just what do I mean by a very vaudeville kind of day? Well it’s National Barber Shop Quartet Day, as well as the birthday of Nick LaRocca of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, not to me…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:54PMWe choose the birthday of Dominic “Nick” LaRocca (1889-1961) for this tribute to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (original rendered as the Original Dixieland Jass Band). This seminal qu…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:36AMWednesday, April 9, 2025
April 9, 1813 was the date upon which Moll Pitcher (Mary Diamond) transitioned from this Mortal Plane into the Great Beyond. In modern parlance, Moll can best be described as a celebrity psy…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:06AMApril 9 is the birthday of singer and actress Paula Stewart (Dorothy Paula Zürndorfer, b. 1929) Stewart is very much still with us — I’ve even had the pleasure of interacting with her …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMTuesday, April 8, 2025
Happy National Banjo Day! As I wrote in No Applause, this quintessentially American instrument originated in Africa, made its way here through the cultured of enslaved black people, and then…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:03PMThe name Victor Shertzinger (1888-1941) has not withstood the test of time but once you learn of his accomplishments you may wonder why it hasn’t. He was not only a movie director, but als…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:42PMMonday, April 7, 2025
As you might have guessed, western star Neal Hart (1879-1949) was a cousin of the much bigger western star William S. Hart. Less predictably, he was born on Staten Island! According to his d…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:42PMA belated centennial celebration and obituary for the late star Margia Dean (Marguerite Louise Skliris, 1922-2023). 101 at the time of her passing! I see dozens of articles idiotically parro…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PMToday, a tribute to Danny Wells (Jack Westelman, 1941-2013), a distinctive and memorable comedy character actor who was fairly ubiquitous on television when I was a kid in the ’70s. Tall a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:18AMSunday, April 6, 2025
I was already planning a paean to the nation’s libraries for National Library Week, which starts today, but this year in particular invests our message of advocacy with an element of urgen…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:06PMSaturday, April 5, 2025
You don’t know with what pleasure I rode through New York on buses and trains this past Tuesday (April 1), conspicuously reading Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother in hopes that some strang…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:03AMFriday, April 4, 2025
I got a pleasant surprise (well…pleasant, but not a surprise) this morning when I grabbed a copy of the Queens Gazette and saw that my profile/interview had dropped. It was a few days too …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AMJohn Brown (1904-1957) was a beloved comedy character actor in his own time, and a bit of a legend in the biz, though his name has gone unremembered, largely one imagines because he shares i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:06AMThursday, April 3, 2025
So…the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution is coming up in just a couple of weeks. Remember? The war started at Lexington and Concord, over a year before the signing of the Declar…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:06PMThe Jan and Dean saga deserves remembrance, not just because their binary star rates a bona fide place of significance in the pop firmament, but because theirs is a good yarn, with the same …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:36AMWednesday, April 2, 2025
I just learned from researching my new post on Hans Christian Andersen that (on account of his birthday) April 2 is celebrated as International Children’s Book Day. In honor of the day, I …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:12PMHans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was born 220 years ago today, and died 150 years ago this year — now would seem a propitious time to add him to our annals. I love the photo above! “A…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:48AMI think it would be really funny if some terrible and yet physically rambunctious actor claimed to have studied at HB Studio, but the H.B. turned out to stand not for Herbert Berghof, but fo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:42AMTuesday, April 1, 2025
Denise Nickerson (1957-2019), or, as some clever soul might contract it, “D’ickerson”, is surely best known as the child actress who played Violet Beauregarde, the obnoxious gum-chewin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:36AMApril Fool’s Day birth notwithstanding Robert Pirosh (1910-1989) may have been the least characteristic and least-suited writer the Marx Brothers ever had. A former advertising copywriter,…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:18AMBorn 150 years ago this day: British mystery author Edgar Wallace (1875-1932). In America, Wallace is known for writing of the first draft of the original King Kong (1933), and dying before …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:12AMThanks Eve Golden, as always, for the intel that actress Sian Barbara Allen (1946-2025) has passed away. Allen was an obscure figure to be sure, but I had actually taken note of her before a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12AMMonday, March 31, 2025
I don’t know if it’s true that, as they say, the Scots are gifted with the Second Sight, but they are definitely lovers of the lore informing us that such things exist in the world. I kn…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:06PMYes! Herb Alpert (b. 1935) lives! Over the course of my moderately long life, I have done a complete 180 about-face on my feelings about Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass. When I was a kid i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AMSunday, March 30, 2025
Just a little trifle in celebration of National Doctor’s Day. Having already done a post on comedy doctors a couple of years ago, I thought of this new one over the course of writing about…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:18PMPeople of generations older than mine would be nonplussed to learn how little Frankie Laine (1913-2007) is remembered, and even more so to learn what he is remembered for, among those who do…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12PMMarch 30 was the birthday of Ethel Owen (Ethel Waite, 1893-1997), best known for playing Ralph Kramden’s bossy, meddlesome mother-in-law on The Honeymooners. Originally from Chicago, Owen …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMSaturday, March 29, 2025
I’m pleased to report that I’ve got a piece in the upcoming April issue of Sideshow Gazette. In the article I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. David Geary (late of the New York Time…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:12PMFew things made by humans have given me as much pleasure as the Comedy Central show Strangers with Candy (1999-2000), which I am astounded to realize is now a quarter century in the rear vie…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:06PM 
