Thursday, February 20, 2025
Having frequently come across clips of the original CBS broadcasts of the game show What’s My Line?, which ran from 1950 through 1967, I grew curious about its host John Charles Daly (1914…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:54AMWednesday, February 19, 2025
There are a number of people on my calendar to write about today; with the government currently attempting to erase LGBT community, trans people in particular, I figure I’d better go with …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:48AMTuesday, February 18, 2025
February 18 is the birthday of Billy DeWolf, Adolphe Menjou, “Little Angie” Rossitto, Hugo Haas, Allan Melvin, Edward Arnold, George Givot, George Kennedy, George Kirby, Jerry Fujikawa, …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:12AMMonday, February 17, 2025
Few are the American actors as significant and solid yet as unknown and forgotten as Arthur Kennedy (1914-1990). Kennedy’s chief claim to enduring fame is his having created key roles in t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:02AMSunday, February 16, 2025
Back in 2016, some P.A. on a documentary asked me if they could use a clip from one of my old vaudeville shows at Surf Reality circa 1998 in a new film about burlesque, and I said yeah and p…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12PMSaturday, February 15, 2025
February 15 being National Wisconsin Day, we now add it to the small number of American states to which we are paying tributes in a series, making a sort of midwestern trilogy with our two r…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMFriday, February 14, 2025
Comic strip artist Carl Thomas Anderson (1865-1948) was born of a Valentine’s Day, just like Jack Benny, Gregory Hines, and tellingly, Teller of Penn and Teller. Teller is just as silent a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:02AMThursday, February 13, 2025
The big year for Susan Oliver (Charlotte Gercke, 1932-1990) was 1964: in that one year she was the female lead in Jerry Lewis’s The Disorderly Orderly, the Hank Williams bio-pic Your Cheat…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:02AMWednesday, February 12, 2025
This ad was the best image I could find recording the existence of vaudeville harmonica player Ted Waldman (1899-1987), who was born of a February 12. You can see him and his brother Al ment…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:24PMFour Marxes, Three Dimensions
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:24PMTuesday, February 11, 2025
Australian country singer Chad Morgan (1933-2025) passed away last month, and thanks Eve Golden for my belated introduction to him. Australian country music is very much a thing, and it make…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:02AMMonday, February 10, 2025
Mia Farrow’s birthday is February 9; February 10 was the birthday of her father, the less remembered writer and director John Farrow (1904-1963). John Farrow’s self-reported early life s…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:42PMSunday, February 9, 2025
I apologize in advance because for the rest of the day and surely for several days afterward your head will be full of the songs of Gerry Goffin (1939-2014) and Carole King (b. 1942) — I m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:32AMSaturday, February 8, 2025
This one goes to my favorite Iowan, Lynn Berg! It’s National Iowa Day. In writing this blog, I’ve been aggregating things I like about this state for years, believe it or not. As a membe…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:48AMFriday, February 7, 2025
This is a public apology — published permanently into the public record for all to see. Ten years ago a very good friend launched a monthly theatrical series and cast it with about two doz…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:06PMWe are kvelling big time for our friends Rich Martin and Meagan Hennessey of Archeophone Records, for chalking up two Grammy Awards for the album I told you about last August Centennial: Kin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:48AMThursday, February 6, 2025
February 6 is the birthday of singer and actor Fabian Forte (b.1943), known to audiences of his own day merely as Fabian. Fabian lives at the center of a Venn Diagram including two sets of m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:42AMWednesday, February 5, 2025
I’m always late to the party! Somehow I never got word that Stewart F. Lane, visionary Broadway producer, author of Black Broadway: African Americans on the Great White Way (2015), and par…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AMFebruary 5, 1969 was the air date of the one and only broadcast episode of the TV comedy sketch show Turn On. Turn On has become legendary as the shortest-lived tv series ever, because not o…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:02AMTuesday, February 4, 2025
Though he was a major star in Great Britain, here in the States movie lovers are apt to know Norman Wisdom (1915-2010) from just one film, The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1967). Born right…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:12AMMonday, February 3, 2025
I was raised to believe that the good guy in any David vs. Goliath scenario was David. Intrinsically. As far as I know, that used to be the American Way. Until a few decades ago, most of our…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:06PMHere’s one all Brits of a certain age know about, but few Yanks will know at all. Val Doonican (Michael Valentine Doonican, 1927-2015) was an Irish crooner in the vein of Perry Como or Bin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:24AMSunday, February 2, 2025
Well, what do you know about that? A theme of sort emerges today. February 2 is the birthday of Betsy Gay (b. 1929), a cornfed child performer who sang, danced and yodeled, and it’s also t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:12PMI chose the photo above to head this post on Emmett Miller (1900-1962) because it’s the one I could find that will be least offensive to modern sensibilities. Notwithstanding, Miller was a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:12AMPurv Pullen (Almy Purves Pullen, 1909-1992) was a voice-over artist for animated films, radio and records, a comedian, ventriloquist, and puppeteer. His specialty was bird calls, which had b…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:42AMSaturday, 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 08:32AM 
