Wednesday, November 8, 2023
I swear I haven’t gone car crazy (today’s earlier post was about TV shows sponsored by Chevrolet). It’s just that this seemed the best angle for me to take on my post about singer Patt…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AMI don’t give two hoots in hell about cars or car companies, but it just so happens that Chevrolet did sponsor some great radio and television variety shows and that IS our bailiwick, so we…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:24AMTuesday, November 7, 2023
Please join me Saturday, November 18, 6:00pm (EST) for a special live-stream event celebrating the 60th anniversary of one of my favorite movies, Stanley Kramer’s beloved all-star comedy …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:06AMWhen Dan W. Quinn passed away on November 7, 1938 he’d been out of the limelight for 20 years. With the Big Band Era in full swing (!) he was little remembered by the record buying public …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:03AMMonday, November 6, 2023
The tale of stage star May De Sousa (1884-1948) is one of great unexpected success, followed by tragedy great enough to sap whatever savor there was of her triumphs. This is a common enough …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:18AMSunday, November 5, 2023
When people want to kid around about the British Invasion of the 1960s, it’s usually Herman’s Hermits or The Dave Clark Five they’ll mention, presumably on the grounds that they were a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:48AMSaturday, November 4, 2023
We’ve paid plenty of attention to Will Rogers (1879-1935) on Travalanche in tribute to his mighty cultural reach and today, even though we could well be writing about 2 or 3 people we’ve…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:54PMFriday, November 3, 2023
Dennis Miller (b. 1953) turns 70 today, but let’s get real — hasn’t he been 70 for the past 30 years? So let’s just say that he’s about a hundred. Hearing that he supported our pre…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:36AMThis comes under the header of neither fish nor foul…neither quite historical yet, nor any longer contemporary. But I do take note of the fact that the Canadian television show Slings and …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AMThat lame attempt at a witticism in the title of this post is spawned by the knowledge that November 3 is the birthday of Charles Louis Fleischmann (1835-1897), who, along with his brother M…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AMLulu (Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie, b. 1948) turns 75 today, which means that she has been a pop star for 60 years. She was only 15 years old when she broke into the biz! It can be awful…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AMThursday, November 2, 2023
Born November 2, jazz genius Bunny Berrigan (1908-1942), very much not to be confused with Bunny Breckinridge. Here on Travalanche, we have many bunnies. Singer and horn player Berrigan head…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:18AMWednesday, November 1, 2023
We pause now from our unceasing torrent of self-promotion to engage in a little…indirect self-promotion! I’ve been working with Gary Hardcastle for months on the audio-book version of my…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AMJohn Adams (1735-1826) was born on October30. Around 1990, I began a three year stint working in New York’s greatest bookstore, Brentano’s Fifth Avenue. Assigned to the history section, …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:33AMTuesday, October 31, 2023
As promised a couple of days ago, a thing on Fay, the very short lived 1975 sit-com starring Lee Grant (Lyova Haskell Rosenthal). Grant is top-of-mind at the moment because my wife recently …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:43PMHow flipping cool is it that Michael J. Anderson (b. 1953) was born on HALLOWEEN? The “J” is very important so as not to confuse him with the movie director or his son. The guy I mean is…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:13PMOctober 31 being Ethel Waters’ birthday, I thought I’d give you an early head’s up about an exciting upcoming musical show that celebrates her life and work. Bread and Gravy: The Songs…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:13PMOver the past several months we have essayed what amounts to a series of light pieces exploring the many mutt holidays America inherited from Western Europe. There are more of them than migh…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:07AMMonday, October 30, 2023
That which you see here, with its conveniently timely Halloween color scheme, is my much-thumbed, frequently highlighted copy of Robert Brustein’s seminal 1964 book Theatre of Revolt. Hele…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:19PMI re-read the Dover edition above recently in preparation for the Halloween season, but it emerges that the post in question will treat not only of its author but his esteemed ancestor. I ha…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:03AMSunday, October 29, 2023
This one goes to the two Turks in my life (that I know of) one is a nice puppeteer friend whom I was honored to marry to her husband at the marionette cottage in Central Park a few years bac…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:13PMOctober 29 is National Cat Day. Ironically though it is two days before Halloween, it is somehow not National BLACK Cat Day, that’s August 17, so a black cat related post will follow at th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:55AMSaturday, October 28, 2023
October 28 is the birthday of multiple sit-com mother Susan Harris (Susan Spivak, 1940). Harris is the step-sister of film editor and producer Marion Segal Freed, who was married to George S…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:55AMFriday, October 27, 2023
Obviously, the sand bar we know as Coney Island is uncountably old, and was trafficked by Native Americans long before the Dutch and English began poking around out there. But according to t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:55AMThursday, October 26, 2023
Thank you Edward Parker Bolman for the hot tip that today marks the 101st birthday of the still-living performer and designer Juli Lynne Charlot (Shirley Ann Agin, b. 1922). As you can see f…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:03AMWednesday, October 25, 2023
October 25 is World Opera Day, and not coincidentally the birthday of both Georges Bizet and Johann Strauss II. The bicentennial of the birth of the latter composer is in just a couple of ye…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:25AMTuesday, October 24, 2023
October 24 is World Kangaroo Day; naturally we observe it with a look at the Australian marsupial’s old-school show biz niche: kangaroo boxing. I was startled to learn some time ago that i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:07AMMonday, October 23, 2023
It seems nothing but meet and right that they should be a silent screen star named Gloria Grey (Maria Dragomanovich, 1909-47), there also having been a Gloria Swanson, a Gloria Stuart, a Glo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:55PMLucy Monroe (1906-1987) was called “The Star-Spangled Girl” and “The Star-Spangled Soprano” not merely to indicate that she was patriotic, a la the girl in the eponymous Neil Simon c…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:25AMI snapped the above at the late Mari Lyn Henry’s place just over a year ago. She was a big Sarah Bernhardt buff, and today being Bernhardt’s birthday, I thought I would share this wonder…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:25AMSunday, October 22, 2023
A MINOR comedy auteur to be sure, but one nonetheless, and some of his films are rated as modern classics by some. Howard Zieff (1927-2009) first gained fame for advertising photography and …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:33AM 
