Monday, October 23, 2023
Lucy 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 11:33AMAnd why not? We’ve done as much for most of the other major classic comedians here, and this will help you navigate your way through the many posts we’ve done about the team. And, anyway…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:19AMSaturday, October 21, 2023
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is surely our second most notable English opium eater, after Thomas de Quincey, though certainly the one whose artistic productions are the more celebrate…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:25AMFriday, October 20, 2023
Happy Bela Lugosi’s birthday! We’ve amassed several posts about the Hungarian heart-breaker here on Travalanche over the past few years. In honor of the day we introduce this new hub to …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:49PMOctober 20 was the birthday of the man credited with devising the modern stage revue, Édouard Marchand (1859-1905). In 1886 he was hired by the Folies Bergère to devise stage shows for the…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:04AMThursday, October 19, 2023
October 19 was the birthday of actor George Nader (1921-2002). Lebanese-American Nader was a local L.A. kid who studied theatre at Occidental College, got experience at Pasadena Playhouse, a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:07AMWednesday, October 18, 2023
I’m just the kind of sucker who can be taken in by a screen name like Bob Custer (Raymond Glenn, 1898-1974). I literally did wonder whether the western star was related to the ill-fated Ge…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:25AMTuesday, October 17, 2023
I stopped doing “bundled” biographical posts a very long time ago, but this week three Hollywood actresses passed away within days of each other, adding up to a theme of sorts. It’s po…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:19AMMonday, October 16, 2023
October 16, 1923 was the release date of Alice’s Wonderland, the film that set 21 year old Walt Disney on a successful career track as a professional animator. Previous to this, Disney had…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:43AM50 years ago today (October 16, 1973) was the first time the acronymic band name ABBA was put to paper. It stands for the initials of its four members Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Be…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:43AM40 years ago today, The Right Stuff (1983), Philip Kaufman’s quicksilver adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s book about the American space program, premiered (appropriately) at the Kennedy Center.…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:44AMSunday, October 15, 2023
Not be confused with Lieutenant General Chesty Puller, the most decorated U.S. Marine in American History. Although Chesty Morgan (Ilana Wajc, b. 1937) was pretty well decorated herself. It …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:43AMSaturday, October 14, 2023
A century ago this year (1923), the UK-based firm Lever Brothers introduced Lux Soap on the market. Five years later, the J. Walter Thompson agency cooked up an ingenious campaign to get Hol…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:33AMFriday, October 13, 2023
The date on which I write this post on Cliff Gorman (Joel Goldberg, 1936-2002) has significances beyond the fact that it was his birthday. One is that it also happens to have been the birthd…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:33AMThursday, October 12, 2023
Happy National Farmers Day! As I’ve indicated now and again, I am 100% farm stock, descended from Connecticut Yankees on one side and Smokey Mountain Hillbillies on the other (with the odd…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:55AMWednesday, October 11, 2023
Art Blakey (1919-1990) has been higher in my consciousness in recent months from hearing Steve “Epstein” Krantz’s stories about managing jazz clubs back in the ’80s. Blakey was in hi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:49AMTuesday, October 10, 2023
First, some personal reflections on the bad news. To someone who was a kid during the Yom Kippur War, which just had its 50th anniversary (surely among the reasons for the timing of the Hama…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:13PMI’d like this to be a world where audiences always know the backstory for every artist. You can’t tell the players without a program! The world has never been perfect as far as that goes…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:55AMMonday, October 9, 2023
Columbus Day has become a day of eroding celebration and increasing introspection on the topic of colonialism in recent decades. That feels like a particularly relevant subject as war consum…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:19PMSunday, October 8, 2023
Haywire Mac (Harry McClintock, 1884-1957) cleaned himself up for that photo above. Normally you see him in cowboy or hobo gear, and it wasn’t really a costume. He was a folk singer not unl…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:37PMTell me, O Octopus, I begs/ Is those things arms, or is they legs? /I marvel at thee, Octopus/ If I were thou, I’d call me Us. — Ogden Nash, “The Octopus” For World Octopus Day (Octo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:13AMSaturday, October 7, 2023
It’s been months and months since I’ve organized any Zoom events, but I have a good excuse: I’ve been hard at work on my next several books and the Chain of Fools audio-book which will…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:43PMToday we sing of Italian-American actor-crooner Al Martino (Jasper Gini, 1927-2009). “Hold the phone–Jasper?” you ask? Well, his father’s first name was Gasparino. Al was named after…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:19AMFriday, October 6, 2023
A shout-out today to comic book entrepreneur Alfred Harvey (Alfred Harvey Wiernikoff, 1913-1994), who founded Harvey Comics in 1940, and employed his brothers Leon and Robert to help him run…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:13AMThanks muchly to Lauren Milberger and Jesi Mullins, lovely cohosts of The Murphy Brown Podcast, for inviting me to participate in a special bonus episode of their show to talk about one of m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:13AMThursday, October 5, 2023
I swiped this particularly fabulous and glamorous photo of my high school theatre teacher off of social media. I hope she doesn’t mind, for it makes her look like a movie star. Her name is…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:37PMA brief look today at Larry Fine (Louis Feinberg, 1902-1975), today known almost exclusively as the vaguely catatonic member of the Three Stooges with the Brillo pad on his head. Larry is of…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:25AMThe Bell Sisters, like the Clooney Sisters, were originally from Kentucky. The duo consisted of Cynthia (b. 1935) and Kay (b. 1940. Their given name was Strother; Bell was their mother’s m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:25AMWednesday, October 4, 2023
Happy Buster Keaton’s birthday! This year marks some significant Keaton anniversaries: it’s a century since he began directing and starring in his own feature-length comedies. We thought…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:19AM 
