Sunday, June 11, 2023
The second Sunday in June is Children’s Day in the U.S. (November 20 is World Children’s Day). We take the opportunity to point out that Travalanche has nearly 250 posts on child actors …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:55AMSaturday, June 10, 2023
The Duchess, whom I’ve sometimes referred to as a Countess or a Marchioness (I’m unclear as to her exact rank, but she’s definitely a decadent aristocrat of some sort) was the guest on…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:55AMBorn 100 years ago today, French movie actress Madeleine LeBeau (1923-2016). Most Americans know LeBeau perhaps without knowing her name. Her most famous Hollywood performance was in Casabla…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:55AMFriday, June 9, 2023
By someone’s decree, I guess the Walt Disney Corporation’s, June 9 is Donald Duck Day, marking the anniversary of Donald’s first appearance in a short, 1934’s The Wise Little Hen. Bu…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:13AMThursday, June 8, 2023
There were a couple of shown bizzier figures in my daily tickler I might have written about today, but, hell, it’s Pride Month, and I’ve scarcely done anything to observe it yet this yea…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:13PMHow wonderful that John Albert Chamberlain Kefford (1905-1996) chose the professional name of John Abbott — for that is what he looked like, like some kind of Medieval monk. Occasionally h…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:04PM75 isn’t the roundest anniversary in the world but it is nevertheless one of the raisons d’être for my upcoming book Vaudeville in Your Living Room: A Century of Radio and TV Variety. W…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:25AMSunday, June 4, 2023
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the release date of Jerry Lewis’s best movie, The Nutty Professor (1963). As the great Gerald Mast wrote, all Jerry Lewis movies have problems. We discu…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:36AMSaturday, June 3, 2023
Happy World Bicycle Day! It’s typical of this blog that we’d have written about unicycles before we did something dedicated to their more popular two wheel cousin. By rights I should als…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:02AMFriday, June 2, 2023
I first learned of the remarkable Matthias Buchinger (1674-1740), it should surprise no one, from Ricky Jay’s Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, which has an entire section devoted to him. …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:32AMThursday, June 1, 2023
June is not only Pride Month but it also happens to be National Accordion Awareness Month. This happy coincidence inevitably reminds me that the first person to ever make me understand the r…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:02AMWednesday, May 31, 2023
You see? Just like Milton Berle and Bob Hope, Brooke Shields (b. 1965) started out as a Charlie Chaplin impersonator. In this photo she’s about five, but then she went and dressed like The…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:06AMTuesday, May 30, 2023
BOTD clarinetist and big band leader Benny Goodman (Benjamin Goodman, 1909-1986). The son of Jewish immigrants, Goodman grew up in Chicago, soaking up the jazz music that was only then begin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AMMonday, May 29, 2023
The great Bohemian whatsit known as Harry Smith was born 100 years ago today (1923-1991). When Smith passed away, over 30 years ago now, I recall reading an in depth portrait of him in perha…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:32AMToday we treat of two separate but very much related topics of roughly equal obscurity. I can’t recall which one I learned about first, but we start with comedienne Donna Jean Young (1936-…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:18AMSunday, May 28, 2023
Today is the birthday of Tony Pastor, Father of Vaudeville, which I am henceforth and unilaterally declaring to be National Vaudeville Day. I hope you will join me in observing it going forw…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AMZelda Rubinstein (1933-2010) would have been 90 today, and the reason she’s not around to celebrate it is the same reason we know about her at all, she suffered from a pituitary condition …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:48AMSaturday, May 27, 2023
This wants to be a much longer think-piece, but it’ll be weeks until I can work such a thing into my schedule. But rather than let this time sensitive bulletin fester, we simplify this int…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AMHenry Kissinger turned 100 today, and I was one of the millions bemoaning the fact that death has taken Tina Turner and not that repulsive old baby murderer. I was going to do a post today o…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AMFriday, May 26, 2023
Coming June 1: the midway history I didn’t know I needed, Nathan Wakefield, The Rise and Fall of the Sideshow Geek, Snake eaters, Human Ostriches and Other Extreme Entertainers. Wakefield …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AMThursday, May 25, 2023
Today is Leslie Uggams’ 80th birthday and I hope you will forgive the joke I invariably think of when I see her name, which is “Would Wes-wee wike a wittoo ‘uggams?” If you’re done…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:54AMWednesday, May 24, 2023
As we pen these words it is the 80th birthday of actor Gary Burghoff (b.1943), known almost exclusively for playing the character of “Radar” O’Reilley in both the film and television s…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:32PMThis is a tawdry tidbit well known to Laurel and Hardy fans, but not to the general reader: prior to his four legal marriages and prior to his screen teaming with Oliver Hardy, a woman named…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AMTuesday, May 23, 2023
We’ve many an occasion to mention Benjamin Sherman “Scatman” Crothers (1910-1986) on this blog, but unconscionably our only post dedicated to him to date has been been very narrowly fo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AMMonday, May 22, 2023
Here’s a forgotten star closer to our own time. When I was a kid in the ’70s Michael Sarazin (1940-2011) was everywhere, in all kinds of major screen projects with top actors, and for al…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:42AMVery much ahead of his time was Arthur Cravan (Fabian Avenarius Lloyd; 1887-1918) a hoaxer, boxer, Dada artist, critic performer, poet, adventurer and nephew of Oscar Wilde. One reads abou…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:32AMSunday, May 21, 2023
Not being a baby boomer, I was unaware of Rick Jason’s most famous role and learned about him in the most unlikely was possible — I got interested in investigating who he was after seein…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AMSaturday, May 20, 2023
Classic comedy fans have reason to take note of the name Patricia Ellis (Patricia O’Brien, 1916-1970). She appears opposite Joe E. Brown in Elmer the Great (1933), The Circus Clown (1934) …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:12AMFriday, May 19, 2023
Today marks the 99th anniversary of the Marx Brothers’ first Broadway show I’ll Say She Is, which we revived nine years ago in the context of an entire Marx Brothers festival produced by…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:32PMAll honor and deference to British stage and screen anomaly Sabrina (Norma Ann Sykes, 1936-2016). We first became aware of her when she sashayed into the middle of Satan in High Heels (1962)…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:06AMThursday, May 18, 2023
May 18 is International Museum Day, which I’m certain is not intended to celebrate the kind of dime museums I normally write about here, but allow me to expand the day’s purpose. I’ve …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AM 
