I was inspired to write this post by Showtime’s excellent 4 part documentary series Spector (2022). The title is a little bit of a distortion, if an understandable one; one of the series�…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:32AMAs often happens, I became aware of African American performer and impresario Leon Claxton (1902-67) over the course of putting together my recent post on the Royal American Shows. Claxton r…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:24AMBorn 150 years ago today, French chanteuse Mistinguett (Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois, 1873-1956). The daughter of Paris laborers, Mistinguett (originally Miss Tinguette) initially sang while …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:18AMGreat News! My writing for Chelsea Community News (and that of distinguished colleagues like Michael Musto, Scott Stiffler, and Charli Battersby) just won an honorable mention at the New Yor…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMWell, I was feeling down yesterday but now I am up again in rather a major way (and not just because of a certain historical event happening today in a criminal court in Manhattan). I’d sc…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMInternational Tap Dance Forum Tuesday, April 11, 2023 (10am -12noon EST & 9pm – 10pm EST) ATDF Artistic Director Tony Waag reconvenes a meeting of International Tap Artists, teachers a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:32AMGreat news for fans of classic comedy: in honor of the centennial anniversary of the release of Safety Last (1923), Criterion will be showcasing now fewer than 42 of Harold Lloyd’s comedie…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:06PMYes, 19th century actor John E. Owens (1823-1886) was born 200 years ago on this day. Never heard of him? That’s alright, neither had I until a few weeks ago when a good friend to this blo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:42AMHappy New Year! and April Fools! I don’t mean the opening salutation as an April Fool’s Day joke. Maybe you’d better sit down for this, because it’s the truth and not a prank, and it…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:24AMBorn this day 80 years ago, Ronald “Christopher” Walken (b. 1943). Pop culture has done Walken a disservice, I think, by making him a sort of pop culture punchline, largely due to impres…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:36AMHappy National Doctors Day! In keeping with our usual modus operandi, we observe this celebratory day less by honoring the actual medical heroes themselves than their representation in vaude…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:54PMShame on me for never thinking of such a post before, but the 88th day of the year is always World Piano Day! So here’s a post linking to you to many of the folks we’ve written about who…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:54PMAlways hold out for something better, that’s today’s lesson. I had four potential performing artists flagged whom I might have written about this morning but I could work up an enthusias…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:42AMHard to believe but my second little (literally) baby is now a tween! Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube was released ten years ago today, on March 2…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:36AMWhile researching my upcoming book on television variety I came upon the interesting fact, related by that inveterate show biz scribe Joe Laurie, that as an early TV experiment, 20th Century…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:36AMThe Fox Sisters were not a vaudeville sister act, nor were they related to vaudeville/stage performers like Harry Fox, George L. Fox, Will H. Fox, Imro Fox, Joe Fox, Della Fox, or The Foxy G…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:06PMMarch 27 is World Theatre Day and it finds me in a certain place at the moment, gathering a lot of key ideas I keep coming back to over the years, and rearticulating them. I thought it would…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:48AMI know — you were hoping this post would would be about THIS guy — — Martin Laurello, the man who could turn his head backwards, but there’s no need to be disappointed. You can still…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:39AMSilent comedienne Wanda Wiley (1902-1987) starred in nearly 50 silent movies for the Stern Brothers at Universal between 1924 and 1927. As we wrote here, Universal unthinkably destroyed most…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:38AMWell, it’s Greek Independence Day, at a historical moment when yahoo school districts are falling all over themselves to ban books so it seemed a propitious time to talk about those indece…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:06PMMy son who’s helping fight disease in Africa (which I’ll never stop bragging about) has told me that it’s World TB Day, and it occurred to me that it would be a simple matter to do our…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:12PMMarch 24, 1910 was the release date of the first ever screen version of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and we were surprised to note a gap thereupon in our Oz chronicles. Our …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:24AMThis post arises because we recently re-watched Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) for about the sixth time (in conjunction with re-reading Chandler’s book) and got curious about th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:48AMBorn 100 years ago today, the giant of 20th century French mime Marcel Marceau (Marcel Mangel, 1923-2007). Now, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that the born-again Francophilia I k…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:50AMIt’s World Puppetry Day! We haven’t written tons of puppetry per se to date on Travalanche; our “Ventriloquism and Puppetry” section is overwhelmingly lop-sided in favor of ventriloq…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:01PMThis post comes to you through the courtesy of the fact that March 21 is the birthday of Florenz Ziegfeld, and that I happen to be working on a book called Vaudeville in Your Living Room: A …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:00AMOkay, this is our second post today for French Language Day (here’s the first). I’m just kind of in that place, I must tell you bluntly, it’s not likely to wane at any time before I di…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:40PMIt’s been a while since I’ve trotted out my Trav S.D. Theme Song, as its been a while since I’ve performed anything, what with all manner of ills befalling our nation since, oh, I’ll…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:17AMThis will be a telescopic post: about my own times, but also (by way of a stimulated imagination), all of human history as well. Most probably The Book of Lists (1977) will require no introd…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:46AMMarch 19 was the natal day of James Otis Kaler, pen name “James Otis” (1848-1912), author of some 200 books for young people, most notably (and relevantly, to us) Toby Tyler, or Ten Week…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:05AMMarch 18 was the birthday of burlesque performer and producer Mollie Williams (Mollie Hersh, 1884-1854). Williams was the daughter of German-Jewish immigrants, and raised in New York, where …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:53AM
