Wednesday, July 24, 2024
I first heard the name Frank Silvera (1914-1970) when I was working in the back office of Theater for the New City; I think the Frank Silvera Writers Workshop had presented work there, or ma…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:36AMTuesday, July 23, 2024
Today we celebrate Ruth Duccini (Ruth Robinson, 1918-2014) whose place in history is assured by being the last female surviving cast member of the 1939 classic picture The Wizard of Oz. Ducc…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:02PMMonday, July 22, 2024
A few days ago I took advantage of my membership in The Lambs to start diving into their remarkable archives, starting with the papers of the Homer of Vaudeville, Joe Laurie Jr, whom I first…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:48PMComedy writer and producer Bob Booker (1931-2024) no longer resides in the Land of the Living. Booker has been top of mind for me lately, as I had ample chance to talk about one of his more …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:02AMSunday, July 21, 2024
This is my beautiful wife during our recent trip to the Laurie Beechman which I wrote about yesterday. She hates having her picture taken so I always have to sneak candids like this one, but…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:02PMSaturday, July 20, 2024
This piece started out as a review, and then it grew to two related reviews, in the midst of which circumstances then dictated that it also include some hard news reporting, which then sugge…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:32PMFriday, July 19, 2024
An interesting if belated new edition to our Stars of Slapstick series, screen comedian Addie McPhail (Addie Dukes, 1905-2003). McPhail was born in Kentucky, but moved to Chicago with her fa…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:12AMMost of the photos one finds online of character actor Dallas (sometimes Dal) McKennon (1919-2009) look like this one: a grizzled, bearded western sidekick type. One might be apt to mix him …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:02AMThursday, July 18, 2024
All hail Dion (Dion Francis DiMucci, b. 1939)! I’d inevitably have written an appreciation of this great idol of the interregnum between Elvis and the Beatles anyway, but certain news came…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:02AMWednesday, July 17, 2024
This week I was honored to be the first guest (but somehow also, seemingly, the host) on Dick Zigun’s new youtube show. Best known as the Founder of Coney Island USA, the Mermaid Parade, a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:18PMNo, I’m not a month late in eulogizing Donald Sutherland (1935-2024). Today was the late actor’s birthday, the day on which I had already been scheduled to write about him. And it’s pr…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12PMTuesday, July 16, 2024
When I first moved to NYC the big local scandal of the day was the Bess Mess, a bribery beef centered around the Commissioner of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Bess Myerson (1924-20…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:02AMMonday, July 15, 2024
Born 100 years ago today: Armenian-American character actor Val Avery (Sebouh Der Abrahamian, 1924-2009). Avery’s family was among the persecuted Armenian minority in Ottoman Turkey. He gr…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMSunday, July 14, 2024
Well, my friend the author Eve Golden had scarcely announced the launch of her new website Eve’s Obits when two prominent celebrities obligingly demonstrated its usefulness by dying within…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:24PMFriday, July 12, 2024
Juy 10 was the birthday of filmmaker Dudley Murphy (1897-1968); 2024 marks the centennial of one of his best known works Ballet mécanique (1924), an avant-garde film co-directed with Fernan…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:02PMTuesday, July 9, 2024
Having already written about such Fatty Arbuckle-adjacent figures as nephew Al St. John, wife Minta Durfee, ill-fated associate Virginia Rappe, and countless of his professional colleagues (…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:48AMMonday, July 8, 2024
July 8, 1924 was the day that WNYC radio in New York first went on the air. It’s been years since I was a regular listener, but I am a big fan of public media, and certainly went through p…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12PM…And Adelbert Knott (1858-1933), as well, for he came onto the scene first. Hailing from Tyner, Indiana (about a half hour from South Bend), Knott was both a writer and an actor. He was on…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:32AMSunday, July 7, 2024
Brewster McCloud (1970) is one of the least well-remembered films by its director Robert Altman, and doesn’t even top the list of movies people know which feature its star Bud Cort (surely…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:06PMSaturday, July 6, 2024
July is International ‘Zine Month! The occasion has inspired a little navel gazing, for in those dim dark days before blogging was available, ‘zines were the only way many of us could se…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMFriday, July 5, 2024
Three P.T. Barnum posts in one day? This is unprecedented! I’m pretty sure I’ve never done that for anybody, two is the max. But I just so happened to have gotten three ideas for new Bar…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:42PMThe walking tour I referred to in the previous post was, as intended, a revivifying return to basics for this correspondent. As I mentioned in that post, locations connected to P.T. Barnum w…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PMThis is the first of three new posts for our P.T. Barnum section today, in observance of the showman’s birthday. He’s top of mind at the moment because I conducted a walking tour of nota…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:12AMThursday, July 4, 2024
Henry (Enrico) Armetta (1888-1945) is top of mind at the moment because I recently watched the Marx Brothers’ The Big Store (1941) while putting together my new book and prepped for Marxfe…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:42PMHappy 100th birthday to the still-kicking Eva Marie Saint! I confess the occasion presented me with something of a dilemma. Like everyone else I’m a big fan of her two biggest movies On th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:32AMWednesday, July 3, 2024
A few days ago I led a 13 mile walking tour tracing the origins of New York theatre to its peak in the 20th century. I began that tour at Castle Clinton National Monument in the Battery, not…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:48AMJuly 3 was the birthday of theatre critic, columnist and author John Mason Brown (1900-1969). Most of the major theatre critics of Brown’s day enjoyed lingering pop culture fame by expandi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:48AMTuesday, July 2, 2024
I’m in major need of a laugh today (if you follow the news and have a half a brain I imagine you are too) so I am grateful that today is the birthday of Stephen Stucker (1947-1984). Stucke…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AMMonday, July 1, 2024
Born 200 years ago today, John Jeremiah Garrison (1824-1900), gold prospector, guide, hunter, lawman, sailor, scout, soldier, trapper, woodhawk, whiskey peddler, and more. Originally from Ne…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:12AMYes, I know that Pride Month is just gone, but the thing is July 1 is Victor Willis’s birthday. Willis (b. 1951) was the main singer and songwriter for the Village People, although amusing…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:48AMSunday, June 30, 2024
It’s been a minute since I’ve shared a guest post here on Travalanche, and I don’t do it very frequently, but I am excited to be presenting one today. My most frequent guest poster has…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:48PM 
