Wednesday, December 20, 2023
What follows was adapted from a talk I cooked up in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the epic comedy movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (November 7) as well as the centennial anni…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:06PMAnd how will YOU be celebrating the centennial of the birth of writer/director/ producer Rod Amateau (1923-2003)? If you’re like most people, finding out who he was! I am quite certain I b…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:42AMTuesday, December 19, 2023
Yes, it’s true: Jean Genet (1910-1986) shared a birthday with Edith Piaf and Barbette! Now, that’s a three-way I’d watch through any peephole! Genet was a 20th century literary giant, …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:18PMMonday, December 18, 2023
That’s right! Thomas Abthorpe Cooper (1775-1849). Wanna make something of it? Most people (or many people) would guess Edwin Forrest, but he was just America’s first native-born stage st…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PMIf you’re like me, you are apt to mix up Gladys Cooper (1888-1971) with Alice Cooper, and, folks, don’t do that. They had very different acts. Most Americans know Cooper for her Hollywoo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PMSunday, December 17, 2023
As it happens today (December 17) is International Day to End Violence to Sex Workers. I mention this more to marvel at the synchronicity than to imply that Filthy Lucre, Jonny Porkpie’s b…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12PMJust a brief squib to mark the 130th anniversary of the birth of the great German stage director Erwin Piscator (1893-1966). Along with his sometime colleague Bertolt Brecht, Piscator was on…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:54AMA look today at the much-neglected progressive Southern author Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987), born 120 years ago today. Caldwell was decidedly not neglected in his own time; that’s the whol…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:54AMSaturday, December 16, 2023
A proper post today on Sir Noël Coward (1899-1973), our previous one being of the perfunctory sort from the early days of the blog when I was much less ambitious about the sort of things I …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:02AMFriday, December 15, 2023
I’ve been sitting on this news impatiently for months and am so glad to have the greenlight to leak it (with the aid of Noah Diamond’s premium artwork): May 2024 will see a bright, shiny…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:18PM1923 was a crucial year in the life of young John Henry Hammond II (1910-1987). That was the year the precocious young lad went on a family trip to London and saw the all-black show From Dix…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:54AMThursday, December 14, 2023
You heard it right, folks! This may be the only blog on the planet that has TWO posts about tv comedian Morey Amsterdam (the previous one is here) and we’ve even got a third one planned! W…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PMJust got the message in my in-box that this is the last week of shows at the Kraine Theatre, at least under the management it has known for the past however-many years. I’ve known the day …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PMOn this day in 1934 Hal Roach released his deeply twisted Christmas classic Babes in Toyland a.k.a. March of the Wooden Soldiers starring Laurel and Hardy et al. It’s the day of the year w…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:33PMDecember 14 was the original air date of the first remake of the holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street in 1955. Oddly, we learn that the release date of the original 1947 was in June, and w…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMWednesday, December 13, 2023
Among those few who’ve even heard the name Larry Parks (1914-1975) there is a tendency to know just two or three things: that he made a big splashed playing Al Jolson in The Jolson Story …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:36AMJust got the unhappy news that Andre Braugher (b. 1962) has passed away at the young age of 61. News report are vague as to cause, mentioning only a “brief illness”. Typically we write a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:54AMTuesday, December 12, 2023
I raved my my spiritual soul sister Kathy Biehl’s previous Eat, Drink and Be Wary here two and a half years ago. And as it happens, my own next book release won’t be until early ’24, s…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:48AMMultiple benchmarks go toward justifying today’s spotlight on the late Bob Barker (1923-2023). He was born 100 years ago ago today; he passed away back in August, just a couple of months s…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:42AMI’ve done posts on Young Frank and Old Frank, but not one yet on Middle Frank, which is arguably the peak of his art. To be accurate, Late-Middle Frank is probably the real peak. Early-Mid…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:36AMMonday, December 11, 2023
December 11 was the birthday of a distant relative of mine, Caleb Chase (1831-1908), who, with partner James Solomon Sanborn (1835-1903) formed the Chase and Sanborn Coffee Company in 1862. …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:03AMSunday, December 10, 2023
I don’t know how such things happen, but somehow I managed to do posts on Ray Henderson and Buddy De Sylva a decade ago, but their songwriting partner Lew Brown (Louis Brownstein, 1893-195…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:24AMSaturday, December 9, 2023
For tickets go here!
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:32AMDecember 9 was the birthday of English actress and comedian Elsie Randolph (1904-1982). Wasn’t it lucky that just a couple of nights ago I was re-watching the early Alfred Hitchcock film R…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:32AMFriday, December 8, 2023
December 8 was the birthday of a Southern coffee broker by the name of Joel Owsley Cheek (1852-1935). Cheek’s chief claim to lasting fame is that in 1892 he convinced Nashville’s Maxwell…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:24AMThursday, December 7, 2023
On the off chance that you thought things were getting too treacly ’round here, here’s news of a show that really puts the “X” back in “X-mas”. Burlesque jack-of-all-trades Jonny…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:02AMWednesday, December 6, 2023
For whatever reason, we are ringing the Christmas bell hard this year. Some years it scarcely seems to exist; this year we have jumped in with both feet, having already posted on Oneofus’ …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:24AMTuesday, December 5, 2023
We first posted on “Little Richard” Penniman (1932-2020) back in 2012, and have had occasion to mention the long, tall shadow he cast on American music over 50 times on Travalanche. As a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMThe release date of the motion picture Serpico (1973) was 50 years ago today. We went back and re-watched this classic of my youth a few months ago, prompted by Isaac Butler’s excellent bo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:12AMDon’t get confused! I don’t mean Blythe Danner or Tyne Daly, but just what I said, Blythe Daly (1901-1965), although I’ve seen many spelling permutations of same, including Blyth Daly,…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:06AMThis is not a review but just a notice that today is the release date for the new documentary A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps. Full disclosure: I have a dog in this hunt! My so…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:06AM 
