Wednesday, October 9, 2024
Above please note my first edition copy of a Pultitzer Prize winning autobiography from around a century ago The Americanization of Edward Bok. I acquired and read this now highly obscure bo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:06PMHere’s one I learned about by way of Eve Golden’s “Youtube Theatre” column at the Los Angeles Daily Mirror. When I refer to Judy Tyler (Judith Mae Hess, 1932-1957) as the “Girl Jam…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:06PMTuesday, October 8, 2024
Well, I’ve written about many of the classic, old time gossip columnists here (Walter Winchell, Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, Earl Wilson, Dorothy Kilgallen, etc) so why stop at the later…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AMToday, a salute to an actor whose career is an illustration of the vagaries of fate when it comes to the breaks it dispenses to actors, Kirk Alyn (John Feggo, Jr., 1910-1999). A New Jersey n…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMMonday, October 7, 2024
October 7 will always be remembered for the atrocity that happened in Israel a year ago, but it has another humanitarian significance as well, for it was the birthday of legendary labor acti…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:36PMOctober 7 was the birthday of Alfredo Codona (1893-1937), the most celebrated (and later mourned) member of an international, multi-generational dynasty of showfolk. Originally spelled Codon…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMSunday, October 6, 2024
The second act of Mitchell Leisen (1898-1972) has arrived posthumously, but to misappropriate an attrocious line of Robin Williams, beter latent than never? Numerous in-depth articles about …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:32AMSaturday, October 5, 2024
Previously posted on Travalachance and restored for National Rhode Island Day and the Halloween season. Today we continue our series of Rhode Island Day/ Halloween posts by relating some de…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:54PMYes, yes, I know the title sounds like a Michael Feinstein song (people are forever explaining my own damn jokes and literary devices back to me, as though the very productions of my own min…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:54PMAnd now, since it’s both National Rhode Island Day as well as the Halloween season, news of a spooky film set on a small island in the smallest state. I caught The Block Island Sound (2021…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:32AMFriday, October 4, 2024
Ecstatic to report that I am finally realizing my long-cherished goal of doing a book event at Atomic Books in Baltimore this October 26, 2024, at 7pm. I first visited that cool emporium abo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:32AMThursday, October 3, 2024
October 3 is the birthday of the grea drag star, singer, performance, actor Joey Arias. Born in Fayetteville, N.C. (recently hard hit by Hurricane Helene) Arias moved to L.A. with his family…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:36AMWednesday, October 2, 2024
Thanks, Bob Greenberg for the very good idea to do a solo post on Bud Abbott (William Alexander Abbott, 1897-1974). The reasons for doing one (and doing one now) are multiple: 1) the many po…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:06PMTuesday, October 1, 2024
100 years ago this day and this month: the birth of Surrealism (a few years longer if you count Apollinaire’s coinage of the term in 1917). Yvan Goll published an obscure Surrealist Manif…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:54PM’tis the season for spooky, and I’m way into it this year, so expect plenty of horror and horror/comedy content here throughout the Halloween month. First out of the gate is a thing I ha…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:24PMToday marks the 100th birthday of former American President Jimmy Carter (b. 1924). Apart from Gerald Ford, who scarcely counts, Carter is the first President whose tenure I remember from so…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:06AMMonday, September 30, 2024
Born 100 years today, Truman Streckfus Persons (1924-1984), better known to most as Truman Capote. Mid 20th century fiction is far from my main jam, but writers of that era did leave footpri…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:36AMSunday, September 29, 2024
I briefly considered holding this piece until Andrew Dice Clay (Andrew Clay Silverstein, b. 1957) passed away so I could call it “The Diceman Goeth”, but if the 45th President is any exa…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:12PMSaturday, September 28, 2024
Tomorrow, September 29 (2024, for those of you who don’t look at the dates of things, after all this post won’t always be new) is National Silent Movie Day! Lots of exciting things are h…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12PMHaving paid tribute to David Sarnoff and the founding of the NBC empire, in the name of equal time today we give a respectful nod to William S. Paley, honcho of CBS (1901-1990). Paley’s mi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:48AMFriday, September 27, 2024
September 27, 1954 marked the premiere of NBC’s The Tonight Show. That is a startling statistic. Several related superlatives amplify the impressiveness: it is the world’s longest runnin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMThursday, September 26, 2024
Counterintuitive but true: if you were to cross Shug Fisher (George Clinton Fisher, 1907-1984) with Fuzzy Knight, the result would not be Suge Knight. Fisher was a rustic character actor, co…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMWednesday, September 25, 2024
Happy National Comic Book Day! We sieze the occasion to present you with a handy finding aid for all the comic book series we have written about on Travalanche. (Did your grandmother used to…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:24PMSeptember 25, 1974 was the release date of the horror film The Mutations a.k.a. Freakmaker. The Mutations is the farthest thing from a classic, even (arguably) a horror classic, but it has i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMLeah Hing (1907-2001) was the first female Chinese-American pilot. The Oregon aviatrix got her pilot’s license in 1934, and she definitely stunted with flying circuses, but the real reason…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMTuesday, September 24, 2024
September 23 is World Gorilla Day, and to mark it, we add to our growing store of posts bundling our many posts related to particular animals. The gorillas of animals on stage and screen are…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:42PMWe plugged this book a couple of days ago; time to lean into that a little more for Jim Henson’s birthday! This is our seventh post about the Muppet mogul and/or his felt companions, and i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:32AMMonday, September 23, 2024
Folks in the New York area! Please join me, Wednesday, October 2, 7pm for a simultaneous celebration of Groucho Marx’s birthday and the release of my new book The Marx Brothers Miscellany.…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:06PM“They seek him here, they seek him there/ Those Frenchies seek him everywhere/ Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel.” Baroness Orczy (Emma Magdalena Rozália M…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:54PMSunday, September 22, 2024
Got the word from Ms. Eve Golden that Bette Bourne (Peter Bourne, b.1939) passed away last month. It being just a few weeks prior to his natal day, I opted to wait to do a tribute. How I wis…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:42PMBorn this day, yet 50 years gone, actor Allan Lane (Harry Leonard Albertshardt, 1909-1973). We cut to the chase to let you know that of Lane’s over 125 screen credits, the best known are t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:18AM 
