11,712 stories by "Trav S.D."
How perfect is that is it that animator/director Tim Burton (b. 1958) shares a birthday with animation pioneer John R. Bray, whom we just did a post about earlier this morning? I wonder if h…
Today, some brief appreciation for cartoonist, pioneering animator, and independent film producer John R. Bray (1879-1978). The name may not immediately ring any bells (his entertainment con…
After our last post, you may think it impossible for us to get any more Anglophile on Travalanche today. Challenge accepted! For August 24 is traditionally St. Bartholomew's Day, the traditi…
Born 150 years ago today, British theatre critic, humorist, essayist, caricaturist, and conspicuous Edwardian dandy Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (1872-1956). A man of such patent genius as …
Career's end for actress Dorothy Comingore (1913-1971) is easy to predict once you know the inputs. Having played the part of Susan Alexander in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941), the role m…
Wendall Hall's (1896-1969) was a name I'd not encountered (or at any rate, not taken note of) until my recent research for my upcoming book on television variety. As it happens, Hall was one…
I refer in the title of this post of course not to the super-cool downtown performance art impresario who used to do the booking at P.S. 122 and who founded and runs the Under the Radar Fest…
Acknowledging that the name of actress Francine Larrimore (Francine La Remee, 1898-1975) may not be immediately recognizable to some (all?) of you, we precede the chronology with a shortlist…
Born this day 150 years ago, the great vaudeville critic and chronicler Epes W. Sargent a.k.a. "Chicot" (1872-1938). Now, some may be curious about the pen name, but I find myself much more …
A brief look this morning at silent screen actress Eileen Percy (1900-1973), whose other claim to fame was being Mrs. Harry Ruby. As such you will see her portrayed by Arlene Dahl in the Kal…
I love it when you can draw a line from vaudeville all the way to (relatively) modern times. The career of dancer and choreography Alex Romero (Alejandro Bernardo Quiroga, 1913-2007) traces …
Having already written posts about the original 1947 Nightmare Alley film as well as the 2021 remake, you might think yet a third post related to the sordid tale a bit much, but the author o…
I first learned about magician Max Holden (William Holden Maxwell, 1884-1949) when researching this piece on Times Square area magic shops last fall. Born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, Ho…
This is the third time we have been inspired to observe National Aviation Day with a post! Previously we took a look at wacky airplane movies and their climaxes, and a couple of years later,…
From what I have been able to ascertain, stage and screen actress Elsie Ferguson (1883-1961) didn't play vaudeville, although she was certainly referenced there, as one Martha Russell toured…
It was probably inevitable that I would do a post on English music hall comedian Walter Groves (1856-1906), especially since David Crump's recent biography of Fred Karno has confirmed, at le…
I have not come across any information confirming that ventriloquism legend Fred Maher (1896-1952) performed in vaudeville. He definitely performed on radio, though, and at county fairs, and…
My daily calendar showed five new people I might have written about this morning, but I picked Charles Judels (1882-1969) over two much better known and remembered stage and screen professio…
Most folks have two primary associations in relation to dancer-actress Julie Newmar (Julie Newmeyer, b. 1933). But we would be acting contrary to brand if we led our essay with mentions of s…
I love having published so many posts that new ones often sound like composites of old ones in the same field, in this case say, oh, Frank Alexander and Bebe Daniels (no relation). But Frank…
I first came across the memorable name of Florian ZaBach (1918-2006) while researching my upcoming book on television variety shows. Though not as extraordinary a professional handle as "Eng…
I had some difficulty finding a photo of modern dancer Margaret Severn (1901-1997) that I could actually use, for the perfectly comprehensible reason that she was the kind of performer who i…
I had a heck of a time getting a bead initially on today's subject, for two not insignificant reasons, over and above his relative obscurity. One is his multiplicity of professional names. W…
Singer and comedienne Mabel Todd (1907-1977) was born in the Los Angeles area shortly before it became America's film capitol. She sang and danced in vaudeville as a kid, sometimes in a two …
I'm pretty sure this is my sixth Partridge Family related post: I did one on David Cassidy and the show itself; one on Shirley Jones; one on Dave Madden (Reuben Kincaid); one on The Cowsills…
