11,714 stories by "Trav S.D."
I've kept a lid on this sad news for several days, awaiting the official announcement, but I see now that word has begun to get out " friend, colleague and mentor George Ferencz passed away …
Beatles fans know the name "Charles Hawtrey" from the Let it Be album. John Lennon intones it in his introduction to "I Dig a Pony", which he characteristically renders as "I Dig a Pygmy" (w…
Most of us who grew up in the '60s, '70s and '80s experienced Frank De Vol (1911-1999) backwards, first as a funny and highly recognizable bit player in movies and on television, then later,…
Today we complete the Great '70s Girl Feminist Hero Triumvirate that also includes The Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman. In fact Isis (later called The Secrets of Isis) actually predated the ot…
Just a few words of homage to an unsung comedy hero, Fred "Gabe" Gabourie (1881-1951), the man who made a lot of Buster Keaton's most extravagant screen visions come true. Gabourie was a Sen…
An introduction here to my fellow Americans to British ventriloquist Ray Alan (1930-2010). Alan was a native of the London borough of Lewisham, where he began performing as a child in talent…
Ray Cox (1881-1957) was billed in vaudeville as the "Southern Girl" or "The Girl from Dixie" and she played a sort of modern Southern belle character. Some sources give her birthplace as Bat…
I have spent the last few weeks getting to know Samuel Johnson (1709-1794) a little better. One wants to. He's a riddle: so well known and yet so unknown. Rarely has a literary figure of Joh…
All honor today to actress and activist Frances E. Williams (Frances E. Jones, 1905-1995), not to be confused with the Frances Williams we wrote about here. This Frances Williams was a produ…
A King yesterday, and a King today! Many there are who would make themselves royalty, but it's fair I think to say, both undistiputed and indisputable, that Riley "B.B." King (1925-2015) was…
When I was a kid in the '70s and '80s, Roy Acuff (1903-1992) was still considered an eminence in the field of country music " I mean, a living one, he was still performing at the Grand Ole O…
We've had over 50 occasions to mention American International Pictures (AIP) on Travalanche, but no real uber-post to link to. I've done a couple on their most famous auteur Roger Corman, bu…
Wow. Did NOT see that coming. The opposite of the usual just happened. Normally you see the name of some nonagenarian (like Jimmy Carter or Betty White) trending on Twitter and you click and…
Silent movie actress Margaret Gibson (1894-1964) has over 150 film credits, but today any chatter about her tends to be about her private life and several crimes she may or may not have comm…
Sid Marion, sometimes billed as Sidney Marion (Sidney Marienberg, 1900-1965), was a performer about whom we know little on the private end, but a good deal professionally. Born in Massachuse…
All hail, Bill Monroe (1911-1996), Father of Bluegrass Music. If you're like me, when you hear that bluegrass was cooked up in the 1940s, you'll, be like "Wha-? Huh? Isn't that way too recen…
Some sources, apparently without authority, give September 13, 1660 as the birthday of the landmark British author Daniel Defoe (d. 1731). I therefore post on him today in an abritrary spiri…
You know you've done a lot of biographies when new ones start seeming like composites of old ones; thus Vera White sounds like a mash-up of Vera Vague or Vera-Ellen and Pearl White. In sooth…
Today we acknowledge big bandleader Shep Fields (Saul Feldman (1910-1981). You'll find nearly as many images of Fields blowinto liquid with a straw as you do of him playing his clarinet or s…
There is a great episode of Mad Men, where hero Don Draper gets taken to an Off-Off Broadway play by his second wife Megan, an aspiring actress. It is an experimental thing with guys in suit…
I'm not one of the numerous people who have to run and hide every September 11. I'm very much the opposite. I've obsessed on it since it happened; I've been working on a book length poem abo…
I was going to head this post: "50 years ago today: John Lennon's last good album" but that would not be in a very positive spirit, would it? But I think it is true. To my taste, after the b…
Queenie Smith (1898-1978) was a familiar character actress well into the 1970s, with a career that had begun over a half-century earlier. Sounds like a blues singer, right? A mix of Mamie Sm…
"Believe me, if a Turk could get out of Turkey and come here, even now, he would kiss the ground. To oppressed people, America is still a dream." This quote from Elia Kazan (Elias Kazantzogl…
One might be forgiven for assuming that character actor Irving Bacon (1893-1965) was a brother or some other relative to director Lloyd Bacon, since the former acted in some of the latter's …
