11,717 stories by "Trav S.D."
I love that Louis Prima's (1910-78) birthday falls during the Christmas season. He sang on one of my favorite Christmas records when I was a kid, which I wrote about here. Prima was a favori…
T.S. Eliot was such a fan of British music hall comedian Ernest "Ernie" Lotinga (1875-1951) that he once wrote to Virginia Woolf, calling him "Â "the greatest living British histrionic art…
The career of Frances Gifford (1920-1994) is an illustration of the weird vicissitudes of fortune. Good luck struck from out of the blue to begin her career; bad luck did the same to end it,…
My advice to anyone with half a brain and/or a serious grounding in Hollywood lore is to watch Mank for its gorgeous images, but turn the sound down. Director David Fincher seems to be attem…
We undoubtedly learned about star jazz trumpeter Bob Effros (1900-1982) through his granddaughter Barbara, who maintains a blog devoted to his legacy and is working on a book that treats of …
Just got the news that David L. Lander (b. 1947) has passed away. I'd known about Lander's MS for a while; Michael McKean's amazing turn on Better Call Saul led me to wonder what had had hap…
I find myself increasingly interested in the work of Nunnally Johnson (1897-1977) who combined the cracker-scribe identity of guys like William Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe with the journalisti…
Fans of the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts (1929) may be astonished to learn that the homely, rather unimpressive actor who plays the schemer Harvey Yates was anybody, anybody at all. But he w…
Character actor Warren Berlinger (b. 1937) has just passed way. I don't know that I'd have felt the need to eulogize him, but for the fact that, par usual, the entertainment obit writers (or…
Ordinarily, I restrict what's essentially local news to posts on social media, but I think you can see that there's a dimension to this story that will be of interest to vaudeville lovers th…
Mark Robson (1913-78) directed many of my favorite movies but until recently I never knew his name. His is not a name-above-the-title, and many of his best known films are associated with st…
A few words on the legacy of Frank Joslyn Baum (1883-1958), sometimes billed as "L. Frank Baum, Jr" or "Col. Frank Baum". The son of the famous author of The Wizard of Oz, Baum Jr is known f…
I've long wanted to do a post on Alfred "Alf" Reeves (1876-1945). There's not much to be said, but he deserves to be honored. The brother of the better remembered Billie Reeves, Alf was init…
The title of this post is of course a screen name. It belonged to Matilda Fernandez (1897-1976), a local Los Angeles girl, who initially danced on the stage before an injury forced her to re…
Tribute today to Flo Bert (Florence Bert, 1898-1981), sometimes rendered as Flo Burt, or Flo Sophie Bert, but never apparently as "Flaubert". She is not to be confused with African American …
A few words on early talkie star June Clyde (Ina Parton, 1909-1987), whose screen career and name both seem like a mash up of June Haver and Andy Clyde. Billed as Baby Tetrazini, Clyde began…
The career of William Tracy (1917-1967) was fairly blessed while he remained young (and young-ish, thanks to a boyish face and persona) but hit a brick wall all at once in middle age. The Pi…
There is no way to give a pat, simple description of the life and career of Jack Sheldon (Beryl Cyril Sheldon, Jr, 1931-2019). He was most accomplished as a jazz trumpeter, but he also made …
What a stroke of genius it was casting Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989) in Aaron Sorkin's Netflix movie The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020). The recreation of Hoffman's (and Jerr…
Happy St. Andrew's Day, for them that celebrate! A fitting time, says I, for a brief tribute to the Collins Variety Agency, which ruled Scottish music hall for the first half of the 20th cen…
Jacqueline Logan (1904-78) was a movie star for precisely one decade (1921-31), starring in over five dozen films. Her gorgeous looks made her a shoe-in for silents. She also had decent stag…
I recently re-watched a favorite movie of mine, Wild in the Streets (1968), whose nightmare satircal scenario is that people under 30 get their wish and take over the world, The career of Di…
Some brief notes on the brief career of Betty Mack (Idalene Thurber, 1901-1980). A rural Illinois girl, Mack started out as a Broadway chorus girl at the age of 18. She was in the shows Red …
Curious how African American classic blues singer Lucille Hegamin (Lucille Nelson, 1894-1970) has been forgotten, when so many of her peers have been remembered, despite the fact that she le…
A tip of the Stetsomn today to legendary stuntman, action director, and actor Enos Edward "Yakima" Canutt (1895-1986). Canutt is best known today for: several stunts in John Ford's Stagecoac…
