11,718 stories by "Trav S.D."
A tip of the hat today to silent screen star Jack Mulhall (1887-1979). Mulhall was from upstate Wappinger's Falls, New York and started out as a teenager working carnivals and vaudeville, th…
Yesterday, the music world lost two trailblazers, each of whom only hit the #1 spot once on the pop charts, but who both left much much greater legacies than that might imply. Johnny Nash wa…
One Week From Today, October 13, 7pm: Show Business 101 I hope you'll tune in next Tuesday for my online talk for the The South Orange-Maplewood Adult School. What you'll learn: American …
Saddened to hear the news about the passing of Ernie Orsatti (1940-2020) back on September 12. He was the son of two remarkable parents. His father Ernie Orsatti, Sr, had been a stand-in for…
With little prompting, I could wax enthusiastic about Glynis Johns (b. 1923) to an unseemly degree. In her youth she was often cast as a sexpot; in middle-age there remained more than a hint…
When I was a kid and heard the name of Damon Runyon (1880-1946) mentioned, I had the wrong idea about what he wrote. I don't know why, but I somehow got the notion that he was a writer of to…
I may have eventually got 'round to a post on director Stan Dragoti (1932-2018) but probably not as soon as today. The fast track is accounted for by the fact that he was an old friend of my…
I have long been amused that the name "Chubby Checker" is similar to those of Fats Domino and Leonard Chess " this faction of the early rock and roll pantheon sounds like the game shelf. It …
This morning's subject is not to be confused with the other Johnny Burke the minor film comedian. This Johnny Burke (1908-1964) was a tin pan alley songwriter, usually a lyricist. A graduate…
Classic comedy fans may know Matthew Coniam as one of the presenters of the Marx Brothers Council Podcast. But his interests and research are wide ranging (from Jane Austen to Egyptomania) a…
October 1 is the natal day of the late Tom Bosley (1927-2010) and we're just a couple of weeks shy of the 10th anniversary of his death, and we've dropped his name here on Travalanche about …
It's just so weird and uncanny that Mac Davis died on the same day as Helen Reddy " they were both the same age, they came to fame at the same time, they both had similar careers (encompassi…
Almost as if I KNEW I would be cooped up in my house for a year, just about a year ago I stretched my legs a bit and traveled to San Francisco and environs and western New York and some othe…
I selected the photo above not because it is the best representation of George Bancroft (1882-1956) but because it represents the film role of his which I know best, the part of Marshall Cur…
I had already been planning a post on Helen Reddy (b. 1941), her birthday is in less than a month, but upon learning of her passing yesterday, we elevate her to where she was during much of …
It is inevitable that I will do a post on Deadwood, which I rate the highest TV western series ever made (at least in terms of production values; arguments can be made about the writing). Am…
If you're reading this blog you no doubt hold the late Madeline Kahn (1942-1999) high in your esteem already; but now that I look at her career in its totality I am fairly agog. Like most, I…
Sometimes your good luck is also a Trojan horse for your bad luck. Brooklyn born Beryl Wallace (Beatrice Heischuber, 1912-1948) was plucked from the chorus by impresario Earl Carroll to be h…
40 years ago, PBS launched its wildly popular series Cosmos, brainchild of the much-missed Dr. Carl Sagan (1934-1996). Sagan was an astrophysicist, among many other things, but as far as the…
As a New Englander who loves Jewish comics, satire and good girl art, and whose father was both a conservative hillbilly and a closet cartoonist, there is precisely EVERYTHING to fascinate m…
Thanks be to Immortal Ephemera for gathering together more info about Wally Van (Charles Wallace Van Nostrand, 1880-1974) than I might otherwise have easily gotten. Born in New Hyde Park, Va…
There are more reasons to know the name Basil Dean (1888-1978) than you have fingers. but I'm betting you don't (as I once didn't). We'll cut to the chase, then give you his background. Dean…
Philippe Nicole (1881-1940) was a small-statured native of Montreal who worked for the sideshow of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus between the ages of 12 and 15. In 1906 he me…
Most classic cinema buffs inevitably think of Edmund Gwenn (Edmund John Kellaway, 1877-1959) as a loveable, even cuddly English senior citizen, due to the sorts of roles he played in Hollywo…
Today some overdue sunlight on silent comedian Al Cooke (Albert Gallatin Cooke, 1880-1935). Cooke was a moneyed Los Angeles local who'd been educated in Switzerland and had been a rancher an…
