11,723 stories by "Trav S.D."
Born this day, bandleader, arranger, accompanist and composer Fletcher Henderson (James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, 1897-1952), one of the key inventors of the musical style known as Swing.…
Today is Wright Brothers Day, the national day celebrating the anniversary of the brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. I thought it would be a perfect time to publish a long germinat…
A few words about the interesting career of comic actor Dave Madden (1931-2014). Today best known for one, perhaps two, particular roles, Madden’s career, like most, proves to be much …
I often worry that Travalanche is becoming too much like other blogs by adding Hollywood films stars to my previous and ongoing content streams of vaudevillians, sideshow freaks, and the lik…
December 16 is the natal day of actor Hardie Albright (Hardie Albrecht, 1903-1975). Albright was of Pennsylvania German stock, hailing from Charleroi, 20 miles from Pittsburgh. His parents h…
Born this day in 1889, Ted Wilde, who was not at all a minor figure in silent comedy, but one who died young, preventing him for growing and cementing his reputation. Wilde started out as a …
A post today in honor of the late Steven Bocho (1943-2018), on his birthday. Cancer took Bochco earlier this year at the young age of 74. I crowed about him on social media at the time, but …
Comic actress Patti Deutsch (1943-2017) would have been 75 today; she passed away just last year. I find it exceedingly odd that most of the obituaries and bios about Deutsch make their lede…
This post is a can I’ve been kicking down the road since 2015 when I cooked up a series of horror articles for every day in October that year. Each Halloween season since then I’…
Reality TV, now a staple of the medium for better or worse, has been with us since the dawn of television, albeit it came to us in muted and piecemeal forms prior to exploding into its own w…
A sort of aimless memory post for the birthday of Frank Sinatra (1915-98), prompted by this TV Guide cover we recently came across advertising one of his TV specials in the 1970s. I was b…
I know there’s always another shoe, and it’s always supposed to drop, but I didn’t know it would happen so quickly after this morning’s shoe. Cornelia Street Cafe sen…
Well, I sure am glad I got to perform in Jason Trachtenburg’s Me and Lee at Sidewalk late last month, for I just read in EV Grieve that it may no longer be long for this world. I ha…
A couple of months ago I flipped both for St. Kilda, Jody Christopherson’s new solo work, and for Torn Page, the space where it was presented, which I’d heard about for ages but …
The biggest bombshell about B movie queen Marie Windsor (Emily Marie Bertelsen, 1919-2000), best known for playing smoldering noir dames and dance hall girls in westerns, was that she was a …
This post is the sequel to our earlier one about Laurel and Hardy’s silent comedies. It covers all of the team’s talkie shorts for Hal Roach from 1929 through 1935, excluding the…
Dan Blocker (1928-1972) was probably my first celebrity death. The sad and unexpected event was nothing in scale like the death of Elvis five years later, but it did cause more of a stir tha…
A thousand cheers today for E.C. Segar (Elzie Crisler Segar, 1894-1938), best remembered today for giving the world Popeye and the cast of characters who came with him. Segar grew up in smal…
A brief of celebration of Bryan Foy (1896-1977) — for a time one of the most important men in Hollywood, and now largely forgotten. Bryan was the oldest of the vaudeville act The Seven…
Today is the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and I can’t think of a better time to celebrate the long friendship between the U.S. and Japan since that horrible war ended. And…
The great American stage actor Edward Hugh “E.H.” Sothern (1859-1933) was born on this day. The son of prominent actor E.A. Sothern, he made his debut in his father’s starr…
A celebration today of comic actor Wally Cox (1924-1973). While Cox did enjoy some starring roles, notably the leads in the sitcom Mr. Peepers (1952-55) and the animated show Underdog (1964-…
Just a few brief words of acknowledgment for Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968). Today Lane is best known as instigator-editor-maybe-ghostwriter of her mother Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little H…
Tomorrow, December 6 on TCM, starting at 6am (EST): several classic Laurel and Hardy features. Please follow me on Twitter at @TravSD — I may live tweet along with the movie as I often…
A long overdue post on Walt Disney (1901-1966) today. I have only dragged my feet to this point because Disney is one of those figures who is so major, and possesses so many facets (cartooni…
