11,723 stories by "Trav S.D."
Frederic “Fred” Hallen (1859-1920) was a popular vaudeville entertainer, who always worked as one half of a team. He had rather a succession of them. In Forty Years Observation o…
A fascinating figure was born on this day. Georgette Harvey (1882-1952) was principally a stage performer, although I first became aware of her from the 1934 voodoo movie Chloe, Love is Call…
Year’s end is a perfect time for stock taking, and as I often like to do, I made a little tally of the readers’ top ten favorite subjects on Travalanche. I pulled out some anomal…
On December 30, 1903 there occurred the worst disaster in theatre history, and the largest single building fire in American history, Chicago’s Iroquois Theatre Fire. The Iroquois had o…
Mary Alice Rice (1910-1989) came into the world on December 30. Originally from Temple, Texas, Rice was a trained soprano, and once called “one of the ten most beautiful women on the A…
Well, Good Riddance to 2017! If you’re all like me, you got the wind knocked out of you on November 8, 2016, sending you spinning in unanticipated directions, like in the iconic Coney …
Born December 29, Claire Dodd (Dorothy Dodd, 1908-1973). Born in Iowa, raised in Arkansas, it was often given out that she’d gotten her start in the Ziegfeld Follies, although there is…
Charles “Slim” Timblin was known for a single signature bit in vaudeville, a comedy monologue he did in blackface** as an African American preacher. He does the bit in the 1930 V…
I made an exciting discovery the other day; I stumbled upon a Jazz Age Broadway Chorus Girl to whom I am distantly related. Her name was Helen Herendeen. I have tantalizing fragments, and am…
Ingenue Mary Kornman (1915-1973) was born December 27. Like many of the earliest kids hired for Hal Roach’s Our Gang series of comedy film shorts, Mary was initially hired because she …
Art Deco era visual artist Russell Patterson was born the day after Christmas, 1893. Patterson had a hand in practically every kind of influential visual expression in popular culture from t…
On Christmas Day, 1977, the 88 year old Charlie Chaplin skidded around his last corner. W.C. Fields had also died on Christmas. Sometimes it is Krampus and not Santa who visits us on that da…
Born Christmas Day: dancing harp player Carlena Diamond (1900-1992). She is best remembered today for her 1929 Vitaphone short Carlena Diamond, Harpist Supreme, in which she plays her harp, …
Christmas Day was the birthday of singer and actress Frances McCoy (Franya Popowsky, 1910-1976) Born in Poland, she moved with her family to the Bronx when a young child. The family’s …
December 23 is the birthday of little person performer George Brasno (1911-1982). George started out in a vaudeville act singing and dancing with his sister Olive (also a little person), and…
Apropos of nothing except I saw a common thread of bizarreness in their work, herewith a listicle (in no particular order) of a dozen strange and eccentric comedians, one note weirdos who ma…
Happy birthday Barry Gordon! And how perfect that his birthday falls during the Holiday season, for his first claim to fame was singing the 1955 hit song “Nuttin’ for Christmas&#…
I shouldn’t have said “yes”, when a friend asked to take to me see The Greatest Showman. It was a nice gesture on his part and it was an opportunity to socialize with my fr…
Prior to the present age it could be truly said, though one seldom had occasion for it, that there was no way to describe Charlie Callas (1924-2011). Well, it can still be said, but you don&…
December 19 is the birthday of Minnie Maddern Fiske (Marie Augusta Davey, 1865-1932), almost invariably known in her day as “Mrs. Fiske”. (The use of a husband’s patronymic…
December 18 was the birthday of Betty Grable (Elizabeth Ruth Grable, 1916-1973). Others will no doubt disagree, some vociferously, but I have always deemed the Grable phenomenon to be someth…
Just got the word that what we were bracing for a few months back has sadly come to pass: Johnny Fox has gone to his final blowoff. Best known for his skills as a sword swallower, Johnny was…
December 14, 1932 was the natal day of Abbe Lane (Abigail Francine Lassman). Born in Brooklyn, young Francine Lassman was all of four years old when she first appeared on the radio and five …
December 13 is the birthday of former child star Johnny Whitaker (b. 1959). The red-haired freckled Whitaker was memorable as young Jody on Family Affair (1966-1971), which we wrote about he…
Eve Meyer (Evelyn Eugene Turner, 1928-1977) was born on this day. The buxom Georgia beauty began her career as a pin-up model, often posing nude or topless. In 1952, she married photographer…
