11,724 stories by "Trav S.D."
The Four Aristocrats were Bert Bennet, Eddie Lewis, Tom Miller, and Fred Weber. This vocalizing quartet played vaudeville in the 1920s and ’30s, and recorded frequently for the Vict…
I attended an amazing edition of LaMama’s Coffeehouse Chronicles yesterday, devoted to the memory of John Vaccaro, founder of the Playhouse of the Ridiculous, who passed away last Augu…
Mel Klee was born Moses Lefkowitz in New York City in 1892. Klee illustrates a peculiar phenomenon of late era vaudeville, something almost Medieval in a way. Klee started out as a song-plug…
May 6 is apparently something called “No Diet Day”, which must mean, to my alarm and astonishment, that every other day is one on which we were supposed to have been dieting? I g…
Last night, we got to check out Axis Company’s exciting revival of Sidney Kingsley’s Dead End. I’d gotten to see a portion in rehearsal for my feature about the show …
It took surprisingly long for word to trickle down to me that Jean Stein has left us (she died April 30, The New York Times reported on it on May 2). It was an apparent suicide; she was 83 a…
May 5 is the birthday of Max Asher (1885-1957). Originally from the Oakland area, Asher got his start in vaudeville and stock companies where he perfected his “Dutch” (German) sp…
Hollywood star Mary Astor (Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke, 1906-1987) is a May 3 baby. If you’re like me, you know her primarily, maybe entirely, be her LATE roles, most especially B…
Our old friend (fiend?) Dandy Darkly is about to launch two exciting new projects: his book of monologue-stories Dandy Darkly’s Six Hundred and Sixty-Six Tales of Sex and Death, Vol…
Broadway Playwright Clyde Fitch (1865-1909) was born on this day. Much like his contemporary Oscar Wilde, with whom he is said to have had an affair, Fitch established a reputation as a dand…
It being May Day, today we honor an important figure on the labor side of the vaudeville story, Harry Mountford (James Henry Walsh, 1871-1950). Originally from Dublin, Mountford was initiall…
First of all, we no longer say “Hottentot”. The proper name for this tribe of Southern African hunter-gatherers is Khoikhoi; Dutch colonists dubbed them “Hottentot” i…
April 2017 marks the centennial anniversary of America’s involvement in World War One. April also just so happens to be the time of year when one of our favorite theatres, the Metropol…
Riddle me this: when is a Dead End not a Dead End? Answer: when it’s Sidney Kingsley’s seminal 1935 play, being given an invigorating new revival by the Axis Theatre Company. I w…
This past weekend was the annual Congress of Curious Peoples at Coney Island USA. I was honored to be asked to give the keynote address this year on the topic “When Did the Circus Beco…
April 2017 is the 100th anniversary of America’s involvement in the First World War. Tomorrow night, April 25 at the Metropolitan Playhouse’s 25th Anniversary Gala is April 25…
April 24 is the birthday of big band and jazz piano player Ray Mayer (Ray Maher, 1901-1949). Originally from Lexington, Nebraska, he started out in circuses and in some bands organized by tr…
Today is the traditional birthday of William Shakespeare (see our earlier article about him here). Recent years have been exciting ones for Shakespearean scholarship. Computer analysis has b…
April 22 is the birthday of Bettie Page (1923-2008). I feel sort of Bettie Page cult-adjacent, near but not of the intense widespread worship of this iconic pin-up girl of the 1950s. So many…
April 21 is the natal day of British actor/ comedian/ director Walter Forde (Thomas Seymour Woolford, 1898-1984). Forde was the son of music hall comedian Tom Seymour, joining his father …
Sundays at Noon, Gary Dreifus presents his long-running family-oriented magic show at Coney Island USA, featuring a different line-up  of expert illusionists every week. Today, Gary gives…
Lina Basquette (Lena Copeland Baskette) was born on April 19, 1907. Basquette was a star of stage and screen through several different phases, but is perhaps best remembered today for her ei…
April 19 is the birthday of Arthur Pat West (1888-1944). Today West is best remembered among vaudeville fans for his 1929 Vitaphone short Ship Ahoy, in which the stout little man comes ou…
Well, here’s a wonderful surprise: familiar character actor Bob Hastings (1925-2014) had an old school show biz background as a kiddie performer. First: you recognize him, right? The f…
Born today in 1896 in Salamanca, Spain: the great ventriloquist Wenceslao Moreno, better known to American audiences as Señor Wences. After having written about a couple of th…
