11,725 stories by "Trav S.D."
Okay, they’re officially dropping faster than I can pump these out. My normal rule is I only bother with a tribute if I have things to say, but I may have to amend that. At any rate, I…
Today is Hal Roach’s birthday — what could be more perfect than opening my mailbox just now and finding a copy of Our Gang: A Racial History of the Little Rascals by Julia …
In the midst of so many horrible precedents, and history being made in so many undesirable ways, something truly amazing happened. The great Barry Lubin, best known as the Big Apple Circus&#…
Tomorrow morning (January 15, 2017) at 6:00am Eastern, Turner Classic Movies will show the 1934 Warner Brothers musical Dames, co-directed by Busby Berkeley and Ray Enright. Dames is …
Just got word that William Peter Blatty has passed away (at age 89) and it’s astounding to me that I don’t have ANYTHING on my blog about him. I know that I must have written som…
Today is the birthday of Charles Robert “Uke” Henshaw (1896-1969). Originally from Wheeling, West Virginia, where his family had lived for many generations, Henshaw also spent so…
Opening today at Cinema Village in New York, the new documentary about our pal latter day big band leader and music preservationist Vince Giordano — There’s a Future in the Past.…
Tonight St. Anne’s Warehouse opens its new all-female production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest by The Donmar Warehouse. Not only that, but it’s Friday the 13th. A suitable t…
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: burlesque, Kita St. Cyr, Society Nocturnus, The Delancey, Welcome to Underland
We were delighted to see, amongst all the Nat Hentoff tributes in this week’s Village Voice the above photograph, which depicts the late critic and columnist in his cluttered office, w…
Originally posted on GRAPHOMANIA: I’m in a state of some despair over the future, as are I think many people. Part of this is religious disillusionment and part of it is just the horri…
Filed under: PLUGS, SOCIAL EVENTS Tagged: benefit, Birdland, Broadway, gala, mark York, Ziegfeld Society
For obvious reasons, we have been catching up with our Carrie Fisher-watching more expeditiously than we might otherwise have done. Over the past several days we looked at Postcards from the…
This new series of posts came out of the realization that I have relatives and roots in all 50 U.S. states. My ancestors lived in 14 of them (all on the eastern seaboard or adjacent), and I …
Tomorrow, starting early in the day, TCM will feature a day long marathon of Red Skelton movies. Now, I know Red’s not every guzzler’s glass of gin, but he’s grown on me a …
Tonight at Midnight (Eastern), TCM will be showing their usual Sunday Silents. Tonight’s line-up includes three early films starring Wallace Beery:  The Keystone comedy Teddy at…
Today is the anniversary of the start of the 10-day Battle of New Orleans (1815). Â Technically, the battle occurred after the Treaty of Ghent had already concluded the War of 1812, so its…
Boy! How’s this for symbolic timing? The great journalist Nat Hentoff has passed away at age 91. We need as many men and women like we can get at the present moment; and yet I can well…
Originally posted on Mary Miley's Roaring Twenties: Vaudeville’s heyday lasted from about 1890 to about 1930. During that time, an estimated 2 million people EACH DAY attended a v…
A problem of ethics, and by extension, a problem of justice and of politics: what do we (society) do about the quantifiably, measurably, observably amoral? Systems are crude; we can only dev…
The Revelers were a popular and influential vocal group of the Jazz Age. The act consisted of a vocal quartet plus a pianist. The quartet, originally known as The Shannon Four, began p…
Herr George Techow of Hamburg, Germany toured the Keith Circuit and circuses such as Hagenbeck-Wallace, with a collection of trained house cats who could walk on their front feet, jump throu…
Gae Foster (born 1903) was from Bunker Hill, California. By age 17 she was already dancing with Fanchon and Marco in vaudeville and presentation houses. By 1925 she was assisting Fanchon in …
This new series of posts came out of the realization that I have relatives and roots in all 50 U.S. states. My ancestors lived in 14 of them (all on the eastern seaboard or adjacent), and I …
I’m informed that it’s National Bird Day, which raises the interesting question, “Is it National BIRD Day? Or NATIONAL BIRD Day?” i.e., a day to celebrate all of our …
