Coming up tonight on TCM: several highly entertaining movies co-starring Olivia de Havilland. Warning: we always include spoilers: 8:00pm (EST): In This Our Life (1942) I am especially fond …
I was just about to leave for The Iron Heel rehearsal yesterday when I heard that protests about the Baton Rouge and Minnesota killings were taking place at Union Square, only a couple of bl…
Tomorrow afternoon (Eastern times) Turner Movie Classics will be presenting three classic Charlie Chaplin movies. As a lead-in, almost to whet your appetite before the big feast, they’…
The Bowery Alliance of Neighbors has just launched their terrific new “Windows on the Bowery”” project, to which I was honored to contribute in a small way. To learn all ab…
I have been having great fun rehearsing my role(s) in Untitled Theater Company #61’s latest production, an adaptation of Jack London’s forgotten 1908 dystopian/utopian novel T…
Even as we speak we are in the midst of  Day #1 of Turner Classic Movies month long salute to the Hollywood western (see yesterday’s post here). Every Tuesday and Wednesday in Ju…
Today is the birthday of Jack “Moose” Farrell (1857-1914). Farrell was a second baseman for such teams as the Syracuse Stars and the Providence Grays before retiring from t…
Today is the birthday of Sarah Siddons (Sarah Kemble, 1755-1831). Mrs. Siddons, as she was usually styled after the fashion of the times, is a legendary figure in theatre history. She was th…
Tomorrow Turner Classic Movies will be launching what amounts to a survey course in the Hollywood western. Every Tuesday and Wednesday in July they will  be showing westerns the entire da…
Happy Fourth of July! Once again we share the famous Trumbull painting to commemorate the signing of the document that made America’s political separation from Great Britain official. …
I could learn nothing about Jolly Ema beyond what it tells on this postcard, and the weight they give (if it does indeed say 620 lbs) is probably a matter of creative interpretation. But thi…
Today is the birthday of Bernard “Bunny” Granville (1886-1936). Granville was a comedian in vaudeville; he played the Palace in the very first year of its existence, and again, a…
Today is the birthday of Anna Chandler (1884-1957). Pennsylvania native Chandler was only 16 years old when she married Keith-Albee booker Jack Curtis Sr. For the next 30+ years she was to b…
Tomorrow on TCM at 1:30pm (EST), a screening of the 1959 film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple. I’ve seen this movie a couple of times now (af…
Film director Michael Cimino passed away yesterday at the age of 77, but as is well known for all intents and purposes we lost him 36 years ago. That was when he (fresh off the career high o…
Today (July 1, 2016) marks the one hundredth birthday of the very much alive Olivia de Havilland. I’m not sure I ordinarily would have written about this actress apart from her remarka…
For weeks the subway and tv ads for the musical Cagney have been unavoidable. I had a chance to see it a few weeks back; my review is in the current Chelsea Now (read it here). A co…
Today is the birthday of the great stage and screen actor Walter Hampden (Walter Hampden Dougherty, 1879-1955). For better or worse, Hampden is probably best known today for the meta, self-r…
Today is the birthday of American minstrelsy entrepreneur J.H. Haverly (1837-1901). Haverly was one of the first minstrelsy producers who was not a performer himself. He was strictly a busin…
Today is the birthday of Odette Myrtil (Odette Quignard, 1898-1978). Odette (that was often her entire billing) was a second generation stage performer. She was born in Paris and attended a …
Filed under: BROOKLYN, Coney Island, PLUGS, Summer Solstice/ Mermaid Parade, VISUAL ART Tagged: BROOKLYN, Coney Island, Luke Ratray, Mermaid Parade, photography, Urban Folk Art Gallery
Tonight (actually tomorrow) at midnight (E.S.T.) on Turner Classic Movies: two silent comedy classics featuring Buster Keaton : Go West (1925) While among Keaton’s more personal fil…
This post has germinating for a long time; Britain’s recent step backwards in voting to leave the E.U. has moved it to the top of the pile. It grows out of some previous posts, includi…
Just heard the news that yesterday New York Times society photographer Bill Cunningham succumbed yesterday to the stroke which had felled him a few days earlier. He was 87, still riding arou…
Today at 4pm (EST), Turner Classic Movies will be showing the 1953 American film version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Visiting some family about a month ago, and having a couple …