11,727 stories by "Trav S.D."
 Today is the birthday of Gus Williams (Gustave Wilhelm Leweck, Jr., 1848, 1915). Born in the vicinity of New York’s Bowery, young Leweck went west as a teenager seeking his fortun…
Set your DVRs, chillun! Tomorrow morning at 4:30 E.S.T., Turner Classic Movies will be presenting Charlie Chaplin’s penultimate film A King in New York (1957). If you’ve no…
Today is the birthday of Walter Kerr (1913-1996). Kerr was and is known for many things. He was a major New York theatric critic for over a quarter of a century, first for the Herald Trib…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the all-star Paramount comedy Million Dollar Legs (1932), directed by Eddie Cline. This…is one of my favorite movies. It’…
 Today is the anniversary of the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle comedy Good Night, Nurse (1918), featuring Buster Keaton, Al St. John and Alice Lake. This short seems at l…
Every year that passes gets kinder to Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. The sad story of his railroading gets wider known, and more importantly more and more of his work is available for …
What crazy madness! We had those historic, sold-out readings of I’ll Say She Is in May as part of Marxfest and I never did a blogpost about it??? Well, there was a lot going on i…
Today is the birthday of Merv Griffin (1925-2007). When I was a kid Merv represented the summit of bad show biz to me. His syndicated talk show came on in the afternoon after school where I …
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Harold Lloyd comedy Billy Blazes, Esq (1919). This is one of several parody westerns Lloyd made in his early years. A bunch of bad g…
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: Birchmere, burlesque, Burlesque-a-Pades, Washington
It was just kind of perfect. We had a free night, we had a meeting nearby and we had missed Bathtub Jen and her Henchmen’s previous attempt at full length show. So we popped in to Unde…
Today is the anniversary of the Keystone ensemble comedy Court House Crooks (1915), directed by and starring by Ford Sterling. This little comedy has a number of interesting features, …
Today is the birthday of a minor but legendary show biz character, Vince Barnett (1902-1977). Barnett was a second generation vaudeville comedian, who graduated to Broadway revues in the lat…
Today is the birthday of circus impresario James A. Bailey (James A. McGuiness, 1847-1906). He is of course the guy whose name falls at the end of “Ringling Brothers, Barnum and……
The old gal’s been around the block a couple of times, but she ain’t beat yet!Filed under: Comediennes, Comedy, Hollywood (History), Movies, Vaudeville etc., Women Tagged: Mae We…
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, HOLIDAYS, FESTIVALS, MEMORIALS & PARADES, PLUGS Tagged: 4th of July, Bell House, City Winery, Doc Wasabassco's Burlesque
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, HOLIDAYS, FESTIVALS, MEMORIALS & PARADES, PLUGS Tagged: burlesque, Fourth of July, Independence Day, Liberty Belle Extravaganza
Tonight on Turner Classic Movies, a bill of films by that seminal writer, performer and vaudevillian, the idol of millions the great Mae West (for my full article on West and her career go h…
Filed under: Contemporary Variety, Illusionists, Music, PLUGS Tagged: Corn Mo, Sideshows by the Seashore, Tanya Solomon
 Kevin Maher wrote and directed this comicalriffic and gastronomically evocative video just in time for the grown-up version of the contest that will take place two days from now on t…
Everyone within the sound of my voice: you MUST see Leslie Zemeckis’s wonderful, definitive new film about the Hilton Sisters. As the Mad Marchioness said last night, Zemeckis is reall…
Got the idea for this post just under the wire: Today is Canada Day! So here’s a little shout out for all the vaudevillians and other performers from Canada we have written about on Tr…
Tonight at midnight on TCM, Charlie Chaplin’s 1923 melodrama masterpiece A Woman of Paris. (He wanted us to call him “Charles” at this stage. You’ll never find a g…
 Today is the anniversary of the release of the Paramount Raymond Griffith-Betty Compson comedy Paths to Paradise (1925) In this sparkling feature, Griffith and Compson play a pair of…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Laurel and Hardy comedy Men O’War (1929). In this, one of their first sound shorts, the boy are a couple of sailors on shore l…
