11,727 stories by "Trav S.D."
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the 1925 comedy What Price Goofy? starring Charley Chase and directed by an uncredited Leo McCarey. The title is of course a play on the…
 Today is the anniversary of the release date of the 1935 comedy The Nitwits, starring Wheeler and Woolsey and directed by George Stevens. In this middling caper comedy, the boys work…
Today is the anniversary of the 1926 feature Ella Cinders, starring Colleen Moore. The film was based on the comic strip, a sort of Americanization of Cinderella, which had been launch…
Today is the 70th anniversary of D-Day, a fitting time say I to memorialize Hollywood’s greatest D-Day testament pre-Private Ryan, 1962′s The Longest Day. I had never heard…
Filed under: BROOKLYN, Burlesk, Coney Island, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: Burlesque at the Beac, Cabaret Exotica, Coney Island USA
Having now written about every other principal in my favorite movie The Wizard of Oz (I really have, just use the search feature at right to find them, it’s way too many names to…
Here’s one that’s been rapping on the back door of my consciousness for a long time screaming to get out. I first saw this ABC tv movie when it premiered in 1972, and then a few …
Today is the 100th anniversary of the release date of the Charlie Chaplin-Mabel Normand short Her Friend the Bandit. It is a testament to the popularity of Chaplin that this is the only o…
June is Russian Heritage Month;Â if you don’t believe me just check out RussianAmericanFoundation.org. This must be a trying time to be a Russian-American. It shouldn’t be the …
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: Bushwick Burlesque, Revival, Sideshow of Moral Woe
I’ve long held that the best writers make the best critics. In addition to aesthetic insight, the job calls for  descriptive powers both sufficient to engage the reader in art he ha…
British Columbia professor Douglas Edward Fraser is a pen pal of mine. His new book sounds like my cup of frontier whiskey. It’s available in a Kindle version today. Get it here. Fi…
Today is the birthday of Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962). A post here on Marilyn’s comic oeuvre is inevitable, but in the meantime, we can’t the obvious Marxfest connection. Grouch…
 Adapted from a talk given May 10, 2014 at the Greater Astoria Historical Society as part of Marxfest. By the late 1920s, the Marx Brothers had already been in show business (vaudevi…
Adapted from a talk given at the Coney Island Museum on May 2, 2014 as part of Marxfest and the Congress of Curious Peoples Never in their lives, even in childhood, were the Marx Brothers ev…
 Today is the 100th anniversary of the release date of the Keystone short The Fatal Mallet. In this outdoor comedy, no less than three self-styled suitors vie for Mabel Normand…
 Today marks the anniversary of the release date of the 1929 Laurel and Hardy short Berth Marks. Trouble on a train. That's really all it is. The boys play two vaudevillians on th…
I meant to post this piece early in the month — and here’s the month flown by! Most of us first encounter the Marx Brothers in our youths, when we’re not yet seasoned c…
Adapted from a talk given at the New York Public Library on May 29, 2014 and published in the May 2014 edition of Zelda. This May marked the 100th anniversary of Julius, Leonard, Adolphe …
In celebration of Marxfest, every day this month we will be paying tribute to a different Marx Brothers film. While there are only 13 extant cinematic features including the entire team, …
Today is the birthday of Jim Hutton (1934-1979), a fitting time to talk about a favorite show of mine from the 1975-76 television season Ellery Queen. It’s astounding to me that thi…
Today is the anniversary of the release date of the hilarious Laurel and Hardy short Hog Wild (1930), directed by James Parrott. This is a perfect comedy: perfectly written, performed shot a…
Today is the birthday of the great producer and director (and screenwriter)Â Howard Hawks. It’s inevitable that I’ll do several additional blogposts on the topic on Hawks, espe…
Today is the birthday of the Boy Genius, legendary MGM production head Irving J. Thalberg (1899-1936). How fitting that it falls within the month of Marxfest! The name Thalberg looms large i…
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: burlesque, Champagne Riot, Dandy Wellington, Gelber and Manning
