11,729 stories by "Trav S.D."
Wednesday, September 25, 7pm Brooklyn Public Library, Central Branch (Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn) Vitagraph: Brooklyn’s Own Movie Studio In the early years of cinema, Brooklyn (Midwood…
Leaping Dog acts were all the rage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the best of the lot was said to be Meehan’s Leaping Dogs. I find many references to them an…
Today is the birthday of the great dancer Harriet Hoctor (1905-1977). A native of rural Hoosick Falls, New York, at age 12 she was sent to New York City to live and study with a Russian ball…
Today is the birthday of pathbreaking black comedian Spencer Bell (1887-1935). Originally from Lexington, Kentucky, Bell started out in minstrel shows and vaudeville before breaking into pic…
Today is the birthday of the late Anthony Newley (1931-1999). I have no idea why I’m writing about him today apart from the fact that he had an interesting career, and helped perpetuat…
Today is the birthday of blues legend Lemon Henry “Blind Lemon” Jefferson (1893-1929). Born blind to a sharecropping family in East Texas, Jefferson learned to play in his teens,…
Re-posted from earlier this year in honor of Fitzgerald’s birthday today. I risked the fate of Myrtle Wilson this morning as I walked down the street re-reading The Great Gatsby…
Today is the birthday of the great puppeteer and impresario Jim Henson (1936-1990). As I’ve often said, he is someone who ought to be included amongst the New Vaudevillians; he is of t…
Today is the birthday of the great juggler Lester “Larry” Weeks (b. 1919). Weeks is one of the very few bridges between the original vaudeville business and the phenomenon of …
Though I ended my monthly column for the Community Media papers a few months back, I have been keeping a hand in with the occasional feature, and, as of today, the futuristic medium known as…
We’re very excited back here at Trav S.D. Laboratories about the two talks we have lined up this week, one more connected with my first book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book …
Filed under: Dixieland & Early Jazz, Music, PLUGS Tagged: jazz, Rudy Wiedoeft, saxophone
Today is the birthday of one of my favorite screenwriters, Charles B. Griffith (1930-2007). Almost the entirety of Griffith’s career was spent working for Roger Corman from the mid 195…
Originally posted in 2010 This photo of Mickey Rooney was taken just last week. No, no… Judy Garland's pal from the Andy Hardy movies was also in vaudeville with his vaudevill…
Today is the birthday of Typhoid Mary (Mary Mallon, 1869-1938), the Irish cook who stubbornly plied her trade, eluding authorities and infecting dozens of people with Typhus. A fitting time …
Today is the birthday of Si Jenks (Howard Jenkins, 1878-1970). Jenks clowned for years in both circus and vaudeville (with a brief interlude of service in the Spanish-American war), playing …
In honor of John Houseman’s birthday (see full tribute here). From 1978 to 1986, Houseman reprised his role as the SOB with a secret heart of gold Harvard Law School professor Charles …
Today is the birthday of John Houseman (Jacques Haussman, 1902-1988). Born in Romania to an English/Irish/Welsh mother and an Alstacian-Jewish father (hence that French first name and German…
Today is the birthday of the great silent film comedian Billy West (Roy B. Weissburg, 1892-1975). In the unlikely event that you were wondering, that’s West in the photo above which I …
Today is the birthday of Dave Dreyer (1894-1967). Dreyer was an accompanist in vaudeville, playing for the likes of Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, Belle Baker and Frank Fay. He wrote or -co-wrote…
According to my excellent reference boo Monarchs of Minstrelsy, from “Daddy” Rice to Date by Edward Roy Le Rice, today is the birthday of one of American show business̵…
Today is the birthday of the awesome character comedian Henry Gibson (James Bateman, 1935-2009). His stage name was a play on that of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. To give you some idea…
Filed under: Contemporary Variety, PLUGS, Singers Tagged: Al Jolson, Don't Tell Mama, Jack Crosley
When I was a kid, my FOURTH favorite movie (after The Wizard of Oz, The Poseidon Adventure and The Ten Commandments, in that order) was the 1953 George Pal version of H.G. Wells’Â Th…
This nice lady has a large stein of delicious beer, and you can too! Much like New York’s German American community itself, the German American Steuben Parade maintains kind …
