11,732 stories by "Trav S.D."
Today is the birthday of the divine Gilda Radner (1946-1989). I’m sad at how she’s fallen by the wayside in people’s memories — Belushi, too, but Gilda even more so. …
Today is the birthday of Mel Brooks (Melvin Kaminsky, b, 1926). Oy! Mel Brooks is 87! That’s practically 1,000! That he is one of the greatest comic minds of the 20th century (and a li…
 Filed under: Burlesk, Circus, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS, Vaudeville etc. Tagged: Casa Mezcal, Loose Caboose, vaudeville'variety
MORE RARITIES FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS A large number of the surviving silent comedies are held by the worldÊ»s film archives. One of the foremost is the Library of Congress. Since the…
Like most posts on this blog, this one really isnt about its advertised subject matter, it’s really about me. Today is the birthday of Henry VIII (1491-1547). On our first date, the Du…
Filed under: Hollywood (History), Movies, PLUGS, Silent Film Tagged: Broncho Billy, California, Essanay, festival, Niles, silent film
Polly Moran is probably best known today for a series of comedies she co-starred in with Marie Dressler in the late twenties and early thirties. In the years before this she was a key …
Originally from South Africa, Billy Gould was a former newspaperman who became a comedian and song-and-dance man in vaudeville and music hall  in the 1890s. With his first partner Nellie …
Today is the birthday of one of the great vamps, Valeska Suratt (1882-1962). I find it notable that her first work was as an assistant in an Indianapolis millinery shop — her knowledge…
Today is the birthday of Max Gordon (Mechel Salpeter, 1892-1978). The younger brother of “The German Senator” Cliff Gordon, Max too went into vaud, but not as a performer. At the…
Today is the birthday of magician and ventriloquist Colonel Stodare (1831-1866). There are several versions of what his real name might have been: Joseph Stopddart, Jack Inglis and Alfred En…
Today is the birthday of the great Bob Keeshan (1927-2004). In No Applause I spoke of children’s entertainment as one of the last places you could find vestiges of pure vaudevill…
Today is the birthday of the great African American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906). The first African American poet to gain widespread acceptance in America, he wrote a dozen books …
Originally posted in 2009 MAY IRWIN, "Madame Laughter" Mae Irwin spent her career alternating between the legit theatre and vaudeville, but her most lasting legacy is the fact that she is on…
(originally posted June 27, 2010) Yes, Helen Keller was in vaudeville, and, no, she didn’t do Helen Keller jokes. She and her teacher Annie Sullivan had done the Chautauqua lecture cir…
This gender bending performer is one we are presenting in a series to celebrate NYC Pride Week. There is a dismaying dearth of biographical information readily available on female imperso…
Filed under: Music, PLUGS, Singers Tagged: Barnum Festival, Batnum Museum, Bijou Theatre, Bridgeport, Jenny Lind
If I had a cultural bete noir in my youth without a doubt it was disco. A revolution? Perhaps, but one can’t help thinking of the French Revolution as characterized in A Tale of Two…
Today is the birthday of Wiljalba Frikell (Friedrich Wilhelm Frickell, 1817-1903). The German magician began performing professionally at age 16. By the early 1840s he was travelling with an…
Today is the birthday of Peter Lorre (Laszlo Lowenstein, 1904-1964). Categories are hard; Lorre doesn’t fit into most of my regular content streams, never having been in American vaude…
Today is the birthday of Big Bill Broonzy (Lee Conley Bradley, 1893-1958). An Arkansas sharecropper, he originally played a fiddle made out of cigarbox, but switched to guitar in 1920 when h…
Today is the birthday of one of the great impresarios, con artists and flim flam men of all time, Colonel Tom Parker (1909-1997). A former carnival worker and sideshow talker, he gradually w…
Today is the birthday of Neal Burns (1892-1969). Originally a stage actor, Burns transferred his skills as a light comedian to films at Nestor in 1915 with Nellie the Pride of the Fire Ho…
Today is the birthday of Viola Dana (Virginia Flugrath, 1897-1987). A child actress since the age of 3 she played in melodramas on the legit stage and in vaudeville, including a vaud tour wi…
Today is the birthday of Grady Stiles, Jr. (1937-1992). Stiles was the sixth in the bloodline of a family prone to ectrodactyly, a condition in which the extremities are hardened and fused, …
