11,741 stories by "Trav S.D."
Han Ping Chien (1891"1930) was a magician, born, raised and trained in China, who came to the U.S. to tour American vaudeville in the wake of the success of Ching Ling Foo and his many imita…
Jack Mason was a major Broadway choreographer and director, with credits stretching from 1905′s The Duke of Duluth through 1937’2 Swing It. For several years he performed i…
Today is the birthday of Dorothy Lamour (1914-1996). She got her start in show business as a teenager when her exotic French-Spanish-Irish good looks won her the title of Miss New Orleans. S…
Today is the birthday of the adorable Una Merkel (1903-1986). Ironically she did not start out in vaudeville but only wound up there after she was a star, to promote her films in the early 1…
Today is the birthday of the great Tin Pan Alley lyricist Lew Brown (1893-1958), most famous as one third of the team of Henderson/ Brown/ DeSylva. Now here’s a 1926 recording of one o…
Today is the birthday of Harry McCoy (1889-1937). After nearly a decade performing in stock companies and vaudeville, the Philadelphia native went to Hollywood in 1912 and performed in…
The Albino Lucasie family were European (the name is French), but P.T. Barnum, who discovered them at the 1857 Amsterdam fair, gave out that they were “Negroes from Madagascar”…
Young Amar Nath Dutt (1884-1937) was sent by his Punjabi parents to Edinburgh to study medicine. Somehow he wound up chucking all that and touring with Ruth St. Denis as part of one of he…
Today is the birthday of Star of Vaudeville #401 Hal Leroy (see here for more background on him). Here he is in a great little routine with Mitzi Mayfair from 1932: To find out more about th…
The Stirks were the leaders in trick riding and bicycle stunts in the variety world in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. The patriarch was Thomas (1859-1924), married to Flora, who was for…
Pictured above are The Great Coram (1883-1937) and his partner Jerry Fisher. Born Thomas Whitaker, he debuted in music hall with his ventriloquism act in 1905, (he also appeared in Am…
Madame Petty was P.T. Barnum’s long-haired lady, photographed here circa 1870. A Brooklyn native, she was married to sea captain Henry Petty, who lost at sea off Cape Hateras in 188…
Today is the birthday of Star of Vaudeville #399: Tim Moore, best known as Kingfish from the Amos and Andy tv series (for more on his vaudeville history go here). In honor of the day, an epi…
Today is the birthday of second generation vaudevillian Broderick Crawford (for his full bio go here). Showfolk from the cradle he was far from the thugs he typically played in the movies an…
Today is the birthday of the unspeakably awesome Neil Innes (b. 1944). He played the John Lennon character (and wrote all the music for) the brilliant Beatles parody project the Rutles (co-c…
Today is the birthday of the great English poet John Milton (1608-1674). I go back to Paradise Lost periodically as in inspiration both as a writer and as a rough draft of a human being. But…
Today is the birthday of John Elroy Sanford a.k.a Redd Foxx (1922-1991). He was born in St. Louis and raised in Chicago, where he became known as Chicago Red on account of his reddish hair. …
Arthur H. (“Al”) Wheatley was born in Perth, Australia in 1901. Many who knew him give out his name as Albert or Alvin, but more official sources, including his granddaughter con…
Born Samuel Kahn (circa 1870), Major Atom was the nephew of Leopold Kahn a.k.a Admiral Dot. Weighing in at 15 lbs, he sand and danced and was often billed as "the most symmetrical man of his…
One of P.T. Barnum’s “prodigies” she was said to weight 579 pounds, which is prodigious indeed. She was appearing at Barnum’s American Museum in 1849 when Currier and…
Today is Sammy’s birthday (for my full post on him and his vaudeville background go here) . As I said last year, it’s always difficult for me to locate online clips of him tha…
Today is the birthday of Georges Méliès (for my full article on him go here). I write about Méliès at some length in my new book Chain of Fools (due out in late February). Here is one of…
Today is Flip Wilson’s birthday (1933-1998). The Flip Wilson Show is undoubtedly not as “forgotten” as most of the ones I post in this series. After all, it ran for four…
Today is Jim Morrison’s birthday (1943-1971). Influenced by all the right people (Neitzsche, Artaud, Rimbaud, the Beats, the Living Theatre), his own writing and performance have to be…
