11,744 stories by "Trav S.D."
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…
Today is the birthday of George F. Reuschling, a.k.a. George LaFollette a.k.a the Great LaFollette a.k.a Rush Ling Toy (1886-1960). As we have described here, Chinese magicians were all the …
A century ago, a minor show business figure named Barney Davis passed away. Never heard of him? How about his stage name, Plutanor? Nothing? Oh, well. It used to be, a man’s fake name …
Marley was dead; that much was certain. Nothing was certain but death and taxes, and death was one of those. Now old Scrooge knew the truth of the latter part of that Yankee aphorism,…
Today is the birthday of Raymond McKee (1892-1984). Born in Iowa, Â he began acting in stage melodramas as a boy after the family moved to Chicago. He broke into films in 1912 in the Flori…
Today is the birthday of New Orleans-born, Sicilian-American jazz trumpeter and vocalist Louis Prima (1910-1978). Prima was one of my mom’s favorites; she often raved about seein…
I was saddened to learn just now that Helen Guditis, director and founder of the Theatre Museum, passed away on Monday, finally succumbing to the cancer that had been wracking her body for t…
When I was a young, aspiring stand up comedian of 19 and 20 I idolized, idolized Steven Wright (still do). The early-mid 1980s, when he first hit, were his perfect time. His minimalist…
Today is the birthday of silent western star William S. Hart (1864-1946). I’ve got a westerns project coming up but that’s a couple of years down the dusty dirt road. In t…
Today is the birthday of Agnes Moorehead (1900-1974). One of the marks of a good actor is a willingness to take risks, to be as “bad” as often one as one is “good”. A…
Today is the birthday of Kathryn McGuire (1903-1978). A dancer by training, she studied seriously both in her native Illinois and in Hollywood when her family moved there in 1917. In 1919 sh…
Today is the birthday of Walt Disney (1901-1966). The highlight of my short NYU career was the course I took on Disney taught by the world’s pre-eminent Disney scholar John Canemaker. …
Today is the birthday of “Little Richard” Penniman (b, 1932). Richard’s life and career are an example of the perils and pitfalls of Manicheanism, his life perpetually  …
Today is the birthday of Dennis Wilson (1944-1983), generally conceded to be the “coolest” of the Beach Boys. Mike Love may have been the front man, and for all I know the most p…
Today is the birthday of Jean Hugard (b. John Gerard Rodney Boyce, 1872-1959). An Australian native, he began his career circa 1896, and performed under many aliases including also Os…
Since my good buddies Carla Rhodes and Cecil have been spending an unnatural amount of time with Chuck McCann, like this: And this: Anyway, because of that, I find my self recalling Far-O…
This is of course a different lady from the famous high-society art patron who later became a Whitney. THIS Gertrude Vanderbilt was born in Brooklyn circa 1880 and broke into the theatre aro…
Today is the birthday of George Mann (1905-1977) of the vaudeville comedic dance team of Barto and Mann. He and Dewy Barto (b. Stewart Swoyer, 1896-1973) were each performing seperate …
Well, it’s out of the headlines now, and even most of the city has moved past the aftermath of Sandy, but guess what? Entire neighborhoods of NYC are still struggling to climb out from…
Today is the birthday of Bette Midler (b. 1945). The Divine Miss M. was (and remains) way ahead of the curve on this post-modern retro show biz thing…and, in a subtle way, very influen…
Today is the birthday of the great Tin Pan Alley songwiter Ray Henderson (b. Raymond Brost, 1896-1970). He is best known as the “Henderson” in “Henderson/ Brown/ DeSylva…
Today is the birthday of Walter Brown “Brownie” McGhee (1915-1996). A native of Knoxville, TN he learned guitar as a child at the hands of his father, a professional musician, an…
Today is the birthday of Ricky Jay (b. 1948). I don’t know if he’s the coolest man alive (it’s tempting to call him that but he’s got competition) but I think I can s…
