11,744 stories by "Trav S.D."
Mike Tyson will hardly be the first prizefighter to take to the stage after his athletic career is done.
Final Curtain: The Last of Ed Wood, presented by Horse Trade Theater Group at The Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and Bowery), June 20-July 1. Five, count ‘em…
Today is Sir Paul’s birthday (for my longer article on him go here). The clip below is the sort of thing that reminds me of the amazing times we’re living in. When I was a teenag…
For someone of my age, Jack Albertson was VERY present in the early 1970s: Grandpa Joe in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971, pictured above), Manny Rosen in The Poseidon Adventure…
Today is the birthday of Bobby Clark, the chap from whom I stole my drawn-on glasses. For more on him and his comedy partner Paul McCullough, go here. Clark and McCullough are an interesting…
Today is the birthday of Stan Laurel (for his full bio go here). Here is part of one of his solo shorts Oranges and Lemons, made four years before he teamed up with Oliver Hardy. You’l…
Today is the birthday of Lupino Lane. (For his full bio go here). Many know him as the very acrobatic star of silent comedy films in the U.S. This, at least, was my own introduction …
Lounge, Film Friday 7:30pm Jim Moore & Katy Einerson A Quiet Night at the Movies: Lon Chaney’s He Who Gets Slapped Tickets: Free Admission A Quiet Night at the Movies, hosted by Ji…
Today is the birthday of silent comedy great Harry Langdon (for full article on him go here). 1926 was his big year. So ubiquitous was his face that year that he made this cameo in Colleen M…
Today is the birthday of Harriet Beecher Stowe (for my full article on her and her landmark novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin go here). Below, a clip from it’s first cinematic adaptation, …
Sure, sure, maybe you’re too busy to read every single major American play, or, worse, attend productions of them? Have no fear! That’s why Roger Nasser is here! Opening this…
Today is is the birthday of singer Jack Pepper (for more on this fellow go here). A nice youtube contributor has put together this nice slide show, cut to his 1927 recording of “Girl o…
Today is the birthday of the great circus trick rider Poodles Hanneford (for more on his amazing life go here). Above is a fragment of his 1923 comedy short No Loafing, directed by none othe…
As part of the lead-in to my book “Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube” (September 2012), in 2006 I founded the Mack Sennett Centennial Pr…
Today is the birthday of Karyl Norman (1896-1947). Billed as the “Creole Fashion Plate”, the female impersonator is sadly best known from the twist Groucho Marx gave his stage…
Where was I yesterday? W-w-whattaya mean? I was down at Kelsey’s Bar with the guys. (snaps) Okay, readers, I admit it! I was with ANOTHER BLOG! There. I said it. You want proof? No nee…
Rory Raven, the Rhode Island Mentalist, whom we’ve had the honor to present and wrote about here, has just proven that he’s more than just a Southeastern New England mind reader.…
Today is the birthday of the great equestrienne matriarch May Wirth (1894-1978). The product of several generations of circus folk, the Australian born Wirth began performing as a child, fir…
Ed Wynn, like so many of his fellow luminaries of the teens and twenties (Groucho Marx, George M. Cohan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, etc etc etc) made his home in Great Neck, Long Island. This Thur…
Sunday June 3, 2012 1:00pm The Lower East Side Preservation Initiative and the Lower East Side History Project Present a Walking tour of the Yiddish Rialto with the theatre historian Cezar D…
Silent comedy aficionados are very much like baseball fans….all about the standings. They’re forever sizing up the players and ranking them. Thus….Walter Kerr, author of th…
When I read in the paper yesterday that the shooting in Seattle had been “in a coffee shop in the university part of town” my thoughts went to my one and only trip there and my t…
