11,744 stories by "Trav S.D."
An inspirational post with which to begin your day. This is from the awesome vaudeville collection of the Library of Congress. To find out more about the history of vaudeville, consul…
Today is the birthday of the great English music hall star Marie Lloyd (for her full bio go here). Now here is the little dear performing “When I Take My Morning Promenade”: To f…
The extent of vaudeville’s power and cultural reach can be attested to by the fact that the greatest names in every performing arts field were booked for its stages: Sarah Bernhardt fr…
Joe Howard (born this day in 1867) started out as a kid performing in Bowery concert saloons, writing and singing his own songs. Later he brought these skills with him into vaudeville, where…
Today is the Great Emancipator’s birthday. In honor thereof, we present one of our favorite movies, D.W. Griffith’s beautiful, bizarre Abraham Lincoln, one of only two talkies th…
This post is one of a series honoring Black History Month. The Four Step Brothers were a team of dancers, “brothers” in name only, with an ever shifting line-up. The original cor…
Today is the birthday of boxer Max Baer. Read about his vaudeville and show biz connection here. And here’s Baer and Joe Louis being interviewed by that famous sports journalist Lou Co…
Today is the birthday of the Mills Brothers dad and manager John Mills (not to be confused with the English actor!) My full article on the family act is here. And now here they are singi…
Return, Liza Johnson’s new film (opening today), is that proverbial small canvas upon which huge themes are projected. Linda Cardelinni plays a returning Iraq vet whose half-hearted at…
If you’re like me, a Marx Brothers perfectionist, you hate with a passion what happened to their careers after they left Paramount. My pal Noah Diamond is a fellow traveler in that reg…
Today is the birthday of the great Jimmy Durante. For his full bio go here. And now here’s his famous closer from his tv show in the 1950s: To find out more about the history of va…
Over the past few months I have been exchanging emails with an art conservator in Washington about a fascinating project she undertook a few years ago. Dawn Rogala spent two years traveling …
I labored long and hard* (and happily) on the liner notes for this new album, my second for Archeophone Records (the first was Nat M. Wills). Van and Schenck were BIG, man — they were …
This post is one of a series honoring Black History Month. Ulysses S. “Slow Kid” Thompson (1888-1990) was the husband and manager of Florence Mills from 1921 until her death in 1…
Today is the birthday of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, star of the legitimate stage, who would occasionally condescend to perform in vaudeville in exchange for very large checks. For my previous ar…
The terrific film make Heather Quinlan is having a screening/ fund-raiser tonight for her work-in-progress If These Knishes Could Talk: A Film About the New York Accent. I’ve seen clip…
What if Shakespeare’s contemporary and occasional collaborator Christopher Marlowe was a bitter rival, whose bitterness has only increased over the centuries as Shakespeare’s sta…
This post is one of a series honoring Black History Month. Today is the birthday of the great bluesman Lonnie Johnson. For his full bio go here. And here he is performing “Too Late To …
This post is one of a series honoring Black History Month. There is much to be said for getting a good idea first. In Conjure Times: Black Magicians in America, Jim Haskins and Kathleen B…
This Thursday at 8pm will be the final performance of Poor Baby Bree,’s Ragmen, Ragtime, and Ragamuffins: Historic Songs of the Lower East Side at Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery…
Philadelphoa native Francis Wilson (born this day in 1854) got his start in minstrelsy and old school variety as one of half of the blackface team of Mackin and Wilson. He’s not part o…
Today we celebrate the 200th birthday of one of my favorite writers (and no doubt the favorite writer of a couple of billion others), Charles Dickens. As the photo above records, I made a pi…
Marie Cahill (born this day in 1870) was one of the great transitional figures from the age of 19th century theatre to the vaudeville era. A Brooklyn native, she started out in legit theatre…
Today is the birthday of Babe Ruth. See here for his vaudeville connection. And watch the Sultan of Swat’s limited skills as a thespian in this Vitaphone Short “Home Run on the K…
This post is one of a series honoring Black History Month. There was a lot of Black Her(r)man(n) action going on back in the day — there are several of them, and we’ll explain th…
