11,746 stories by "Trav S.D."
I keep wanting to catch the Chinese Opera when it plays Pace University. We’ll probably miss this go-round too, but I share the info with you for your intercultural delectation:
A rehearsal fragment from our upcoming reading of Beach Blanket Bluebeard at Coney Island USA December 8. In this, Esther Crow as Johnny Guitar tells us how to “Shuck the Clam”.
To be my age and a nerd (there, I said it) is to have been a big fan of The Muppet Show during its initial run (1976-1981). Though he is seldom categorized this way, I think Jim Henson ou…
This is part of a little series of post-Thanksgiving mini-posts I'm doing about items you might want to consider as Holiday gifts. Frank Cullen is the author of the indispensable Vaudeville …
Alex Emanuel as Boy-O, rehearsing a snippet of one of the tunes from Beach Blanket Bluebeard (with Sarah Engelke in wig). We do hope you can attend and drink beers with us at the sideshow! G…
Thursday, December 8, please come see a reading of my show Beach Blanket Bluebeard at Coney Island USA! Johnny Guitar’s a way-out cat. A little TOO way-out: it’s pretty obvious h…
Alreet, shet yer yap! Maybe St. Andrew’s Day isn’t near as popular as St. Patrick’s, but somewhere under all this greasepaint there lies a card-carryin’, kilt-wearin&…
I’ll be writing about another version Victor Herbert’s 1903 operetta Babes in Toyland (yes, the Laurel and Hardy version) in a few weeks. Meantime, this version opens at the Bric…
The Three X Sisters were actually The Hamilton Sisters and Fordyce (i.e., Jessie Fordyce) who were later renamed to add glamor and mystery to their radio careers. Pearl Hamilton (1900-1978) …
Lee Morse (born Lena Corinne Taylor on this day in 1897) was a big time vaudeville singer and star of Broadway revues in the 1920s. She was the daughter of a preacher; her four older brother…
Here now, the third installment in our Vaudephone series: the impeccable rock and roll ventriloquist Carla Rhodes and her partner Cecil Sinclair:
An interesting surprise arrived in the mail with my copy of Pood. An outfit known as the Next Issue Project has been reviving comics titles that have fallen into public domain. Their latest …
Pood is my life raft. Oh, not metaphorically — quite literally. The other day I fell off the Staten Island Ferry into the middle of New York harbor…but I simply clung atop my cop…
Today is the birthday of the great Trixie Friganza (for her full bio go here). In honor of the day, we present her rendition of A Girl Named Lula. It seems to me carrying around a cello …
There were several hurdles for The Fartiste to clear before the curtain even went up: 1) I am extremely hard on musicals. It’s not, I finally realized, that I don’t like them, it…
This is part of a little series of post-Thanksgiving mini-posts I’m doing about items you might want to consider as Holiday gifts. Readers of No Applause and this blog know that I̵…
Tonight at 10:15pm (EST) on TCM, a rare showing of Eddie Cantor’s 1936 vehicle Strike Me Pink, also featuring Ethel Merman, William Frawley, Sidney Fields, etc. ,with Brian Dunlevy, (u…
 Lou Tellegen (born this day in 1881) is sadly most famous today for his Hollywood Babylon style suicide. Surrounded by scrapbooks and memoribilia, he stabbed himself to death in 1934. S…
Today is the birthday of British Music Hall singer Vesta Victoria (for a full bio go here). Here she is now singing her signature song “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy me a Bow Wow”. To…
This is part of a little series of post-Thanksgiving mini-posts I’m doing about items you might want to consider as Holiday gifts. A copy of this CD magically fell into my hands a coup…
Tonight I’m performing in The Loose Caboose’s Black Friday Edition at Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery). Please come see! Here are all the “deets”, as the young people …
While you scurry around the shop-o-sphere trying to find that PERFECT Christmas gift, may I suggest…this (please follow the link; for some reason I couldn’t embed the video!) No …
Today is the birthday of the “Suave Deceiver” Cardini (for a full bio go here). Below, witness a fuzzy but genuine clip of him in action: To find out more about the history o…
Every year at this time, I break out my copy of this handy Life Magazine coffee table book chronicling the history of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.The book is a souvenir from whe…
