11,698 stories by "Trav S.D."
I chose the photo above to head this post on Emmett Miller (1900-1962) because it's the one I could find that will be least offensive to modern sensibilities. Notwithstanding, Miller was an …
Purv Pullen (Almy Purves Pullen, 1909-1992) was a voice-over artist for animated films, radio and records, a comedian, ventriloquist, and puppeteer. His specialty was bird calls, which had b…
For Black History Month, a brief introduction to the Hyers Sisters, pathbreaking black singers and actors, whom I only just learned about while putting together my recent post on bandmaster …
Clap hands, it's Eddie Cantor's birthday! In celebration we have spent all day sprucing up the Eddie Cantor section of Travalanche, and present you now with this handy finding aid to help yo…
This may shock even the few living people who remember stage and screen star Eddie Cantor at all, but he was a briefly in silent movies! We associate Cantor with musical comedies, of course,…
January 30 was the birthday of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945). This is far from the best photo of FDR. It depicts his last address to Congress, in March, 1945, and he looks as old and…
Not to worry, this is not a post about the lame '70s rock group " you can sleep soundly in your beds knowing I'll never waste time writing about that. Rather, this is the latest in my catch-…
Barbi Benton (b.1950) has been retired for nearly 40 years, so I will forgive spring chickens for not recognizing this omnipresent 1970s television celebrity. But I assure you, there was a t…
The sentiment "Never Forget" seems to be in deep jeopardy these days, both home and abroad, on countless fronts. People hearts have grown hard. Is it possible that they've forgotten those im…
I am proud to realize that I have been a fan of James Cromwell (b. 1940) for over 50 years now. The 6'7″ actor played practical joker Stretch Cunningham on All in the Family starting i…
January 27 was the birthday of writer George Randolph Chester (1869-1924). We've had many occasions to mention his principal works on this blog, for they were adapted for stage and screen ma…
That's right, ladies and other lovers of Paul Newman " he was born on this day in 1925. Another Newmanian benchmark recently passed a few weeks ago: 70 years since his first movie The Silver…
January 25 is Robert Burns Day, a.k.a Robbie Burns Day a.k.a. Rabbie Burns Day, obviously in celebration of the birth of the Scottish National Poet (1759-1796). Apparently Burns Day has edge…
Once in a blue moon, the subject of one of our centennial posts is being celebrated elsewhere. Maria Tallchief (1925-2013) is being remembered in a program of dances associated with her this…
This morning finds me in an ever-worsening funk of several days standing. Though there are about a half dozen notable show biz professionals born on January 23 I might conceivably add to our…
When the screen version of Conan the Barbarian starring Arnold Schwarzenegger hit screens in 1982, most people who thought about it all, I'll wager, made the understandable assumption that i…
And so one black day succeeds another, and so it shall be for the foreseeable future. It doesn't surprise me that Jules Feiffer (b. 1929) endured but one day of the restored Trump monarchy, …
More examples of the ephemerality of fame in the broadcast media: the largely forgotten pair of John Reagan "Tex" McCrary Jr. (1910-2003) and Eugenia Lincoln "Jinx" Falkenburg (1…
Through some miracle of Divine Providence, Scottish comedian Janey Godley (Jane Godley Currie Storrie, 1961-2024), most famous for greeting the 45th President of the United States to her cou…
Lilian Harvey (Helene Lilian Muriel Pape,1906-1968) was in many ways the perfect international star " until the disease of nationalism arrived to divide the world. (If her name sounds vag…
January 18 is the birthday of Oliver Hardy. We observe it this year with an overdue roadmap to posts relevant to the team of Laurel and Hardy, including the nearly 70 in the dedicated sectio…
From a certain standpoint, Harrison Greene (1884-1945) had one of the most impressive film careers I have encountered: over 250 screen credits in talking films spread across a mere 15 year p…
Yes, I am very much aware that "Eskimo" is no longer the preferred term for certain native denizens of the Arctic. It was however part of the name of a jazz band a century ago; to tell their…
An experiment " I wrote this piece (linked above) last year, and tried to circulate it today using the increasingly exhausted method of social media, with little success, so I now reblog it.…
This unusual post arises because I was amused to notice a few years ago that three unrelated female performers of the Victorian/Edwardian stage and screen shared a January 16 birthday and ha…
