For years I have taken good care to qualify my boast that I have ALMOST written about every cast member of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), because there's always someone else. This m…
Scratch beneath the surface of almost anybody in show business and you'll usually find a more fascinating person than Hollywood presents. I'm assuming its because the town is focused on prom…
Many impulses contributed to the creation of this post: the approach of Halloween, our snowballing Francophilia, the fact that this year marks the 60th anniversary of the closing of the orig…
Jack Arnold (Jack Arnold Waks, 1916-1992) is typically celebrated as a director of '50s sci-fi and horror classics ('tis the season), though his accomplishments range across all genres, and …
Pamela Tiffin (1941-2020) passed away a few months ago, but I thought I'd leave a tribute for this birthday benchmark she never made it to. I think of Tiffin was one of the "'60s youth gener…
Jacques Inaudi (Giacomo Inaudi, 1867-1950) was an internationally known math prodigy from Northern Italy. Studied and written about by major scientists, his fame brought him to the attention…
Louise Closser Hale (1872-1933) was an early 20th century Renaissance woman: actress of stage and screen, magazine editor, author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, and playwright…
This somewhat impulsive post arises from the fact that we re-watched Martin Scorsese's Casino (1995) last night and were reminded of the unusually large number of comedians there are through…
It is my enthusiastic honor to point you to a piece I wrote on another website today. The omnivorous and multi-mediumistic Heather Quinlan is curating a wonderful series on HiLoBrow.com call…
Having had a recent occasion to mention Clifford Essex (1869-1946), we thought his contributions to the variety arts sufficient to merit a brief entry of his own here. Essex was basically th…
Born on October 10, 2022: Lee and Lyn Wilde: The Wilde Twins. Singers, movies actresses, and pin-up models, the sisters were most active during the 1940s. The girls grew up in East St. Louis…
October 5 was World Teachers Day, so we compose this belated tribute to someone to whom I owe a lot. I've been wanting to look him up lately, as I've recently picked up a thread that started…
Most who remember actor Robert Warwick (Robert Bien, 1878-1964) probably know him best as a supporting player of the sound era. His over 250 credits include nearly all of the Preston Sturges…
Years ago I went on a purge, ruthlessly removing scores, probably hundreds of obsolete and/or underperforming posts from Travalanche. My piece on the interesting figure Paschal Beverly Rando…
Don't answer that! The question is both rhetorical and a joking reference to Atlas Shrugged. Al Alt (Alexander Alt, 1897-1992) was a comedian of the silent and early sound eras, who worked b…
We were saddened just now to hear about the passing of comedian/performance artist Judy Tenuta (b. 1949), a supreme example of the neo-vaudeville style that played a huge part in the stand-u…
Robert Z. Leonard (1889-1968) managed to direct some of the best known and loved classics of the studio era, without achieving lasting fame himself, a factor clearly of the anonymous Hollywo…
If you're like me, and I know that you are, you've spent a lifetime mixing up Britt Ekland (b. 1942) with Anita Ekberg (1931-2015) and Elke Sommer (b. 1940). Why not Ursula Andress (b. 1936)…
We have too long overlooked silent screen comedian and director Bobby Ray (Wilhelm Robert McBain Fuehrer, 1899-1957). Originally billed as Bobby Fuerher (yes, Bobby Fuerher, which I guess is…
"The first ones now shall later be last" " Matthew 20:16, by way of Bob Dylan. The Lumière Brothers [Auguste (1862-1954) and Louis (1864-1948)] were neither first nor last in the history of…
Harry Bowen (1888-1941) appeared in nearly 200 films as a bit player and stunt double, most of them comedy shorts of both the silent and talkie era with the likes of Our Gang, Laurel and Har…
Of all those so-called "public intellectuals" of the mid 20th century TV talk show circuit who consistently fail to impress me (Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, etc), Gore Vidal (1925-2012…
We were already scheduled to do a post on Sacheen Littlefeather (Mary Louise Cruz, 1946-2022) on her birthday six weeks from now as part of our section on Native American performers and othe…
Rare is it now for us to add new posts to our section on the different forms of variety arts, for there can only be a finite and not very large number. But we recently learned about another …
Charles Kellogg (1868-1949) was a star of the B.F. Keith vaudeville circuit for decades by virtue of his ability to imitate bird calls, not just by whistling (as was common in his day) but b…