11,737 stories by "Trav S.d."
I feel like I've been hit by a truck. David Green, my stage manager on I'll Say She Is has died of Covid-19. David wasn't a professional stage manager (though he was in the theatre) but we n…
This snippet was generated for upcoming publication in a popular vintage magazine, but I'm missing two vital snippets: from whence she came, and whither she wandered. The subject in question…
MA JANIS Elsie Janis was so dependent on her domineering stage mother that she remained in some senses a "child star" until well after her fortieth year. Ma Janis did everything for her: coa…
Reginald "Reggie" Wesgate Rymal (1921-2002) got his start in Toronto as a teenage yo-yo champion, but his ball-and-paddle act in nightclubs, film and television is what brought him brief fam…
50 years ago today, the Beatles' sad swan song Let It Be was released. Then and now, there was much to confound and confuse the casual observer about this ill-fated project. For just a few e…
Clapham and Dwyer were a British music hall comedy duo of the 1920s and '30s. The team consisted of Birmingham native Charles Clapham (1894-1959) and William Henry "Bill" Dwyer (1887-1943), …
Today a celebration of circus strongwoman Katie Sandwina (Katherine Brumbach, 1884-1952). It seems extraordinary to me that she had the same birthday as Vulcana, another famous performer in …
I've had a couple of dozen occasions to refer to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) on this blog. This fairly flimsy, scattershot post is frankly just to have something to link to! Freud's core theor…
Marty Brill (b. 1932) " am I right? Brill has had his finger in many pies over the years, except the middle finger of his right hand, which he lost due to an accident, which is probably why …
To learn more about show biz history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on classic comedy please read Chain of Fools: Sile…
Pat Carroll (b. 1927) has been entertaining audiences for over 70 years. I certainly recognized her onscreen when I was a kid, and that was three decades after she'd originally got rolling. …
Since we're all going to die, today I deliver a heresy: Â Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) is a figure I respect enormously as an icon and a star but most of whose movies I have little use for. …
We find the qualifier in the headline necessary to differentiate our present subject from the pioneering female stand-up comedian Jean Carroll, who'd been in the team of Carroll and Howe. To…
More than a few thoughts, lifted from my notebooks, to mark the birthday of playwright/screenwriter William Inge (1913-73). I was guilty of being dismissive of Inge for many years, mostly…
Today Hedda Hopper (1885-1966) is almost exclusively remembered as a Holy Terror of a right-wing gossip columnist, champion of Joan Crawford, J. Edgar Hoover, and HUAC, and scourge of Charli…
There is a herky-jerky aspect to the career of Betty Ross Clarke (May Clarke, 1892-1970), preventing her career from attaining the kind of momentum it required to really get going. Clarke wa…
Several points of interest draw us to the topic of stage and screen actress Rose Hobart (Rose Kefer, 1906-2000). First, she figures in horror classics. She was Fredric March's leading lady i…
April 26, 1947 was the death day of animal impersonator George Ali (George Bolingbroke, born ca. 1866). Thank you, Matt Brady for suggesting him! (BTW, I don't ordinarily take requests. Let …
When I was a kid (it seems to me) a lot of the older women emulated Eve Arden (Eunice May Quedens, 1908-1990). Arden was beautiful and glamorous, but also imposing. She stood 5'7″, whi…
Jerry Seinfeld (b. 1954) is a man who has stood on the shoulders of giants, one who has since become a giant himself, which must be very uncomfortable for the people he's standing on. My nic…
Now that Jay Leno (b. 1950) has become Tip O'Neill, I like him again. I caught him on Bill Maher's show the other day after not having watched him in action for like a decade, and was deligh…
I only just became aware of actress Adele Mara (Adelaida Delgado, 1923-2010) on account of her appearance in the Joe E. Brown comedy western Shut My Big Mouth (1942). She was a Columbia cont…
Someone has decreed today to be Superhero Day and who am I to argue? While I have gotten more than my share of enjoyment out of most of the key comic book franchises, parody (of ANYTHING) is…
This one goes out to Kemal Amin "Casey" Kasem (1932-2014). Lebanese-American Kasem was from Detroit, and got his start in local radio in high school and later as a student at Wayne Statue Un…
Well now. It was no small matter getting to the bottom of the multi-generational Redgrave pool, with so many twists and turns and tributaries. It's enough material for a book, but as with my…
