11,744 stories by "Trav S.d."
Brief tribute to character actor Billy Sands (1911-1984). Comedy kingpins loved to have Sands around, but he could also hold his own in heavy drama. Sands started out as a stage actor, appea…
January 6 is the birthday of one of the few WAMPAS Baby Stars we haven’t written about yet Ruth Hiatt (1906-1994). Interestingly, Hiatt was born on the exact same day as another leadin…
Young Dorothy Appleby (1906-1990) won a Portland, Maine beauty contest and translated it into a 20 year career in show business, notably as a supporting player in classic comedy shorts. Appl…
Some brief words of appreciation for countrified character actor Tom Fadden (1895-1980). Born in Iowa, Fadden was the son of a mining engineer. Travel was part of the job, so parts of his ch…
January 5 is the birthday of my favorite of all the Supermans, George Reeves (1914-1959). Well I say that, but I have some catching up to do. I’ll be comparing all versions up to the p…
Like most classic comedy fans I first became aware of Cora Witherspoon (1890-1957) from seeing her as W.C. Fields’ henpecking wife Agatha in The Bank Dick (1940). (“Don’t y…
January 4 was the birthday of Sorrell Booke (1930-1994). Those who know Booke only as “Boss Hogg” will be startled by aspects of his background. He’s a Yankee from Buffalo,…
Orpheus McAdoo (1858-1900) was a terrifically successful African American minstrel show impresario, back in the era when “genuine” all-black minstrel shows were the rage, paving …
Today appears to be a day for profiling lesser-light younger brothers. Just now we did something on Harry Gribbon’s brother Eddie. Now we look at Jack Donahue’s younger brother J…
Today, a tribute to Eddie Gribbon (1890-1965), younger brother to the better known but still obscure Harry. Eddie broke into silent comedies a couple of years after his brother, playing …
Everything goes in three: today we lost wresting announcer Gene Okerlund, comedian Bob Einstein (son of Harry), and also musician Daryl Dragon (1942-2019), better known as the “Capt…
We are saddened to hear of the passing today of Eugene “Mean Gene” Okerlund (1942-2019), straight man to an entire sports league. The news took me aback, for I had no idea that: …
George “Beetlepuss” Lewis (1901-1955) started out in vaudeville but achieved his greatest fame in burlesque, where he was one of the most popular comedians. Lewis appears to have…
Dublin-born Tom Dugan (1889-1955) grew up in Philadelphia and was a manual laborer before breaking into show biz as an Irish tenor. He worked in minstrelsy, medicine shows, big time vaudevil…
In the Middle Ages, the Feast of Fools, a burlesque religious festival, was celebrated on or near New Year’s Day. In many places a Lord of Misrule, or a Boy-Bishop, or an Ass, ruled ov…
I’m tempted to dub 2018 “the smallest year ever”, for it was a year in which, for a variety of reasons, I was compelled to “work small”, to perform close-up mag…
Full confession: I was a huge John Denver (1943-1997) fan at the height of his full John Denver-dom (the 1970s). I was a child at the time and I naturally disavowed all that as a teen…
Very late in his life, I got to meet one of my favorite actors Jason Robards Jr (1922-2000) and for once I wasn’t tongue-tied, I knew just what to say to put us both at ease. For on th…
A tribute today to Russ Tamblyn (b. 1934). Ironically, I’ve already written a post on Russ’s much more obscure father, Eddie Tamblyn, a vaudeville performer, because that is the …
For those of us of a certain age there is only one Hawaii Five-O worth talking about, the original one starring Jack Lord (John Joseph Patrick Ryan, 1920-1998) which ran from 1968 through 19…
Everyone loved character actor Jack Riley (1935-2016). I considered a tribute to him at the time he passed a couple of years ago, but here follows a more thorough one than I would have done …
December 30 was the birthday of the late Bert Parks (Bertram Jacobson, 1914-1992). When I was a kid in the 1970s, Parks was a sort of a lightning rod representing the worst in old school, mo…
The late Ed Flanders was born on this day in 1934. We’ll talk about his eventual fate in a bit; meantime, we celebrate him, his career, and his hit TV show. An army vet from Minneapoli…
Wow! Okay, I fell down a happy rabbit hole this morning, and it was one of those experiences that assures me that this blog sometimes serves a useful function. Travalanche is the only place …
December 28 was the birthday of Martin “Mike” Branner (1888-1970). Branner was the son of a New York lacemaker. At age 17 he got a job as a clerk to a couple of vaudeville booker…
