11,752 stories by "Trav S.d."
Today is the birthday of one of America’s greatest songwriters and performers, Hiram “Hank” Williams (1923-1953). Unlike his precursor Jimmie Rogers, Williams came along to…
Around our house we are big fans of A) Ghosts; B) the Victorian Era; C) Famous Murderers; and D) Jenny Lee Mitchell! So we are excited to report the news that the home video DVD of JennyR…
Originally posted in 2011 Winnie Lightner (born Winifred Reeve on this day in 1899) is best known today as a movie star of the pre-code era, 1929-34Â (not because she was particularly racy…
Originally posted in 2011 Today is the birthday of Ira Erastus Davenport (1839-1911). It was Ira who eventually confessed to Houdini (an acorn off of his own tree) that the spiritualis…
Today is the birthday of Esther Ralston (1902-1994). She began her performing career in the family vaudeville act ”The Ralston Family with Baby Esther, America’s Youngest Juli…
A King and Three Jokers Originally posted in 2012 The Wiere Brothers unfortunately came along too late for American vaudeville, hence we do not include them in our Stars of Vaudeville Ser…
Today is the birthday of James Grover Tarver (1885-1958). During his 26 years with various sideshows (1914-1940) he was billed at different times as “Texas Jim”, the Texas Giant&…
Congratulations to our friend and sometime collaborator Jim R. Moore was is being honored by the  Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York with an aptly named Local Hero Award in a speci…
Today is the birthday of magician David Copperfield, who is really only David Seth Kotkin of Metuchen, New Jersey — but thanks for making it harder for children to Google the Dickens&#…
Originally posted in 2012 Today is the birthday of the great Broadway impresario Earl Carroll (1892-1948), best known for his series of revues Earl Carroll’s Vanities , which …
 Today is the birthday of Daisy Ann Peterkin (1884-1952). Originally from St. Louis, as a youth she was interested in the modern dancing of Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan, and went to …
Today is the birthday of Renée Claire Angèle Élisabeth Napierkowski, a.k.a. Stacia Napierkowska (1891-1945). The Polish-born actress, pantomime and interpretive dancer lived and per…
Originally posted in 2012 Today is the birthday of Julius “Nipsy” Russell (1918-2005). Those of us a certain age remember him as the guy who used to go on all the game show…
Originally posted in 2010. Penny Singleton (born this day in 1908) is best known today for playing the title role in the film and radio adaptations of Chic Young’s comic strip B…
Originally posted in 2012 Today is the birthday of the great American humorist Robert Benchley (1889-1945). A native of Worcester, Massachusetts (you can hear it in his accent), he later wen…
Today marks a sad anniversary, for on this day in 1885, the most famous elephant star of them all, Jumbo met his untimely end on the railroad tracks. Born in the Sudan in 1861, Jumbo had pre…
Today is the birthday of the great American author James Fenimore Cooper (1759-1851). I am one of the few Americans whose pilgrimage to Cooperstown was completely unconcerned with baseball, …
Today (according to IMDB is the birthday of African American show business Renaissance man William “Billy” McClain (1870-1950): musician, acrobat, minstrel performer, producer, a…
Filed under: Burlesk, Contemporary Variety, PLUGS Tagged: Cutting Room, Dark Carnival Burlesque, Hell on Heels
Every Sunday in September TCM is showing dozens of works by Alfred Hitchcock from morning until…well into the next morning. It’s not the entire canon, but it’s enough…
Today is the birthday of Jon “Bowzer” Bauman (b. 1947), a fitting occasion I warrant to recall the syndicated variety show he starred in along with another dozen or so guys in th…
Today is the birthday of stage and screen comedian Billie Ritchie (1878-1921). A native of Glasgow Scotland, Ritchie got his start in music hall with Karno’s Speechless Comedians, spri…
Here’s a little tidbit that would have been a perfect column item if your correspondent had such an old-fashioned thing as a show biz column. But I do have a blog, so here is where we …
Today is the birthday of Roald Dahl (1913-1990). I thought I’d observe the day not by talking about his popular children’s books, but about this amazing television show the Duche…
Today is the birthday of a man whose name will probably never be better known that it already is, but whose career forms an important link between show business past and show business presen…
