No, shame on YOU, Spade Cooley! "Spade" was western swing fiddle player and band leader Donnell Clyde Cooley (1910-1969). The native Oklahoman was part Cherokee; his folks were sharecroppers…
The Montague Brothers were a strong man act of the British music hall in the early 20th century. Their real last name was Woollaston; their father owned a shoe factory, was a Methodist preac…
My wife and I have been binging Seinfeld re-runs for the sheer pleasure of it in recent weeks and I caught a "Farfel" reference in one not long ago. Of course, the origin of that name is a J…
Great was our enjoyment, occasionally swelling to awe, of Showtime's The Real Charlie Chaplin, which we mentioned here a few days ago. Directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney pulled off …
…And by that I mean of course, not just the period in which she wrote but the need to restore Aphra Behn (1640-1689) to her rightful place in the hierarchy of English writers. I'm uncertai…
Norman Foster (Norman Foster Hoeffer, 1903-1976) was one of the rare ones who worked in Hollywood as an actor, screenwriter and director " all three " during the talkie era. If that sounds W…
Grateful homage today to Margo Jones (Margaret Virginia Jones, 1911-1955), whose contributions to American culture were significant and real, though they are often badly articulated and misu…
Well, I don't get Showtime, and I don't know anyone who does, but periodically they show something that makes me wish I did. Tonight they premiere a program called The Real Charlie Chaplin. …
Today, two weeks out from Christmas, you've no doubt heard the most lasting hit of Brenda Lee (Brenda Mae Tarpley, b. 1944) several times already, as America does every year. "Rockin' Around…
A few words today on a Scottish strongman born in Banff as William Bankier (1870-1949). Bankier's father was, of all things, a hand loom weaver, an occupation that can hardly have been remun…
This may come as news to many of you below a certain age, but some of us had not one, but two Hermiones in our lives prior to the 1997 publication of Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone.…
The internet possesses no shortage of gushing, enthusiastic blogger valentines to the great actor Lee J. Cobb (1911-1976) and that's as it should be. So I'm not going to dwell on Cobb's exce…
It may be hard to credit for those who were alive and sentient back then but it's nonetheless true " while he was alive, Sam Kinison (1953-1992) was only prominent in the pop culture landsca…
80 years ago today, the air forces of Imperial Japan attacked the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, precipitating U.S. entry into World War Two. My Tennessee grandfather enlisted in t…
A gingerly nod of the head today to Joseph Milana (1884-1959), a.k.a. Ajax the Great, Professor Ajax or the Mighty Ajax. A native of Washington DC, Milana began working in dime museums as a …
Tonight, I was flipping through channels and stopped just in time to see a fan of one of my books accept her Kennedy Center Award from the President. Congratulations, Bette Midler. I am kvel…
With Steven Spielberg's reboot of West Side Story due for nationwide release this coming Friday, he will be the last of the major "New Hollywood" directors of the 1970s to tackle a famously …
60 years ago (late 1961) a group named Joey Dee and the Starliters released a new variation on the Twist craze spawned by Chubby Checker the previous year. By January 1962, their single "The…
I had the best time this afternoon rapping with the illimitable Wayne Federman about comedy and vaudeville on his podcast. In addition to being the former headwriter for Jimmy Fallon, a co-p…
Tonight (December 3) at 8pm Eastern " our pal Torkova the magician and mentalist will be on Penn and Teller Fool Us on the CW Network. It was honor to present Bobby Torkova many a time in my…
Having done ten posts about stars with the first name of Virginia and about a dozen with the last name of Carroll we must observe that Virginia Carroll (1913-2009) is a likely name for a fil…
Eddie Mekka (Rudolph Edward Mekjian, 1952-2021) was much more than "Carmine from Laverne and Shirley" of course, it's just that when you say his real name everyone goes "Who?" and when you s…
This is liable to remain one of my obscure Travalanche posts and yet it's the kind I love the most, for it mixes together two of my great loves, American theatrical history and the lore surr…
Today we celebrate the Lakota Chief Óta Kté ("Plenty Kill"), also known as Matȟó NážiÅ‹Â (or "Standing Bear") (1869-1939) " not to be confused with the Ponca l…
We heard at the 11th hour last night that 96 year old Arlene Dahl (b. 1925) had passed away. Dahl was a gorgeous redhead in the vein of Virginia Mayo and Rhonda Fleming, and appeared in the …