11,834 stories from Trav S.D.
Today we finally shine a spotlight on female cinema pioneer Lois Weber (1879-1939). We do this in the interest of completeness, having long since done squibs on women like Alice Guy, Frances…
O.J. Simpson (1947-2024) died two months ago. Having had cause to mention him over 15 times on this blog, O.J. rates a post here, yet I wasn't about to eulogize him, and I certainly don't ce…
Once upon a time, contemporary variety arts and theatre information was a prominent content stream on this blog…but frankly few people read those posts, so I took them (and there were hund…
The ghost of Suzy Knickerbocker (Aileen Mehle, 1918-2016) seems to hover over this cultural moment, especially for those who love to binge streaming TV series. There are echoes of her life a…
Friday evening occurred a wonderful convergence of catchings-up: hanging out with old friends Michele Carlo and Last Up Larry…to see the current production of Circus Amok (one of my favori…
June 9 was the birthday of stage and screen actress Bessie Barriscale (Elizabeth Barry Scale, 1884-1965). Barriscale was the older cousin of Mabel and Edith Taliaferro; of the three, Mabel T…
June 8 was the birthday of Edwin S. Votey (1856-1931), inventor of, among other things, the player piano. Votey grew up in Ovid, New York, then moved to West Brattleboro Vermont with his fam…
That's right! There's more! In fact there'll be even more than THIS post over the next few weeks, truth to tell. The wonderful news for folks who couldn't attend Marxfest is that it was extr…
Born 100 years ago today, the great Broadway actress and nightclub performer Dolores Gray (Sylvia Dolores Finkelstein, 1924-2002). Not to be confused with the similar looking Dolores Fuller,…
Someone who watches vintage celebrity interviews as often as I do was bound to discover Skip E. Lowe (Sammy Labella, 1929-2014) sooner or later. I'd heard of him long before I ever saw him. …
Today we venture outside our wheelhouse a smidge, but not TOO far, for the post concerns the coming together of two previous subjects: Cyndy Fujikawa, who wrote this wonderful six part serie…
Have no fear, I have no attention of taking down or running down the idiosyncratic genius of Bruce MacLeish Dern (b. 1936). The title refers to the fact that this post will divide aspects of…
I am in the midst of a very mushy "soft roll-out" of my latest book. The Marx Brothers Miscellany became available to purchase about six weeks ago, and I certainly hawked it at the just-clos…
Two old time actors of note were born on June 2, 1874. Lulu Glaser came from Pennsylvania Dutch stock. She was only 17 when she began to show up in New York stage productions, initially unde…
Today we salute one of the key figures in the silent movie Renaissance of the last several decades: author, collector, preservationist, director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and…
June 1 is National Game Show Day apparently, a holiday one mightn't have thought society required ("Those poor neglected game shows! Let us…let us take a day to memorialize them!") But it …
It's quite true! And (a fact that should be much more widely known) it was started by none other than P.T. Barnum! The final iteration of Barnum's American Museum burned down in 1868, but th…
Happy National Smile Day! With several Coney Island events fresh in our rear view mirror, and the Mermaid Parade just three weeks away, the natural topic of exploration today would appear to…
Here's news so good I had to share it in my Marxfest talk at Coney Island USA last Sunday…and that is Woman with a Beard Jennifer Miller and Circus Amok, her ground-breaking Brechtian stre…
Who was television variety's biggest comedy giant? My answer may throw you for a loop, but I have a sound rationale. Other names may spring automatically to mind through force of habit, and …
We've only got about 20 posts in the Bob Hope (1903-2003) section of Travalanche, but still it seemed useful to create a post which laid them out in a sensible order for ease of perusal. And…
Item One: Coney Island. A couple of weeks ago the Daily News announced a plan by Thor Equities to build a casino and other commercial retail in Coney Island. Though Thor has behaved rapaciou…
Well it's Memorial Day, and this year we unavoidably think of those fallen in the battle between Freedonia and Sylvania in Duck Soup…as well as the many Marxfest events of the past 10 days…
A celebration today of actress Pam Grier (b. 1949). Grier was working as a receptionist at American International Pictures when the producers wisely judged that her talents were being wasted…
Among show biz buffs, Bennett Cerf (1898-1971) has become the poster child for How American Pop Culture Has Changed And Not for the Better. Cerf was the co-founder of the Random House publis…
