Quaker Founder George Fox (1624-1691) was born 400 years ago this year; William Penn (1644-1718) was born 20 years later, on this day. I am descended from Quakers on both sides of my family.…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:24PMBelieve it or not, this is my first post dedicated to single Walt Disney feature. I’ve given many of them attention on Travalanche, but usually in the context of broader topics. I’m goin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:48AMFar be it from me to besmirch the fine name of Boyardee, but we know what we know. I’m not here to endorse this unpalatable family of products. I’m a culinary barbarian and even I am too…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:02AMOctober 21, 1858 marked the world premiere of Offenbach’s opera Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld). Its culminating piece of music, the “galop infernal” was to become the c…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:54AMWilliam Vann Rogers (1911-1993) was one of those rare juniors who outgrew the shadow of a great father and became his own man, becoming mighty valuable himself. In Rogers case he managed to …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:06PMOctober 19, 1964 was the date on which Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., the first record album by the duo Simon and Garfunkel was officially released. The pair had released music earlier under the…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:32PMMultiple lures attracted us to Feejee Mermaid, the inaugural production of Drops in the Vase, now in previews at the Flea: the title, obviously, but also the past work of the principal artis…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:32PMMy original intention was to create this new finding aid for Saturday Night Live related posts for the REAL 50th anniversary next year (2025 — the show launched in ’75), but they’re al…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:32PMMargot Kidder (1948-2018) gave up the ghost just a few years ago, but if I saw more than just a headline, I don’t recall it. The country was neck deep in the shit storm of the 45th Preside…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:48AMOctober 16 was the birthday of a future B movie star whose birth name was Gordon Nance (1904-1965). Nance grew up on a cattle Missouri ranch. He grew up riding, roping, and participating in …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:24AMLittle birds that tweet have told me of two new books that are coincidentally both being released today, which readers of this blog in particular should be interested in. As we told you back…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:54AMThat’s Jimmy Durante — of course, I’m going to give him pride of place among Italian Americans in show business. He’s kind of the “Adam” of it all, a musician, a singer, a comedi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:48PMOriginally posted on my other blog the Trav-a-log, the contents of which I am in the process of transplanting here, so that it will all live in one place! In 1492 most well educated people i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:32AMJack MacGowran (1918-1973) was what it’s all about: a muse for many of the best creative minds of the 20th century, an indispensible character actor, and a career most of us would die for,…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:36AMIt’s National Farmers Day. For the occasion, I am restoring a post I published here in 2017, then moved over to Medium when I did a big purge of all the non-show biz related posts on Trava…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:42AMBorn 100 years ago today, actress Randy Stuart (Elizabeth “Betty Jane” Shaubell, 1924-1996). Stuart started out with her parents in a small time vaudeville act that toured the South and …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:42AMHow perfect is it that the International Day of the Girl Child falls on the birthday Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)? She’s one of my top female heroes; we’ve needed her or someone like he…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:06AMWhen I say I mourn Steve Gordon (1938-1982) I don’t mean to imply that I knew him or that he only recently died. The writer/director passed away over 40 years ago, worlds away from my litt…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:18PMMy word but there were a lot of Alices running around a century and more ago! I’ve always been interested in the phenomenon because it was my mother’s middle name, after her aunt, who he…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:02AMAn experiment in media in honor of the birthday of the great actress Helen Hayes in further exploration of the legacy of her friend and “Boswell”, Mari Lyn Henry. The audio is not optima…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:02AMBorn 100 years ago today, the one and only writer/actor/producer/director Edward D. Wood, Jr! We are a huge fan of his oeuvre, and have been for well over 30 years. (As it happens, it is als…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:48AMAbove please note my first edition copy of a Pultitzer Prize winning autobiography from around a century ago The Americanization of Edward Bok. I acquired and read this now highly obscure bo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:06PMHere’s one I learned about by way of Eve Golden’s “Youtube Theatre” column at the Los Angeles Daily Mirror. When I refer to Judy Tyler (Judith Mae Hess, 1932-1957) as the “Girl Jam…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:06PMWell, I’ve written about many of the classic, old time gossip columnists here (Walter Winchell, Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, Earl Wilson, Dorothy Kilgallen, etc) so why stop at the later…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AMToday, a salute to an actor whose career is an illustration of the vagaries of fate when it comes to the breaks it dispenses to actors, Kirk Alyn (John Feggo, Jr., 1910-1999). A New Jersey n…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMOctober 7 will always be remembered for the atrocity that happened in Israel a year ago, but it has another humanitarian significance as well, for it was the birthday of legendary labor acti…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:36PMOctober 7 was the birthday of Alfredo Codona (1893-1937), the most celebrated (and later mourned) member of an international, multi-generational dynasty of showfolk. Originally spelled Codon…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMThe second act of Mitchell Leisen (1898-1972) has arrived posthumously, but to misappropriate an attrocious line of Robin Williams, beter latent than never? Numerous in-depth articles about …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:32AMPreviously posted on Travalachance and restored for National Rhode Island Day and the Halloween season. Today we continue our series of Rhode Island Day/ Halloween posts by relating some de…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:54PMYes, yes, I know the title sounds like a Michael Feinstein song (people are forever explaining my own damn jokes and literary devices back to me, as though the very productions of my own min…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:54PMAnd now, since it’s both National Rhode Island Day as well as the Halloween season, news of a spooky film set on a small island in the smallest state. I caught The Block Island Sound (2021…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:32AM