Sunday, February 9, 2025
I apologize in advance because for the rest of the day and surely for several days afterward your head will be full of the songs of Gerry Goffin (1939-2014) and Carole King (b. 1942) — I m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:32AMSaturday, February 8, 2025
This one goes to my favorite Iowan, Lynn Berg! It’s National Iowa Day. In writing this blog, I’ve been aggregating things I like about this state for years, believe it or not. As a membe…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:48AMFriday, February 7, 2025
This is a public apology — published permanently into the public record for all to see. Ten years ago a very good friend launched a monthly theatrical series and cast it with about two doz…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:06PMWe are kvelling big time for our friends Rich Martin and Meagan Hennessey of Archeophone Records, for chalking up two Grammy Awards for the album I told you about last August Centennial: Kin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:48AMThursday, February 6, 2025
February 6 is the birthday of singer and actor Fabian Forte (b.1943), known to audiences of his own day merely as Fabian. Fabian lives at the center of a Venn Diagram including two sets of m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:42AMWednesday, February 5, 2025
I’m always late to the party! Somehow I never got word that Stewart F. Lane, visionary Broadway producer, author of Black Broadway: African Americans on the Great White Way (2015), and par…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AMFebruary 5, 1969 was the air date of the one and only broadcast episode of the TV comedy sketch show Turn On. Turn On has become legendary as the shortest-lived tv series ever, because not o…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:02AMTuesday, February 4, 2025
Though he was a major star in Great Britain, here in the States movie lovers are apt to know Norman Wisdom (1915-2010) from just one film, The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1967). Born right…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:12AMMonday, February 3, 2025
I was raised to believe that the good guy in any David vs. Goliath scenario was David. Intrinsically. As far as I know, that used to be the American Way. Until a few decades ago, most of our…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:06PMHere’s one all Brits of a certain age know about, but few Yanks will know at all. Val Doonican (Michael Valentine Doonican, 1927-2015) was an Irish crooner in the vein of Perry Como or Bin…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:24AMSunday, February 2, 2025
Well, what do you know about that? A theme of sort emerges today. February 2 is the birthday of Betsy Gay (b. 1929), a cornfed child performer who sang, danced and yodeled, and it’s also t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:12PMI chose the photo above to head this post on Emmett Miller (1900-1962) because it’s the one I could find that will be least offensive to modern sensibilities. Notwithstanding, Miller was a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:12AMPurv Pullen (Almy Purves Pullen, 1909-1992) was a voice-over artist for animated films, radio and records, a comedian, ventriloquist, and puppeteer. His specialty was bird calls, which had b…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:42AMSaturday, February 1, 2025
For Black History Month, a brief introduction to the Hyers Sisters, pathbreaking black singers and actors, whom I only just learned about while putting together my recent post on bandmaster …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:12AMFriday, January 31, 2025
Clap hands, it’s Eddie Cantor’s birthday! In celebration we have spent all day sprucing up the Eddie Cantor section of Travalanche, and present you now with this handy finding aid to hel…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:42PMThis may shock even the few living people who remember stage and screen star Eddie Cantor at all, but he was a briefly in silent movies! We associate Cantor with musical comedies, of course,…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:18PMThursday, January 30, 2025
January 30 was the birthday of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945). This is far from the best photo of FDR. It depicts his last address to Congress, in March, 1945, and he looks as old and…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:42AMWednesday, January 29, 2025
Not to worry, this is not a post about the lame ’70s rock group — you can sleep soundly in your beds knowing I’ll never waste time writing about that. Rather, this is the latest in my …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:18AMTuesday, January 28, 2025
Barbi Benton (b.1950) has been retired for nearly 40 years, so I will forgive spring chickens for not recognizing this omnipresent 1970s television celebrity. But I assure you, there was a t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:32AMMonday, January 27, 2025
The sentiment “Never Forget” seems to be in deep jeopardy these days, both home and abroad, on countless fronts. People hearts have grown hard. Is it possible that they’ve forgotten th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:54AMI am proud to realize that I have been a fan of James Cromwell (b. 1940) for over 50 years now. The 6’7″ actor played practical joker Stretch Cunningham on All in the Family starting in …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:32AMJanuary 27 was the birthday of writer George Randolph Chester (1869-1924). We’ve had many occasions to mention his principal works on this blog, for they were adapted for stage and screen …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:32AMSunday, January 26, 2025
That’s right, ladies and other lovers of Paul Newman — he was born on this day in 1925. Another Newmanian benchmark recently passed a few weeks ago: 70 years since his first movie The Si…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:12PMSaturday, January 25, 2025
January 25 is Robert Burns Day, a.k.a Robbie Burns Day a.k.a. Rabbie Burns Day, obviously in celebration of the birth of the Scottish National Poet (1759-1796). Apparently Burns Day has edge…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:12AMFriday, January 24, 2025
Once in a blue moon, the subject of one of our centennial posts is being celebrated elsewhere. Maria Tallchief (1925-2013) is being remembered in a program of dances associated with her this…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:24AMThursday, January 23, 2025
This morning finds me in an ever-worsening funk of several days standing. Though there are about a half dozen notable show biz professionals born on January 23 I might conceivably add to our…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:03PMWednesday, January 22, 2025
When the screen version of Conan the Barbarian starring Arnold Schwarzenegger hit screens in 1982, most people who thought about it all, I’ll wager, made the understandable assumption that…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:54PMTuesday, January 21, 2025
And so one black day succeeds another, and so it shall be for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t surprise me that Jules Feiffer (b. 1929) endured but one day of the restored Trump monarchy…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12PMMore examples of the ephemerality of fame in the broadcast media: the largely forgotten pair of John Reagan “Tex” McCrary Jr. (1910-2003) and Eugenia Lincoln “Jinx” Falkenburg (1…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:48AMMonday, January 20, 2025
Through some miracle of Divine Providence, Scottish comedian Janey Godley (Jane Godley Currie Storrie, 1961-2024), most famous for greeting the 45th President of the United States to her cou…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:54AMSunday, January 19, 2025
Lilian Harvey (Helene Lilian Muriel Pape,1906-1968) was in many ways the perfect international star — until the disease of nationalism arrived to divide the world. (If her name sounds vag…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:18AM 
