Thursday, May 29, 2025
Well, I couldn’t let National Alligator Day pass without adding pop culture representations of this ancient reptile to our store of animal posts. Just click on links below to learn more ab…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:36PMWe seem to to be all about the headlines today, although I think you’ll agree we are keeping it on mission. Dramatic events concerning the Texas Renaissance Festival, generally touted as t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:54PMA few items of timely clown and silent comedy news have accrued, so I’ve bundled them into this handy bulletin: It’s that time again! Since last year’s was such a resounding success, a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:24AMWednesday, May 28, 2025
May 28 was the birthday of Edith Massey (1918-1984) the dentally challenged oddball at the heart of most of John Waters’ early movies, best known for her egg-sucking scene in Pink Flamingo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:48AMTuesday, May 27, 2025
This will be my third substantial post on the late Paul Reubens a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman (1952-2023). I was among the many for whom Reubens was a professional hero. That guy had a LOT of vaudev…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12PMMonday, May 26, 2025
Well whattaya know? This is the second Memorial Day in a row that I found myself sharing memories of Marx Brothers events that took place the weekend before, over and above such other stuff …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:24PMKnowest thou of the Moondog (Louis Hardin, 1916-1999)? Moondog is notable for multiple reasons: he was a highly influential composer, musician and recording artist; a pioneering figure of th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:06PMMay 26, 1882 was the birthday of the Maurice Dubinsky (1882-1929), oldest of the three Dubinsky Brothers, followed by Edward (1885-1860), and Barney (1895-1949). These guys went from travell…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:42AMThis is a footnotey sort of story but its subject is not without significance. The stage and screen career of May Collins (1903-55) was major for about a decade (1920-30) and was followed by…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:42AMSunday, May 25, 2025
May 25 is National Wine Day. Here on Travalanche we have something of an Americana fixation, and that would appear to rule out wine, at first blush (see what I did there?). In the realm of i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:02PMToday we celebrate a comedian so great that he has transcended having the same name as the psycho killer from Halloween. To date, there have been well over 150 regular cast members on Saturd…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:06PMSo many of the classic comedy directors are fairly anonymous as compared with the comedians they helped make look good. I checked myself from using the word “great” with reference to Cha…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:42AMMay 25 was the birthday of Dixie Carter (1939-2010). That’s actually her name! (Not a nickname). I happened to acquire a copy of her 1996 autobiography Trying to Get to Heaven, a hodgepodg…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:42AMSaturday, May 24, 2025
Not only was there a Montgomery and Stone back in the day but there was also a Montgomery and Rock! And believe it or not, I can keep it all straight! We’ve already written about Joe Rock …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12AMFriday, May 23, 2025
Congratulations to Travalanche friend Tamara Rose of Transcendental Concord, recently elected to the board of the Margaret Fuller Society. Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was a remarkable Americ…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:36PM1985 was the year Marine Corps vet Drew Carey (b. 1958) started writing jokes for a local Cleveland radio station. His stand-up grew out of that. By 1988 he had made it onto Star Search, and…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:18PMImagine if you can (I have a hard time doing so) a world in which an introverted nerd can bag eight wives, including Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, and Evelyn Keyes, and date the likes of Betty G…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:06AMTribute today to actor John Payne (John Howard Payne, 1912-1989). While he has around 100 screen credits, Payne will probably always be best remembered for his role as the anti-feminist nood…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:42AMMay 23 was the birthday of Harlem singer, dancer and showgirl Isabel Washington (1908-2007). The younger sister of Fredi Washington, Isabel followed her sister from Georgia up to Harlem to j…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:42AMThursday, May 22, 2025
Those of us of a certain age remember Johnny Olson (1910-85) from his last gig as the announcer on The Price is Right, from 1972 until his passing. Come to think of it, I remember his voice …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:24PMOur recent viewing of Lucy Worsley’s latest BBC doc Holmes vs. Doyle (2023) awakened my longstanding desire to add a post here on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) that went beyond Sherlo…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:12AMWednesday, May 21, 2025
If there were a dating app to match theatre-goers with shows, any successful software would have paired me up with The End of All Flesh, the new bluegrass musical by Greg Kotis, Tony-winning…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:36PMTuesday, May 20, 2025
I’ve done a couple of posts to date on Hollywood star James Stewart (1908-1997) and several others that mention him, but none that encompass his whole story, so I thought I’d tackle that…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:42PMMonday, May 19, 2025
This year National Unicycle Day falls on May 18, and we want to use the opportunity to plug the King Charles Troupe! The unique Bronx based troupe can trace its origins to 1918 when Jerry Ki…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:54PMThis may seem an odd thing for an online blogger to say, but at this moment in history the most constructive acts of affirmative dissent against encroaching techno-autocracy will take place …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 03:54PMSomewhat late in the game for us to shine a light on a silent comedy figure as significant as Natalie Kingston (Natalia Ringstrom, 1905-1991), but these things happen. Though her father’s …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:36AMSunday, May 18, 2025
As a kind of private joke, whenever I listen to the old Searchers’ tune “Needles and Pins”, I likes to change the titular refrain “Needles and Pins-uh” into “Ezio Pinz-a”. To t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:42AMSaturday, May 17, 2025
How sweet it is that International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOBIT) falls on the birthday of playwright Ronald Tavel (1936-2009). Tavel is an important figure in 2…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:12PMAs promised in yesterday’s post on Margaret Sullavan, today a look at her posthumous son-in-law Dennis Hopper (1936-2010). Only time and distance have allowed us to see Hopper for the grea…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:24PMFriday, May 16, 2025
May 16 was the birthday of Margaret Sullavan (1909-1960), an actress of great significance, remembered today only by classic movie buffs, and only a fraction of those, for her films are few …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:54AMThursday, May 15, 2025
May 15 being the birthday of author L. Frank Baum, we thought today would be an appropriate time to create a finding aid for our dozens of posts related to my favorite childhood author and t…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 12:02PM 
