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The Val Doonican Show
Here’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 Bing Crosby,...
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On “Saturday Night” and “The People’s Joker”: A Tale of Two Revolutions
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 stories...
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Norman Wisdom: The Successful Failure
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 around the...
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“Turn On” Was NOT the Worst TV Program of All Time
February 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 only was it...
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It Happened at The Palace: A New Book By Stewart F. Lane!
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 part-owner of...
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The Fabrication of Fabian
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 male pop...
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Archeophone Takes Home Two Grammys!
We 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: King Oliver’s...
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It’s Getting Tired, Mildred (and the Genealogy of the Soap Opera)
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 dozen of my...
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All I Owe, I Owe Ioway
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 member of the...
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On Goffin and King
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 mean more...
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On Filmdom’s F*cked Up Farrow Family
Mia Farrow’s birthday is February 9; February 10 was the birthday of her father, the less remembered writer and director John Farrow (1904-1963). John Farrow’s self-reported early life sounds so close...
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Chad Morgan: The Sheik of Scrubby Creek
Australian country singer Chad Morgan (1933-2025) passed away last month, and thanks Eve Golden for my belated introduction to him. Australian country music is very much a thing, and it makes perfect...
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The Waldmans and Blue-O-Logy
This ad was the best image I could find recording the existence of vaudeville harmonica player Ted Waldman (1899-1987), who was born of a February 12. You can see him and his brother Al mentioned on...
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Susan Oliver: The Green Eyed, Green Skinned Girl
The big year for Susan Oliver (Charlotte Gercke, 1932-1990) was 1964: in that one year she was the female lead in Jerry Lewis’s The Disorderly Orderly, the Hank Williams bio-pic Your Cheatin’ Heart...
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On Carl Thomas Anderson and “Henry”: Life Begins at 67
Comic strip artist Carl Thomas Anderson (1865-1948) was born of a Valentine’s Day, just like Jack Benny, Gregory Hines, and tellingly, Teller of Penn and Teller. Teller is just as silent as Anderson’s...
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Whither Wendest Thou, Wisconsin?
February 15 being National Wisconsin Day, we now add it to the small number of American states to which we are paying tributes in a series, making a sort of midwestern trilogy with our two recent...
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Obscene Beauty (A 2020 Documentary I’m Kind of In)
Back in 2016, some P.A. on a documentary asked me if they could use a clip from one of my old vaudeville shows at Surf Reality circa 1998 in a new film about burlesque, and I said yeah and promptly...
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The Vanishing Arthur Kennedy
Few are the American actors as significant and solid yet as unknown and forgotten as Arthur Kennedy (1914-1990). Kennedy’s chief claim to enduring fame is his having created key roles in the original...
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A Salute to Chester Clute
February 18 is the birthday of Billy DeWolf, Adolphe Menjou, “Little Angie” Rossitto, Hugo Haas, Allan Melvin, Edward Arnold, George Givot, George Kennedy, George Kirby, Jerry Fujikawa, Jack Palance,...
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