He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. (is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). T o find out more about the history of the variety arts (including tv variety), consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous , available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.Īnd check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from etc etc etc You can see him (and his famously multi-colored beard) in the awesome documentary Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talking About Him?) Most intriguingly he produced Harry Nilsson’s last album in 1994, which remains unreleased. In the nineties and beyond he became a songwriter and producer for acts like Aerosmith, Ozzie Osbourne, and Ringo Starr. He co-starred with Gena Davis in the 1985 sit-com Sara, and was the band-leader on Joan Rivers’ 1986 talk show on Fox. KangarooĪfter this show, they had a sit-com in England in 1978 called Bonkers! and they starred in their own movie in 1983 called Hysterical. In the aftermath of their brief 70s successes, brother Mark ended up faring the best in the business. At any rate, after one month in prime time, the Brothers switched over to the kids slot on Saturday mornings where they remained popular for a year. When Sonny and Cher split up in ’74, The Hudson Brothers were one of the acts booked as a summer replacement. Like the Monkees, but easier because the act was ready-made. The combination of comedy and music impressed the producers so much that they kept them in mind. They also presented Bearde and his producing partner Allan Blye with a tape of their original music. Circa 1972 they invited producer Chris Bearde, then hard at work on the The Sonny and Cher Hour, to a party, where they performed for about 45 minutes: songs and comedy shtick. All the sudden, they get to star in their own tv show?Īfter years of wondering about this, I finally uncovered the answer in an August 1974 issue of TV Guide. But my question is, if they weren’t already stars, HOW DID THEY GET THEIR OWN TV SHOW? What the heck? They had been slaving away since 1967 under a variety of names without chart success, a kind of lesser Three Dog Night. They are very lackluster outings: “So You are a Star” reached #21, “Rendezvous” reached #26, and I swear I never heard these tunes before although I almost certainly did. The insane thing is, I look at the chronology now…and their only hit records occurred AFTER their tv show was on the air. It was a comedy/ variety series, very much modeled on Sonny and Cher’s, alternating the group’s musical interludes with wacky comedy sketches. Lo and behold, it is mentioned in their Wiki entry: it ran on CBS for one month, August 1974. But I distinctly remembered that they had a PRIME-TIME show prior to this. When I was looking them up on IMDB, I was like “That can’t be right” - it only lists their Saturday morning kids’ show The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show, which ran from September 1974 to August 1975. As usual, my memory hasn’t failed me, and it’s almost disturbing the stuff I remember from television from that time period…many shows that were only on for a handful of weeks but have always felt like a much bigger deal to me (because a few weeks IS a big deal to a nine or ten year old). The three brothers are Bill, Mark and Brett, and I was quite into their television show(s) of 1974-1975. That’s everybody in show business, right? One of the trio, Bill, was married first to Goldie Hawn (and is the father of Kate Hudson), and his second wife was Cindy William s of Laverne and Shirley. Their aunt Sharley Hudson was married to Keenan Wynn. It’s true - or at least it has seemed that way as I’ve wended through the sea of celebrities in working on this blog. You may not know this but in show business, all roads lead to the Hudson Brothers.
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