Ben Model’s blog
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With the absence of a live studio audience currently being enforced, hosts of entertainment programs on TV are faced with a challenge. But, ultimately, doing so will enable them to better participate in what Ernie Kovacs referred to on one of his shows as “an intimate vacuum”. It’s gotten to…
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Buster Keaton Washes Up in The General
I received notice Tuesday from the NYPL Library for the Performing Arts that that Silent Clowns Film Series screening of Keaton’s Our Hospitality on Sat March 14 was going to be cancelled. So were all public events at all branches of the NYPL I needed an image from a silent…
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Let’s Hear It For Alice Howell
Mabel Normand had a head start. I’ll give you that. Her association with Mack Sennett and with Roscoe Arbuckle has put her name in the consciousness of those with only a passing awareness of silent film. The Jerry Herman musical “Mack and Mabel” didn’t hurt either. Alice Howell, on the…
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Charley Chase Takes a Trip
The rehearsals and performance of my orchestral score for the Charley Chase short “Dog Shy” in February were probably the first time I’d watched the film several times in a while. My participation in the NYC Physical Comedy Lab in the time that has passed since the score premiered three…
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Remembering Diana Serra Cary
I never got to meet Diana Serra Cary, but I did have a couple of phone conversations with her. This was while I was producing the DVD release of one of her feature films, The Family Secret (1925). She passed away this past Monday, February 24, and I wanted to…
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“Rediscovering Roscoe”: Arbuckle Made More Films Than You Think
We classic film fans typically own several “The Films of…” books that cover the careers of important stars or directors. Unavailable for our shelves has been a “films of” entry for one of the main comedians of the silent era who, like Chaplin and Keaton, was both star and director.…
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Chasing Charlie in The Adventurer
I’ve heard the term “baby pictures” used when referring to a composer or other artist’s early work. They were made at a certain point in the artistic arc of a particular creative person, someone whose work has developed and matured and improved. Those early works don’t get revisited and revised.…
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When a Pop Tune in a Silent Movie Isn’t Real…or Is It?
“Sing ‘Fly, Birdie, Fly’,” Angela Fish is prompted by her father in a scene from “Bell Boy 13”. She sits at the piano, beckons Douglas MacLean to join her on the bench, and launches into the song. What do I play here? There isn’t the usual obligatory shot of the…
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Not All Silent Film Needs A Reality Check
“Silent films were never really silent” is one of the main tenets one hears or says in defense of silent films. The medium’s name itself has stuck since the talkie transition, conjuring up a negative in the imagination of anyone who reads or hears it. The name has also reinforced…
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Douglas MacLean-Spotting Around the Ince Lot
Owners of Blackhawk Films 16mm and 8mm prints of “A Tour of the Thomas Ince Studios” probably had no idea why the smiling gentleman, seen racing to the studio in one segment, keeps popping up throughout the film. His is not a familiar face to silent film fans, so why…