Ben Model’s blog

  • Mar 6: played for Lloyd’s The Freshman at MoMA. Had a pretty full house and the film went over really well. This is the 3rd time I’ve gotten to play for it in the last several months. While it’s one if the iconic Lloyd films, I still like Kid Brother…

  • Mar 5 – arrived at MoMA early to throw the Miditzer together for a show of Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld with George Bancroft, Evelyn Brent and Clive Brook. Oh, yeah, and Larry Semon in a character part. Brook comes off better than Bancroft as an actor, and Brook’s screen presence…

  • Mar 4 – I can’t put my finger on why, but Valentino’s Monsieur Beaucaire and Barrymore’s Beau Brummel are two of my least favorite mid-20’s silent dramas. Perhaps there’s something about putting either of these two dynamic personas in a European powdered-wig melodrama. Beau Brummel also ends a few times.…

  • Tues, March 3 – played for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910) and The Whirl of Life (1915) at the Bruno Walter Auditorium, where the Donnell programming is now presented. This was part of a series of films curated by Joe Yransky related to the “Curtain Call” exhibit at the…

  • Monday, March 2 – I played for a selection of animated shorts and films made by women at Antonia Lant’s film history class at NYU. Antonia came to a Silent Clowns show several years ago and introduced herself, and I’ve played once a year at her class ever since. Antonia’s…

  • Last Friday I recorded a piano score for the 1910 1-reeler White Fawn’s Devotion which will be an extra on Milestone’s upcoming DVD of The Exiles. White Fawn was recently added to the National Film Registry, and this scoring opportunity gave me the chance to see the film. I missed…

  • Okay, this is a photo of the beautiful 200-seat auditorium at the Hewlett-Woodmere library before everybody showed up for today’s show of Safety Last. If I’d remembered to charge my camera battery there’d be a photo or two of me and Philip Harwood to post here as well. Piano was…

  • Here are some photos taken on Tuesday at Radio City Music Hall. I was there as part of an invited walk-through of RCMH held by SVA’s creative and tech teams for their annual graduation exercises. Last year I played piano for their graduation, improvising 15-or-so pieces of music while graduates…

  • Spent a piece of yesterday screening The Whirl of Life (1915) and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910) at the NYPL for the Performing Arts. The legendary Donnell Media Center and its film and video collection as well as its staff (as of now sans Joe Yransky, who retired in…

  • Hey, isn’t that Al St. John next to the bone-head commander who thinks the Rock River bridge is strong enough to hold his train? Bruce and Steve were talking about this after the show, pretty certain it’s Al, and so I grabbed this frame from the DVD. Al’s not in…