Category: Silent Comedy Film History
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Before When Harry Met Charlie
Like many people who are into classic film, I only knew Harry Myers as the drunk millionaire in Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931). I knew he didn’t just appear out of nowhere, hand-picked form obscurity the way Virginia Cherrill had been. So, when I spotted him as one of the two comedy relief cowboys in…
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Billy Franey and Grover Jones, Dynamic Duo
I knew the name Billy Franey because Blackhawk Films sold prints of The Bath Dub (1921). I’d seen this listed in their monthly bulletins over and over growing up. I’d never seen the film, so The Water Plug (1920) was my first Franey short. I was impressed. It was one of a handful of rare…
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Rare Cartoons in a Queens NY Basement
Prints of rare and lost films turn up in odd places. A distant cousin in Queens, removed a few times and older than my folks, had a large collection of 16mm silents that I wound up with after he passed away. Mostly old 3rd- or 4th gen dupes of Chaplin shorts, but a few gems…
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Turning The Lights Off and On In a Silent Film
The Raymond Griffith comedy You’d Be Surprised (1926) is not as well-known as his other starring features. That’s not saying much, given that most classic film fans don’t know Raymond Griffith and that most of his films are lost.This one deserves a better reputation, but I get why it’s not on the tiny hit parade…
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Finding More of Baby Peggy
A Baby Peggy Rediscovery — or: When “Circus Clowns” Doesn’t Mean “Circus Clowns” I was pretty much set with additional material for the DVD of the Library of Congress’ restoration of The Family Secret. After playing for MoMA’s restoration of the short Miles of Smiles, I’d inquired about and gotten the okay to include it…
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A Keaton Short and the 19th Amendment
I’ve been seeing items posted online over the last few months commemorating the 100th anniversary of the passing by Congress of the 19th Amendment. This reminded me of a joke in a Buster Keaton film. It’s a topical joke, one that I never got and which usually doesn’t a get a laugh. There is a…
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Finding Wallace Lupino’s Lost Laugh
A Rare Comedy Short Made When the Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread Was Still Sliced Bread A CBS Sunday Morning Report on people who collect toasters included a factoid that made me think of Wallace Lupino, brother of Lupino Lane. There is a gag in The Lost Laugh (1928) involving a toaster that I’d not…
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A Harold Lloyd – Constance Talmadge Crossover
I read silent movie title cards and letter insert shots faster than most people in the audience do. I have to, so I get the meat of the info before the audience does, so I can stay ahead of things. This gives me extra time to look at the periphery in a newspaper insert. It’s…
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Musty Boxes Wolheim to Save Harrison Ford’s Bacon
I should know if Harry Watson, Jr. and Marion Davies appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies together (alas, for the moment, I don’t). If they didn’t, Watson was certainly on Davies’ radar as he has supporting character roles in two of her features, films made half a dozen years after his “Musty Suffer” series of shorts.…
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Mail-Order Netflix – in 1912
Several decades before Netflix offered home viewers of Hollywood films the opportunity to order-rent them by mail on DVD, the same opportunity existed. 16mm versions of movies shown in theaters were offered in the 1920s and 1930s by the Kodascope Library, the Universal Show-At-Home LIbrary and others. There was another home-use format that preceded those…