Today, we're substantially less than bright-eyed and bushy tailed after mucho big screen fun last night at the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival. It was a blast!
And yes, it's true - yours truly slipped a Scrappy cartoon into the extravaganza. What can we say? Love that crew featuring the brilliant Dick Huemer, Sid Marcus and Art Davis!
Do we love seeing the DC5 followed by Mickey Rooney Jr. singing Beatles hits, those guys with the high voices and skinny neckties (The Newbeats) and 1960's heartthrob Adam Faith, doing the bunny hop dance while singing a tune this music fan associates with John Lee Hooker, on SHINDIG? Yes!
A favorite in the program that yours truly didn't bring was the amazing Howdy Doody Presents A Trip To Funland, a 1953 Castle Films opus, which featured, along with Howdy Doody, Buffalo Bob and Clarabelle, scenes from the imaginative science fiction stop-motion animated film Kermesse fantastique, directed by József Misik for Joop Geesink's Dollywood studio.
Showed unintentionally hilarious Marlboro and L&M TV commercials in the extravaganza. Do we like cigarette ads too much? Yes.
Here are some additional nicotine-stained goodies filled with fine tobaccos, courtesy of Prelinger Archives.
The classic comedy fans who write this blog want to call attention to a Go Fund Me on behalf of one of our film historian pals, Nelson Hughes. $2000 more and the fundraiser will meet its goal.
Nelson has forgotten more than most of us know about classic comedy films and silent era knockabout and curated numerous wonderful programs for his That Slapstick Show! series in NYC. We especially like his programs of rare American silent comedies from the Library Of Congress (such as The Celebrity Roast Of Charley Chase) at Brooklyn's City Reliquary and Astoria's Q.E.D.
We enthusiastically support Go Fund Me on behalf of a splendid curator and showman who is among the key figures in the 21st century revival of WW1 era and 1920's Universal Pictures comedies.
In programs he curated, Nelson has brought attention to the slapstick comedy pioneer and producer-director-writer for Keystone, L-KO, Fox "Sunshine" and First National comedies Henry Lehrman (1881-1946).
Along with the ultra-wacky cartoonist turned comic Larry Semon (1889-1928), Lehrman (a.k.a. Pathé Lehrman and Suicide Lehrman) proved to be one highly enthusiastic exponent of a bigger, wilder, spectacular and mayhem-filled more-more-more approach to comedy - great for sight gags and visual humor but dangerous for extras. The fast-fast-fast and then faster Lehrman short subjects reflect that he was a comedy genius - and out of his freakin' mind!
Lehrman and Charlie Chaplin could not stand each other, but they did collaborate on Charlie's earliest films, such as his debut, Making A Living.
There's Charlie, in his tramp costume, thumbing his nose at the universe for the first time in Kid Auto Races At Venice.
Not many of Lehrman's Universal, L-KO, Fox and First National productions exist, but one that does is Almost A Scandal (1915), an L-KO (Lehrman Knock Out) comedy starring the up-to-no-good evil doppelganger of Chaplin, fellow Fred Karno troupe star Billie Ritchie. Both comedians wear that outfit but couldn't be more different; Billie's character is a scoundrel who makes Charlie look genteel by comparison!
Another is His Musical Sneeze (1919), produced by Lehrman and directed by Jack White (a.k.a. Preston Black, the future director of hilarious Three Stooges 2-reelers). There's a very goofy Lloyd Hamilton, supported by Virginia Rappe (the girlfriend of Henry Lehrman, seamstress and occasional actress now known as the unfortunate hard luck gal who shouldn't have attended that Labor Day 1921 party hosted by Roscoe Arbuckle at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel) - and a storyline that looks like a prototype for Bugs Bunny cartoons. Did Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett or Chuck Jones see this?
In closing, we encourage our readers to support this Go Fund Me for Nelson Hughes, an excellent curator and one of our colleagues and comrades in classic movies and silent cinema.
It's mid-April, those inevitable requests for tax filing extensions are in, big big big film events, principally the TCM Classic Film Festival are on - and we're cheap schlubs and not going.
So today, we celebrate the birthday of the only, the hilarious, one of the featured stars of Fred Karno's troupe, Charles Spencer Chaplin.
When it comes to birthdays of comedians and comediennes from the silent era - Charlie Chaplin today, talented actress and extremely reluctant comedienne Fay Tincher (a.k.a. Rowdy Ann on April 17, 1884 and that guy with the glasses who knew more about story construction than anyone in the business, Harold Lloyd, on April 20, 1993 - this week is a bonanza.
Noting that Kevin Brownlow and David Gill's superlative documentary Unknown Chaplin can be purchased on DVD, let us, first and foremost, take a look at The Little Tramp's first insouciant appearance in Charlie's second film, KID AUTO RACES AT VENICE.
In his silver screen debut, MAKING A LIVING, which is on the Chaplin At Keystone DVD set, Charlie plays a slick sharper, possibly based a bit on his pal Max Linder. Chaplin's co-star in MAKING A LIVING and KID AUTO RACES AT VENICE is Henry "Suicide" Lehrman, later responsible for some of the wildest, weirdest, most extreme and most bizarre comedy shorts ever as producer/director at L-Ko and Fox.
The aforementioned DVD set reveals that Charlie was already quite advanced in his visual comedy riffology very early in his movie career.
We love Mabel's Married Life and Mabel At The Wheel because Charlie shares the screen with the winsome and very funny comedienne "Madcap Mabel" Normand. Both richly deserved their inclusion in Leonard Maltin's book The Great Movie Comedians.
Chaplin didn't just play a part other than The Little Tramp in MAKING A LIVING and several of his Keystone Comedies. Charlie's dual role in the Fred Karno "Mumming Birds" troupe's performance of "A Night in an English Music Hall" was committed to celluloid in his Essanay 2-reeler A Night In The Show (1915). Charlie was preceded at Karno in this dual role by Billie "The Man From Nowhere" Ritchie and Billie Reeves.
Tough to pick a favorite (or two or three) from his 1916-1917 series for Mutual. . . Every one is amazing and Charlie's Fred Karno posse (Eric Campbell, Henry Bergman and Albert Austin) shine in supporting roles. Michael Hayde's excellent book Chaplin's Vintage Year: The History Of The Mutual Chaplin Specials delves into these outstanding films in depth.
ONE A.M. absolutely, positively floors this comedy buff, only every time. No doubt Buster Keaton studied ONE A.M. in detail - it's a good bet that the pal of Chaplin and Keaton (and Charlie's Keystone co-star in THE ROUNDERS) Roscoe Arbuckle arranged to borrow a 35mm print for that very purpose!
Charlie's Mutuals were followed by the First National series. Gotta love A DOG'S LIFE!
The Kid is not the first comedy feature film - the Drews' A Florida Enchantment and Mabel Normand's Mickey earn that honor - but it remains innovative for blending slapstick and pathos successfully.
The famous scene from The Gold Rush with Charlie's friend and co-star from Keystone, Mack "Ambrose" Swain, pokes fun at starvation and facing death - and gets big laughs.
One of my favorites from the Chaplin catalog is The Circus.
Saw CITY LIGHTS on the big screen during one of its revivals and was blown away by its brilliant comedy.
Love how an unwitting Charlie gets in the ring with another friend and former Keystone co-star Hank Mann in CITY LIGHTS. It's a Boxing Day favorite!
The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog remain big fans of MODERN TIMES, the last film in which Charlie observed his Carmen Miranda rights and remained silent.
Was there a dry eye in Radio City Music Hall or any other massive theatre at the ending of MODERN TIMES? No.
As the gang here ponders a veritable slew of 2023 losses to art and culture, from MAD Magazine's genius of the fold-in and numerous Snappy Answers To Stupid Questions books, the incomparable Al Jaffee (who made it to 102) to way too many magical master maestros of music (Wayne Shorter, David Lindley, Burt Bacharach, Jeff Beck and Gary Rossington), a fitting response is to seek (and find) belly laughs by celebrating the life and amazing career of the guy who out-Sennetted Mack Sennett and put silver screen slapstick on the map in America.
Thanks for the laughs, Mr. Chaplin - we'll see you when the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum presents the 2023 edition of Charlie Chaplin Days. Cheers!
The spotlight is on vintage silents in several events over the following nine days.
Tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 12:00 noon Pacific Time, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents Amazing Tales Online: Restoring the Films of William S. Hart, featuring George Eastman Museum Senior Curator Peter Bagrov and Preservation Manager Anthony L’Abbate.
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival press release elaborates:
In 2021 the Moving Image Department at the George Eastman Museum embarked on a multiyear project, funded by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation, to restore nine silent films of one of the first western superstars, William S. Hart (1864 – 1946). In addition to materials in the museum’s own collection, elements from at least seven other archives – The Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, UCLA, Fondazione Cineteca Italiana, La Cinémathèque française, Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée, and the EYE Film Museum (the Netherlands) – will be used to put the jigsaw puzzle together. During the search for elements, many discoveries were made – including two films previously considered lost!
While enthusiastically applauding the efforts of the George Eastman Museum and the many archives involved in painstakingly restorating William S. Hart's films, which are between Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson and Tom Mix in the lineage of western movies, all the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog can think of right now is The Frozen North, Buster Keaton's brutal and hilarious spoof of Hart.
Classic film screenings, hallelujah, are starting to happen again. . . knock on wood. Next Friday, February 18, at NYC's Society of Illustrators, glorious 16mm film rules.
From the 16mm collection of animation historian, archivist and preservationist Tommy José Stathes, there will be a fun program of classic cartoons that runs from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Featured in the Friday night show: Felix the Cat, Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, Porky Pig and Flip The Frog.
One of Charlie Chaplin's crowning achievements, City Lights, will be seen in glorious 35mm at Oakland's Paramount Theatre. Accompanying in grand fashion: the Oakland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Timothy Brock.
This show is dedicated to the memory of Michael Morgan, the conductor and Music Director of the Oakland Symphony who passed in 2021.
Advance tickets for City Lights with Oakland Symphony Orchestra LIVE at the Paramount can be bought via Ticketmaster or in person at the Paramount’s Box Office in Oakland (between 12:00 noon and 5:00 pm on Fridays). San Francisco Silent Film Festival members receive a $5 discount per ticket.
Yes, Virginia Cherill, proof of COVID-19 vaccination is required to attend this event.
To whet your appetite for some Chaplin on the big screen, check out Roger Ebert's review of City Lights.
If it isn't possible to get to Oakland and see City Lights at the Paramount on Saturday night, at least there is The Silent Comedy Watch Party, on YouTube on Sunday at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time. One can watch the presentation on Hart and then follow it with The Silent Comedy Watch Party.
Co-hosts Ben Model and Steve Massa have been busy restoring and releasing silent comedy rarities (the latest starring Marion Davies) on DVD and Blu-ray.
Sincerely hope that Omicron will eventually fade and it will be possible to see such annual events as the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum's Charlie Chaplin Days again. . .
Until then, City Lights will bring the laughs, as it has since its theatrical release in January 30, 1931.
Felix the Cat and Farmer Al Falfa shall entertain audiences as they have for 100+ years. Omicron variant, please, go away and STFU!
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are happy to hear that the Psychotronix Film Festival shall return this Saturday evening to the Orinda Theatre.
Happy to see my old friends and collaborators emerging from this extended coronavirus and lockdown-related hiatus to carry on their excellent work providing great entertainment, but NOT happy that I will not be there in person.
Feels like I have not been involved in a Psychotronix Film Festival for a decade, although I never miss hearing Psychotronix co-founder Robert Emmett work his movie and TV soundtrack mojo every Saturday morning on KFJC.
There will be a selection of hand-picked psychotronic goodness, on glorious 16mm film, from the Sci Fi Bob and Scott Moon/Cinema Insomnia Archives!
Yes, straight from Derek Zemrak's retro movie mecca in Orinda, California, there will be trailers from Z movies (starring non-union actors in cheap robot, gorilla and "thunder lizard" suits), theatre snack bar ads, weird cartoons, well-meaning but inept 1950's educational films, Soundies, Scopitones and more. . .
Love seeing how audiences respond to such vintage TV ads as the following. . .
Bums me out that I won't be in Orinda to bring vintage 1950's car commercials to the show! Surely, somebody out there finds TV commercials for the Rambler, Hudson Hornet and Mercury Comet as entertaining as I do.
Psychotronix Film Festival Saturday June 26, 2021 at 7:00 p.m. PST Orinda Theatre
2 Orinda Theatre Square
Orinda, CA 94563
Movieline: (925) 254-9060
As one of the trifecta of founders of the festival (along with Sci Fi Bob Ekman and Robert Emmett), I hope this show is a big hit with an SRO crowd - like so many of those Foothill College extravaganzas.
In Brooklyn, across the country from my Psychotronix Film Festival friends but also presenting classic movies in glorious 16mm film for an audience will be our friends at the Tommy Stathes Cartoon Carnival.
Here, Tommy elaborates on his love of animation.
On Sunday, June 27th, 2021, the 95th installment of the animation extravaganza, presented and curated by Cartoons On Film, returns to the City Reliquary on 370 Metropolitan Avenue.
This will be the Tommy Stathes Cartoon Carnival's first non-online screening since February 2020.
Showtime is 8:00 p.m. EST. Show tix are $15 and are can be purchased in advance here.
It's the moment we've all been waiting over a year for: the big return of 16mm (no digital!) animated cartoons from the 1920s to the 1940s, straight from the Stathes Archives—screened *in person* at a beloved venue—The City Reliquary's lovely backyard, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn!
For program #95, our nearly two hours of animated fun shine the spotlight on that which many of us have sorely missed over the past year: going places, and being out on the town with friends and crowds.
The selection of shorts features a wide array of Cartoon Carnival favorites... from silent era superstars Bobby Bumps, Farmer Alfalfa, Koko the Clown, and Felix; to the Van Beuren Studios' Tom & Jerry (not the cat and mouse!) and Molly Moo Cow; then onward with Krazy Kat, Buddy, Egghead, and even Gumby—plus a few other oddities and surprises mixed in, as always.
In acknowledgement of Pride Month, we're also selecting a couple of 1930s shorts with brief cameos from queer-coded characters, whom we lovingly reclaim as part of our LGBTQIA+ inclusive Cartoon Carnival family.
Be sure to bring all your family and friends out for this much-anticipated opportunity to see these classic and now-rare cartoons the way they were meant to be seen—projected on 'reel' film, and enjoyed with a physical audience!
There is a GoFundMe campaign to relaunch both the online version of the Cartoon Carnival, and a series of animation screenings, in the near future. Stay t00ned! For more info, see TommyJose.com and Cartoons On Film.
This year's event, an online version of the annual weekend of presentations on the iconic comedian's life and career, corresponds with the 100th anniversary of the Chaplin classic, The Kid.
Charlie Chaplin Days spotlights all five films that Charlie made for the Essanay Studio in 1915: A Night Out (shot in Niles, with outdoor locations in Oakland and San Jose), The Champion (filmed in downtown Niles), In The Park (filmed at North Lake in Golden Gate Park), A Jitney Elopement (interiors filmed at the glass stage at Niles, exteriors at the Great Highway and Murphy Windmill at the edge of Golden Gate Park) and The Tramp, in which Chaplin firmly established his "little tramp" character (filmed March 1915 in Niles on 2nd Street and in Niles Canyon), as well as Charlie's First National Studio films Sunnyside, A Day's Pleasure and The Idle Class.
There will be a Zoom discussion of the 1914 Mack Sennett feature Tillie's Punctured Romance (co-starring Charlie with Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and the Keystone stock company) and presentations by actor and Chaplin doppelganger Jason Allin, movie locations expert John Bengtson, Sarah Biegelsen, Nigel Dreiner, Dan Kamin (author of The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin: Artistry in Motion), Hooman Mehran and Lisa Stein Haven, as well as a Whiz Bang Talent Show, Trivia Quiz, Lookalike Contest and Goodtime Hour.
Links to the films and presentations for Charlie Chaplin Days 2021 will become active at 12:01am on each day of the weekend.
