Today and Tomorrow: Niles Film Museum Salutes Al Christie

Shifting the blog's focus from music to silent movies, we note this weekend's special presentations by the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum. There will be a Circus History Live presentation on Sunday afternoon, featuring a recently restored 1902 film of a Ringling Brothers parade in Indianapolis. This weekend's Tribute To Al Christie is a retrospective covering the extremely prolific yet lesser known mogul/producer/director of silent era comedy.

This tribute presents 12 short films directed or produced by Christie.

Film historians, authors and silent comedy experts Sam Gill and Steve Massa, with film collector Michael Aus (who has provided cinematic rarities for the tribute), will tell us more about Christie Comedies, including a discussion on Zoom.

The American Cinematheque noted in the program notes for a 2013 retrospective of the Al Christie studio's films, "Christie's style was often risqué, sometimes bizarre and even borderline surreal, but always witty and hilarious."

The Saturday show of Christie films produced for Nestor in 1914-1915 features Eddie Lyons and Lee Moran, supported by actress, comedienne and frequent player in westerns Victoria Forde (soon to co-star with - and marry - cowboy star Tom Mix).



Sunday's program focuses on Christie Comedies from the 1920's and features most of the studio's flagship stars of the era: Dorothy Devore, Bobby Vernon, Neal Burns, Jimmie Adams, Walter Hiers and Jack Duffy.

Christie's studio aspired to a sophisticated alternative to knockabout comedy - more farcical and situational, less slapstick - during these times when the best known laugh factory was Mack Sennett's Keystone, and Hal Roach was just getting started with Rolin Films, featuring new star Harold Lloyd. The style of the Nestor and Christie Studio comedies of the teens was an ensemble approach, not dominated by any one player, and somewhere in between the situational humor exemplified by John Bunny and Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew and the more wacky approach of the first silver screen comedy star, Max Linder.

Headlining much of the Saturday program: Eddie Lyons and Lee Moran, who co-starred in farces with hints of slapstick and silliness - over 300 films - for Christie, beginning at Nestor comedies in 1914.



Eddie Lyons & Lee Moran would continue to be the exponents of the Christie Comedies house style to some degree even after they left to produce, write, direct and star in the Lyons-Moran Star Comedies series and feature films for Universal.



The Al Christie studio stuck to this approach, eschewing broad physical humor for the most part. Frequently, the films spotlighted comediennes and comic leading ladies such as Victoria Forde, Edith Roberts, Billie Rhodes, Betty Compson, Priscilla Dean, Ethel Lynn and Fay Tincher. In the 1920's, the studio produced feature films starring Christie Comedies stalwart Dorothy deVore (seen in Kidding Katie in Sunday's program).

During the heydey of Lyons & Moran at Christie, the silver screen comedy world, from Sennett and Arbuckle to former Sennett director Henry Lehrman to the "whirls" of circus clown Musty Suffer to Kalem's grotesque team of "Ham & Bud," to Vitagraph's cartoonist and magician turned-slapstickmeister Larry Semon, was headed in the opposite direction.

A decade after their WW1 era stars moved on, some (Betty Compson) to feature film stardom, Christie Comedies increasingly moved away from this style. As the 1920's progressed, Christie Comedies increasingly stressed chases and action. By the time Christie began releasing comedies through Paramount at the end of the silent era, the transition to a more knockabout-oriented Sennett inspired approach was complete.



The lineup of films for A Tribute To Al Christie is as follows:

Saturday March 20th:
Detective Dan Cupid (1914) Directed by Al Christie, starring Eddie Lyons, Lee Moran, Victoria Forde.
Behind The Screen (1915)
Lizzie's Dizzy Career (1915) Eddie Lyons, Lee Moran, Victoria Forde
Pruning the Movies (1915) Eddie Lyons, Lee Moran, Carmen de Phillipi
Mr. Fatima (1920) Eddie Barry, Earle Rodney, Helen Darling
Rocking The Boat (1921) Earle Rodney, Irene Dalton, Henry Murdock

Sunday March 21:

Kidding Katie (1923) Dorothy Devore, Babe London
A Perfect 36 (1923) Bobby Vernon, Teddy Sampson
Fool Proof (1924) Neal Burns, Rosa Gore
Grandpa's Girl (1924) Jack Duffy, Kathleen Clifford
A Rarin' Romeo (1925) Walter Hiers, Jack Duffy
Swiss Movements (1927) Jimmie Adams, Billy Engle, Doris Dawson


LIVE ZOOM - 5:00pm PT 8:00pm ET
Sam, Steve, and Michael will be live for a Zoom discussion of Al Christie's films and comedy.

The aforementioned Circus Historical Society screening, Circus, Part IV - Wagon By Wagon, shall be at 4:00pm PT, 6:00pm CT, 7:00pm ET on Sunday.

Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum curator, film programmer, historian and author David Kiehn, joined by historian Fred Dahlinger and host Chris Berry, will present the 1902 film of a Ringling Brothers Circus parade in Indianapolis, Indiana. CLICK HERE to register for this event.

We yet again extend a respectful tip of the Max Linder top hat to the museum for doing this monthly series of most welcome online events through this last year+ of pandemic lockdown. Looking forward to next month's program on the history of April 18, 1906 - San Francisco Earthquake. For more, check out the museum's YouTube channel.

Back in 2019: Silent Movie Innovators Bowers & Blaché

Good news for silent movie aficionados: a new Blu-ray set spotlights stop-motion animation innovator Charley Bowers, while a new documentary now in movie theaters covers the career of filmmaking pioneer Alice Guy-Blaché. There is also a new DVD collecting the few existing films starring World War I era comedians Eddie Lyons & Lee Moran.



The Extraordinary World Of Charley Bowers isn't the first Charley Bowers collection; that was a 2-DVD set issued back in the 1990's.



The Extraordinary World Of Charley Bowers is, however, the first collection on Blu-ray and includes newly found titles not on the previous DVD release.



First heard about this Bowers Blu-ray when the collection was announced in 2014 and am happy to see it officially out!



The animation and sight gag-packed Bowers Comedies get the restoration treatment on Blu-ray from Lobster Films, distributed by Flicker Alley.



The films of Bowers, the indescribable comic, animator and illustrator, who blended live-action silent era comedy with innovative stop-motion techniques akin to what Willis "King Kong" O Brien and Ladislaw Starewicz were doing, are more akin to the way-out visionary ideas of Ernie Kovacs than to any of his 1920's contemporaries.



The Charley Bowers Blu-ray is available for pre-order and will be officially released on June 25.



For more on the films of Charley Bowers, check out author Imogen Sara Smith's outstanding and scholarly article on the animator/comedian in Bright Lights Film Journal.


Courtesy of Be Natural Productions


Another extraordinary visionary, high atop the short list of the most important and groundbreaking figures in the history of movies, who was there blazing new trails with the Lumiere brothers at the very beginning: producer-director-writer-cinematographer and head of Solax Studios, Alice Guy-Blaché.



In Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, one of the very first filmmakers (arguably, the first narrative filmmaker), the cinema's first mogul gets her due.



The new film by Pamela B. Green tells the Alice Guy-Blaché story via a host of recently discovered photos and historic footage.



The following trailer for Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché reveals that, rather astonishingly, a fair number of movie stars, filmmakers, producers and directors had never heard of Alice Guy Blaché.



Frankly, that causes us at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog to shake our heads in disbelief.



We were thrilled and delighted to devote a post to the original Kickstarter which raised the initial funds to get the ball rolling on its production.



As Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy Blaché was in production, a few more of Mademoiselle Blaché's long lost films - it's been estimated that she made over a thousand - turned up. Some are on the Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers Blu-ray and the Early Women Filmmakers: An International Anthology collection from Flicker Alley.




While it's true that very little was said about her in film history courses 40 years ago - her entire cinematic legacy was lost back then - Alice Guy Blaché's legacy as a female moviemaking powerhouse before the rise of Mary Pickford as producer-star, before the word "filmmaker" existed, has received much long overdue acclaim, including several books, theatrical showings of the aforementioned Kino Lorber collection Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers, and a comprehensive Whitney Museum exhibit, over the past decade.



Those who saw her films on Turner Classic Movies in 2013, as well as on the big screen as part of a presentation by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival a few years ago, certainly are well aware of Alice Guy-Blaché.



Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché is the first documentary about Blaché in quite a few years to hit the film festival circuit and receive a theatrical release, but not the first documentary about Alice Guy Blaché.



With the research of historians Anthony Slide and Alison McMahan, who have championed her work for decades, The National Film Board of Canada produced The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blaché, which included interview footage of Alice from the 1950's, in 1995.



For more info on Alice Guy-Blaché, see:

Women Film Pioneers Project

Auteur! Auteur!: 'Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché'

Alice Guy-Blaché, Forgotten Film Pioneer

A four book series, The Life and Work of Alice Guy-Blaché by Janelle Dietrick:



Alice & Eiffel: A New History of Early Cinema and the Love Story Kept Secret for a Century

Illuminating Moments: The Films of Alice Guy-Blaché

La Fée Aux Choux: Alice Guy's Garden of Dreams

Mademoiselle Alice: A Novel




Two books by Alison McMahan

Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema

The Solax Films of Alice Guy Blaché



Completing today's post on silent film rarities, a limited edition DVD collects the few surviving films of the prolific comedians Eddie Lyons & Lee Moran.



Lyons & Moran were very talented and funny comic actors, at first part of a troupe directed by Al Christie that made the Nestor Comedies series.



Key in a sophisticated comedy and farce lineage, along with the duo of John Bunny and Flora Finch and the marital comedy stars Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew, the witty comic actors were very important in the history of screen humor and among the first to establish the Al Christie studio's situational comedy approach.



Eddie Lyons and Lee Moran co-starred in dozens of sophisticated farces with hints of slapstick and silliness - over 300 films - for Nestor and Universal from 1912-1921.



The Lyons-Moran Comedies' influence continued after the team broke up in 1921. Charley Chase, who, along with future Our Gang diector Robert McGowan, worked as a writer/director on the sophisticated comedies of Mr & Mrs. Carter DeHaven in 1920, began his career making uncredited cameos in Eddie Lyons & Lee Moran Nestor comedies, before joining Mack Sennett's Keystone as a stock company member in 1914. Chase was and eventually would, in collaboration with co-director Leo McCarey at the Hal Roach studio, blend elements of a sophisticated comedy approach with goofy sight gags and judicious moments of outrageous slapstick.



They also wrote and directed a fair number of their own starring vehicles, especially in the last series for Universal, the Lyons-Moran Star Comedies.



Whether the duo were a comedy team in the same sense as Laurel & Hardy remains debatable - this blogger thinks the troupe as a whole, which also featured comediennes Victoria Forde, Edith Roberts, Betty Compson, Billie Rhodes and Charlotte Merriam, constituted the comedy team - at least now it is possible to see a few of the Lyons & Moran films on DVD, thanks to the Library of Congress and the efforts of Rare Silent Films in Portland, OR.



Even more amazing is that the Early Universal Shorts of Lyons & Moran DVD is labeled volume 1; the incredibly low survivability rate on Lyons & Moran films makes one wonder how there could be actually enough existing titles to make a volume 2. Maybe there are. . .