The Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival is three days of films, lectures, and fun named in honor of the man who, as co-founder of Essanay Studios with George K. Spoor, brought the movies to Niles: "Broncho Billy" Anderson. Get festival passes or advance tickets for individual shows here.
This year's Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival includes extremely rare Essanay Studio Films, tributes to Women in Film who starred for Essanay in the early days of movies, ultra-wacky comedies featuring Mack Sennett Productions headliner (and, later, an excellent and most prolific character actor) Billy Bevan, Lenticular Kodacolor home movies, a film about Greta Garbo made for Turner Classic Movies by Kevin Brownlow and Patrick Stansbury among several documentaries on classic movies (The Love Goddesses, The Movies Go West, The Western Costume Company), a presentation by Bison Studios historian and author Marc Wanamaker and a Focus on Film Collectors noting their contributions to preservation of our cinematic heritage.
Friday, July 26 7:30 p.m.
The Love Goddesses
(1965, Walter Reade-Sterling Presentation)
Director Saul J. Turrell’s exploration of sex in the movies. From the silent era and Clara Bow to Cinemascope and Marilyn Monroe, see how the movie industry’s depiction of sex has changed through the decades. Here's an excerpt from it.
Preceded by the documentary, The Western Costume Company (1951)
From the NESFM website: This noteworthy business has been a landmark in Hollywood for decades. Not only has it been supplying “Western" costumes to movie producers, but costumes, armor, weapons, medals, furniture, and props of all kinds from all periods of history. We are shown through the various department of this huge facility, and follow a beautiful and fancy costume from its inception on a designer's drawing-board through its assembly end eventual clothing of a model, along with a number of other unusual and beautiful costumes used not only by motion picture studios, but by theatrical and television producers as well.
Saturday, July 27
11:00 a.m. Walking Tour of Niles
11:00 a.m. movies (FREE program) - Broncho Billy: The First Reel Cowboy (1998, Arkansas Educational Television Network)
This short film details the career of Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson, the very first cowboy movie star. Featured in more than 200 westerns, he preceded the likes of William S. Hart and Tom Mix as the silver screen's cowboy headliner.
G. M. Anderson, as star, producer and director, was instrumental in the formation and development of the western movie genre.
The influence of Broncho Billy is still seen today in films depicting the Old West.
The museum thanks the creators of this documentary for allowing us to screen it.
The Movies Go West (1974, Bell) This film is one of the first visual explorations of the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company as it existed in Niles 100 years ago. Filmmaker Geoffrey Bell was at the helm for this project, which was narrated by Hal Angus, one of the players at the old studio and husband to the head of the scenario department, Josephine Rector. The Niles Museum's Rena Kiehn elaborates:
The Movies Go West includes invaluable images of Niles in the 1970's, including film taken of the original barn that Broncho Billy settled in when first arriving in town, before building a then state-of-the-art studio a block
away.
1:00 p.m. The Women of Essanay
A selection of Essanay Film Manufacturing Company films made in Chicago and Niles, featuring top movie actresses of the day, including Ethel Clayton, Martha Russell, Dolores Cassinelli, Ruth Stonehouse, Eleanor Blevins, Marguerite Clayton, Evelyn Selbie, Bessie Sankey and Margaret Joslin. The program also includes stories about those who were instrumental behind the scenes and involved with getting the productions completed.
A special screening of Garbo, the Photoplay Productions (Kevin Brownlow, Christopher Bird and Patrick Stansbury) documentary celebrating the centenary of the birth of the iconic movie star of iconic movie stars. It covers the early years of Greta Garbo in Sweden, her movie career, early retirement from showbiz and subsequent life in NYC. It features interviews with Greta's friends from later life, friends and such filmmakers who worked with her as Clarence Brown.
7:30 p.m. Flesh And The Devil
(1927, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) In Greta Garbo’s breakthrough picture she delivers a luminous performance as a new type of vamp: less consistently cruel and more subtle than earlier styles. Director Clarence Brown recalled, “Flesh And The Devil was my first picture for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and it really made Garbo.” Her name was listed under the title, which would change after the film’s phenomenal success. She became the most famous woman in the world and the leading film actress. Starring Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, and Lars Hanson. Directed by Clarence Brown.
Opening the Saturday night show, two Mack Sennett comedy shorts featuring goofball du jour Billy Bevan, leader of The Charge Of The Mustached Brigade!
The Golf Nut (1927, Mack Sennett Comedies) Co-starring Vernon Dent. Billy plays a wacky photographer and terrible golfer who brings unmitigated disaster to the links.
Ice Cold Cocos (1926, Mack Sennett Comedies) Billy and his pal Andy Clyde impersonate two ice-delivery men in a suburban town. Mayhem ensues.
Jon Mirsalis, Kurzweil Keyboard Accompaniment
Sunday, July 28
10:45 a.m.
Special Behind-the-Scenes REAL vs. REEL program (FREE program)
Vintage Los Angeles film studios expert and special guest Marc Wanamaker will share some behind-the-scenes images and amazing tales of REAL California history intertwined with motion picture history, the REEL kind. He will share images from two recent books he co-authored: Hollywood: Behind the Lens - Treasures from the Bison Archives (with Steven Bingen) and Hollywood’s Trains and Trolleys (with Josef Lesser).
12:30 p.m.
Hidden Colors of the California Nursery and Beyond: Lenticular Kodacolor Home Movies (FREE program) Back for its second year, with different films! See rare home movies of the Niles Nursery and beyond in color for the first time in 90 years! Local horticultural historian Janet Barton and our museum's own Zack Sutherland walk you through this long-defunct technique of color film processing, and the resulting footage taken in Niles and elsewhere in California. Piano Accompaniment by David Drazin. (High-definition Digital presentation)
2:30 pm - Focus On Film Collectors featuring The Isle of Hope (1925, Richard Talmadge Productions)
Film collector Michael Aus was scrolling through eBay one night when he found a print of The Isle of Hope, a formerly-lost film for sale. After acquiring the only print, Aus deposited the film here at our museum – thus giving us an opportunity at this year's festival to demonstrate how film collectors have been essential
over the decades to making rare or lost material visible to the public.
The Isle of Hope is a stunt-filled adventure feature film starring Richard Talmadge, a former circus tumbling performer turned movie actor and producer, later turned Hollywood stuntman. Also featured are Helen Ferguson (a former player at the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in Chicago), James A. Marcus,mand George Reed. (High-definition digital presentation)
4:30 pm Film Is Dead, Long Live Film! (2024, Cold Eye Films)
This award-winning documentary explores the vanishing world of private film collecting: an obsessive, secretive, often illicit realm of basement film vaults, piled high with forgotten reels. Condemned as pirates and hounded by the FBI, film collectors have long lurked in the shadows. Yet their efforts have resulted in the survival of countless films that would otherwise have been lost to history. Journeying to film festivals, dealer rooms, archives, film storage and workspaces, and ad-hoc screening rooms, a trove of interviews is amassed which
profiles the people involved with collecting and preserving film, underscoring their motivations and legacies. Produced and directed by Peter Flynn.
Preceded by short subjects from the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum's archive:
Ringling Brothers Circus Parade (1902) A visiting circus and onlookers in a street scene.
Suzie Loses Her First Tooth (early 1920s) This early example of an infomercial is an animated tale of heroes and villains in a battle over dental hygiene.
Piano Accompaniment for shorts by Bruce Loeb.
The Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival shall hold forth at the Edison Theater and the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum at 37417 Niles Boulevard, Fremont, CA 94536. 510-494-1411.
There will be Special Festival Hours for the museum and store.
After one doozy of a week, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog were wondering what the next blog post would cover. Thankfully, the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum and favorite authors Kliph Nesteroff, Ben Ohmart and Keith Scott have provided said topics for us! Turns out tomorrow is the natal anniversary of comic character actor and all-time great cartoon and radio voice artist Walter Tetley.
Mr. Tetley is best known today as the voice of Mr. Peabody's intrepid boy assistant Sherman.
He's also the voice of Felix The Cat in the Van Beuren Studio's Disney-fied revival in the Rainbow Parade series, the Walter Lantz Studio's Andy Panda, UPA's Dusty of The Circus for The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show and PG&E's energetic singing spokes-electron, the ELECTRIC Reddy Kilowatt, who should have played a solid body electric guitar featuring a bolt-on neck.
It would be a grotesque understatement to state that Walter Tetley was one of the hardest working radio actors not named Mel Blanc. He was a scream appearing with Jack Benny, Bob Hope and Burns & Allen, on satirist Fred Allen's Town Hall Tonight, as a key driver of the comedy in The Great Gildersleeve and as the not-so-secret weapon, a cleanup hitting laugh-getter, on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show.
In addition, he has brief but very funny cameos in a gazillion movies, such as this one in the Abbott & Costello vehicle Who Done It.
The aforementioned and formidable Kliph Nesteroff penned, as one of his many excellent articles for WFMU's Beware Of The Blog, Credit Castrated: The Voice of Walter Tetley, a very good overview focusing on Mr. Tetley's numerous hilarious turns as radio's "mean widdle kid" and both varied and prolific work on records. (NOTE: posters on OTRCAT and YouTube have done us comedy and OTR fans a massive favor by compiling devastatingly funny turns in the Walter Tetley Radio Collection, including his memorable appearances on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show)
Expert on old time radio and mid-20th century pop culture Ben Ohmart, with OTR archivist Charles Stumpf, penned an outstanding book, Walter Tetley: For Corn's Sake on the voice artist's life and times.
The description of Walter Tetley: For Corn's Sake elaborates: WALTER TETLEY (1915-1975) was the quintessential kid voice of radio. His distinguished voice career began in the early 1930s and lasted until radio s final years in the 1950s. He was also a very private person who never gave interviews, instead choosing to immerse himself in charity and voice work throughout most of his life. For the FIRST time in print finally a complete biography on one of radio s most beloved character actors. Including many RARE PHOTOS and THOUSANDS OF CREDITS, most of which have never been seen or discussed in any article or book. That is because this biography has been written with the aid of Walter s personal scrapbooks! From The Great Gildersleeve to Rocky and Bullwinkle's Peabody and Sherman and beyond. Includes a detailed account of Walter's 1930's public appearances.
It's tough to know where to start or where to end with Walter Tetley's career, given how, in addition to countless radio show roles, his cameos in movies and voice-overs on records are numerous. Among said credits, Walter was a favorite of Stan Freberg's. He's a hoot as the hipster in Yankee Doodle Go Home, from Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America volume 1: The Early Years (1961).
Wikipedia adds: In 1973 Tetley made an appearance on Rod Serling's radio series The Zero Hour. He could be heard in the "Princess Stakes Murder" episodes beginning the week of November 19.
So, a day before his birthday, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog respectfully tips the battered showbiz top hat to the great Walter Tetley. Along with Mel Blanc, Danny Webb, Kent Rogers, June Foray, Bea Benaderet, Sara Berner, Don Messick, Daws Butler and Bill Scott, to name just a few, he is paramount among the ace voice-over artists we LOVE in classic cartoons!
The unparalleled queen of the animated screen - made of pen and ink, she will win you with a wink, ain't she cute, boop-oop-a-doop, sweet Betty - will be back on the big screen tomorrow afternoon, in new restorations of classic cartoons.
Sunday June 2nd at 3:00p.m. PST, our pals at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum present a classic Fleischer cartoon matinee, Betty Boop For President. Purchase tickets here.
Everybody's favorite flapper not named Clara Bow or Colleen Moore shall rock the Edison Theater in a selection of classic Max Fleischer Studio cartoons. Max' granddaughter Jane Fleischer hosts.
The program includes short presentations about the development of the design of Betty Boop and the inventiveness and creativity of Fleischer Studios by Ray Pointer, animation professional and author of The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer: American Animation Pioneer, a superlative tome covering the filmmaking career, art and technological innovations of Max.
Yesterday's animation matinee at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum's Edison Theatre was the equivalent of old home week for this writer, curator, schlepper of 16mm projectors and animation buff. Don't remember the last time this blogger has seen so many familiar faces from years and years and years doing film and animation presentations in one place. There's Jerry Beck, doing a Q&A after the cartoon-packed program.
Robert Emmett of KFJC's Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show and the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival and Mike Bonham of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum
Jerry Beck, Paul Mular, Psychotronic Paul and Robert Emmett from the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival
Kevin Coffey (animator, The Nightmare Before Christmas) and Jerry Beck
They were all there: Jerry Beck, Kevin Coffey, Steve Segal, Robert Emmett, champion of George Pal's incredible movie and animation career Arnie Liebovit and Harry McCracken of Scrappyland. Tommy Jose Stathes of Cartoons On Film was there via his video introductions to classic cartoons by Earl Hurd, Walt Disney, Otto Messmer and Fleischer Studios.
Tomorrow at 3:00 p.m., the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum presents a classic cartoon matinee.
Author and animation historian Jerry Beck hosts this program, curated by Tommy Jose Stathes of Cartoons On Film.
There will be vintage silent cartoons from Bray, Messmer, Fleischer and Disney.
Topping off the program will be a cartoon that was lost for decades but found and restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive: Buzzy Boop At The Concert.
Wow, it's soon to be May 2023 - and at long last classic film screenings are back in full swing. The KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival returns to Foothill College two weeks from today.
A week from today, on Saturday, May 6th, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents the sex, murder and Weimar Republic ennui-packed Pandora's Box, directed by G>W. Pabst, starring 1920's punk rocker Louise Brooks and accompanied by The Clubfoot Orchestra, at Oakland's Paramount Theatre. Also on Saturday, May 6th, if your preference is laughs, at 7:30 pm, the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum presents COMEDY SHORTS NIGHT.
Back on the big screen where they belong: the following quartet of comedy classics, accompanied by pianist Greg Pane.
Alas, plunging further into the 21st century means the losses of too many beloved figures from the 20th century. In 2022, standup comedians dropped like flies. In 2023 so far, it is incredible musicians - including pianist Ahmad Jamal, among of slew of all-time greats - the world is losing at an alarming rate.
The latest is the amazing vocalist-bandleader-activist-actor-director-producer-writer-humanitarian Harry Belafonte, who passed at 96.
Fortunately, Mr. Belafonte was nothing if not prolific and several excellent complete concerts of Harry's are up on YouTube. Tough to stay in a bad mood for long after listening to Belafonte's killer calypso!
Omicron, COVID-19's latest, has postponed screenings, concerts and theater at this time, but, fortunately, online presentations continue. Paramount among said presentations will be this weekend's tribute to British director, screenwriter, actor and silent film comedian Walter Forde by the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum.
This dyed-in-the-wool comedy geek has been watching silent movies ever since Robert Youngson comedy compilations were shown on TV in the 1960's and remains quite familiar with the films of Keystone, Hal Roach Studios, Vitagraph, Christie Comedies and Educational, but (remarkably) has not seen these films before!
Mr. Aus elaborates: Walter Forde is best remembered as a British Director from the 1930's and 40's, but during the silent era he wrote, directed, and starred in a series of slapstick comedies. A number of his silent comedies were issued in Britain by Pathe on 9.5mm film. Several of these have been scanned from my personal film collection and are presented here for your enjoyment.
Forde plays a goofy and somewhat bumbling but likable character, neither a stoic a la Keaton nor a grotesque cartoony clown along the lines of Harry Watson, Jr. a.k.a. Musty Suffer, the Mack Sennett comedy stars not named Mabel Normand and Vitagraph's wacky king of prop comedy, Larry Semon. A few "Walter" comedies, in addition to those Michael Aus will present on January 22, are up on YouTube.
The son of musical hall star Tom Seymour, Walter Forde at the beginning of his movie career (as Ernst Lubitsch did) starred in his own series of comedy short subjects before turning to directing a wide range of genres in feature films. Forde and his father collaborated on the first series of 2-reelers in 1921-1922, with Tom directing Walter's Trying Frolic, Walter Wants Work, Walter Wins A Wager and Walter Makes A Movie.
It's an eye-opener to see Forde's work, both as silent era star and sound era director. The following, Walter Wants Work, recalls the opening sequences of You're Darn Tootin', the Laurel & Hardy classic produced six years later. Maybe Stan saw it!
This writer is surprised by the extent to which he is unfamiliar with Great Britain's silent movie clowns, led by Forde and Betty "Squibs" Balfour. Will need to watch all five Walter Forde comedies Mr. Aus is presenting to elaborate further!
Reflecting upon the legends who left Great Britain for America - Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel and Lupino Lane - it rarely has dawned upon this film buff that there were also excellent comics who stayed in England and starred in slapstick comedies there (note: the acrobatic Lane, as headliner of stage and screen, did both).
As a comedy feature director, Forde helmed a World War II-themed vehicle for the rowdy vaudeville and music hall comedy troupe The Crazy Gang, a version of Charley's Aunt starring Arthur Askey, and several films featuring goofball supporting players Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt, the perennial numbskull stooges from the films of Will Hay. And, speaking of the imperious schoolmaster of 1930's English comedy features, Walter Forde's last onscreen last appearance was with Will Hay in Go to Blazes, a British Ministry of Information short subject about incendiary bombs produced in 1942.
The IMDB entry on Walter Forde by frankfob2@yahoo.com adds: Born in Bradford,Yorkshire, he was the son of repertory actors and showed no inclination for acting but became a comedian on the music hall.
Attracted to films in 1919 he made a short film for Zodiac Films followed by a series of six 2 reel comedies for Windsor Studios in Catford in 1921. There he developed a slapstick type character called Walter whose trademark were Oxford bags (trousers) and a straw hat. Walter's Wining Ways (1921) was considered the best of these but it wasn't until later years that his comedy talent was recognised.
He went to America between 1923 and 1925 making film comedies for Universal but soon tired of American methods and returned to England where he made more 2 reelers and two feature films ~Wait and See and What Next both with Mabel Poulton with scripts written by himself and which he also directed.
When talkies arrived he became exclusively a director making some 30 films the last being Cardboard Cavalier starring comedian Sid Field. In 1947 he directed what many considered to be his finest film, Master of Bankdam shot on location at Marsden near Huddersfield and starring Tom Walls, Jimmy Handley, David Tomlinson, Stephen Murray and Dennis Price.
