It's Showtime Again!

Countdown begins toward Cinevent and Slapsticon, my two favorite Spring-Summer destinations. Getting there has become half the fun for drives through the Virginias, Ohio --- both shows begin for me on Interstate 77 and each amount to apx. six hours on the road (Cinevent happens in Columbus, while Slapsticon headquarters in Arlington, VA). Driving time's good for meditating on fun I've had at previous Cine/Slaps. Actually, 2010 was my first at Slapsticon. Would that I could go back and attend ones missed! It's great reuniting with folks known primarily by mails, or now, internet. If reaction to movies and crowd cheer in general is any indication, everyone has a blast at Cinevent and Slapsticon. I get a rush just entering the hotel at Columbus --- near every year since 1982. There used to be guys camped in the lobby with 16mm lists. We'd look at those before checking in. There's still a thriving dealer room at Columbus, with more on the sixth floor where Morris Everett's annual poster auction is held. So much happens here that it seems four days pass in as many minutes.

Slapsticon last year yielded as many films as I've ever watched in a single weekend. I just couldn't pass any of these rarities up. Organizer Richard Roberts and staff book rarest and most recently restored/rediscovered titles. There's little at Slapsticon you'll find on DVD. Truly it's a show for those who think they've seen everything. This year there is treasure long buried that I'm particularly revved for --- War, Italian Style is a late career starring feature for Buster Keaton last sighted at the Liberty in 1966. It'll be a thrill revisiting this one on Slapsticon's big screen, and with an audience. Harold Lloyd's Professor, Beware is scheduled as well. This one was syndicated with pre-48 Paramounts long ago, but never surfaced in close-by tele-markets. Slapsticon 2011 will be my first time viewing it, as will, I suspect, be the case for many attending. Comedians who don't get enough mainstream exposure are served generously at Slapsticon. Lloyd Hamilton, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew, Harry Langdon, assorted Hal Roach all-stars, many more unheralded and richly deserving of play before an appreciative crowd, which Slaps' assuredly is. Best of all here is comfort and quality of hosting Rosslyn Spectrum Theatre, where projected film looks great and acoustics for live music accompaniment is note-perfect. I lasted hours last year on Spectrum seating without fatigue and expect to do so again this July. How many other venues are as hospitable?

Cinevent has their customary line-up of unique attractions, in addition to lure of the auction and dealer rooms. Steve Haynes really does a splendid job of organizing. This year's program includes a Deanna Durbin, His Butler's Sister, so far unreleased on domestic DVD, and My Gal Sal in IB Technicolor. That one's not available on disc either. A Universal I've long waited to see, Bombay Mail, is scheduled. There's even The Lady and The Monster for horror and Von Stroheim completists. Man In The Dark was an early 3-D feature pretty much unseen since 1953. Many silent features are scheduled, with on-site talent at the piano. Any opportunity to catch pre-talkers with live music is worth seizing. Good as digital is, there's no substituting for performers in the room. Cinevent does a Saturday morning cartoon revue that's especially popular, dependable always for (way) off beaten path animation. A longer list of scheduled films is here. I'll be situated at least part-time at tables where Robert Matzen and Mike Mazzone will be selling a very impressive cache of posters and lobby cards they recently acquired. Readers I've met (and especially ones I haven't) are encouraged to stop by. Maybe this time I'll finally encounter Nitrateville's Mike Gebert after several years of just missing each other.

Comedy's Comeback Continues

Where Robert Youngson really broke out was The Golden Age Of Comedy. Would anyone else have come up with an idea so beautifully timed? Had they eventually done so, it might have been too late for prints and negatives Youngson secured from (primarily) Hal Roach and collector archives known to few. Golden Age made it fashionable to applaud silent comedies. Critics seized opportunity Youngson presented to demonstrate a grasp of picture history and enrich their own cache. Nighttime TV hosts served as Pied Pipers for art house audiences flooding New York and elsewhere venues. The Golden Age Of Comedy shook free of musty association silents labored under when general audiences discovered how funny it was. These were laughs of a sort few youngsters had experienced, let alone with peers in a crowded theatre. Comedy had long settled into dialogue-driven tar pits where a Glenn Ford spent reels hiding geisha girls among straw huts as insubstantial as wink-wink stories tickling what was left of Hollywood’s Production Code. Look (or groan) at much of what passed for comedy in 1957 and success of Youngson’s venture seems not so remarkable. His was an audience more than ready for freshened mirth-making. Jack Parr and Steve Allen were sufficiently hip to sniff the zeitgeist, trumpeting The Golden Age Of Comedy as though it were laughter’s second coming (what I’d not give to see tape of that week Parr sang Youngson’s praises --- does footage exist?). The deal with Hal Roach was providential, for its continuation gave Youngson access to what amounted to the best of silent clowning, and there would be enough of it to sustain him for a decade plus.

Audiences knew Laurel and Hardy from television, their talking stuff seemingly vid-burrowed clear down to China. What even fans didn’t realize was that silent L&H was at least as good, especially in crowded auditoria. These subjects were barely seen since the twenties, Youngson in time (barely) to salvage good prints off nitrate passing thirty years of fragility. The Golden Age Of Comedy represented the first time, outside of Chaplin reissues, that pre-sound truly thrived before mainstream customers (Harold Lloyd had tried a few of his, without notable success). Theatres of every size and stripe were asking to book Golden Age, as Youngson’s compilation and ones to follow were ideal for matinees where kids were in and out and it didn’t much matter at what point you entered the show. Combination comedy days such as ones shown here were breath of life for theatres filling weekend dates, head shots of recognizable comics sufficient to fill drive-in lots as well for all night laugh-a-thons. That Laurel and Hardy continued as meaningful theatrical draws from the late fifties right through the sixties was pretty amazing, considering they hadn’t done anything US-new since WWII's close, Babe having died (in August 1957) and Stan settled into retirement. Youngson as deliverer of so much priceless stuff was nothing if not an evangelist for classic comedy. Narration he wrote took pains to identify and background faces chasing past us. In a way, Youngson’s continuing lecture was fun-making's equivalent of Forrest Ackerman’s Famous Monsters mission. Much was silly with here-and-there cringe-worthy punning, but who else was instructing us as to finer points of silent filmmaking? How he put across what amounted to a clowning curriculum (and to a distinctly unschooled public) was the truest Youngson miracle.

When Comedy Was King showed what a Youngson package could do with major distributor backing. Movie columnists celebrated laughter’s archeologist for having unearthed what Granddad once found so uproarious. The compilation broke opening day records at Manhattan’s 68th Street Playhouse, a venue keeping count since nickelodeon days forty-five years before. The place had a single aisle, a tiny lobby, and seated only 389 patrons, but was ideally suited to first-run When Comedy Was King. Youngson had again delivered a perfect wedding of art and mass appeal. Aesthetes could laud classic samplings of Chaplin and Keaton while their kids enjoyed Youngson pulling drag for live action Disneys, The Three Stooges (when they met Snow White), and even Fox’s ultra-serious Crack In The Mirror, among many other unlikely pairings RY’s film engaged as it widened to neighborhood houses. There were degrees of critical condescension. The New York Times called Youngson’s a mild bonanza, and applauded his choice of highlights that moved without the benefit of palaver. First Gotham runs for Youngson generally went to art houses from which quotable reviews might spring, though fissures opened for want of showmen competent to project standard ratio film properly. 30 Years Of Fun was dealt columnist blows when its NYC opening found intended comedy sliced to 1.85 ribbons, for which Youngson unfairly bore blame. Reviewer Eugene Archer complained that by projecting the clips on a modern wide screen, Mr. Youngson has merely chopped the tops and bottoms off the images, with highly unsatisfactory results. As 30 Years Of Fun was by this time (December 1963) saturating among further flung venues, the problem compounded. To readjust masking and apertures was inconvenient for projectionists, and as 30 Years Of Fun played double bills in almost all situations, modifications would have been required for each and every show, operators in effect jumping from wide image to obsolete flat settings five or more times daily. Archer singled out celebrated 30 Years scenes of Charlie Chaplin disassembling an alarm clock in The Pawnshop for being effectively ruined because the audience couldn’t see the comedian’s hands while doing so. A January follow-up letter to editors, penned by 68th Street Playhouse manager Walter Brecher, defended Youngson: Please don’t blame him … the fault lies with the inertia of the average exhibitor, who has committed himself to the widescreen projection pattern. Brecher went on to point out that art theatres, including his own 68th Street Playhouse, took sufficient care to insure proper presentation, but what of venues across the country subsequently playing this and other Youngson features? I don’t remember noticing a problem when seeing ones at the Liberty, but that’s not to say prints weren’t every bit as cropped.

Laurel and Hardy clearly led Youngson parades, being the attraction that drew most customers inside. More than one reviewer commented that their stuff held up better than Chaplin’s. Some of that was backwash from CC’s then-recent exile, with feathers slow to un-ruffle even as a new decade began. Youngson allowed for latter in narration acknowledging controversy while expressing hope that viewers might put politics second to enjoyment of still rib-tickling moments out of Mutual comedies Chaplin had done so long ago. The big elephant in Youngson’s parlor was Harold Lloyd. He whispered not the name in compilations, but others noted absence of comedy’s point man for output and commercial success back when silents ruled. Lloyd and Youngson were sociable (as here), but the former licensing footage to the latter was strictly no dice, for Harold figured on going Bob one better with his own clowning scrapbook. 20th Fox meanwhile pulled stops to promote When Comedy Was King using contract starlets for premiere night at aforementioned 68th Street Playhouse. A newer-minted Keystone Kop is posed here with Margo Moore of Fox’s Wake Me When It’s Over, while Ina Balin on the right was just out in From The Terrace. Trade ads like one above trumpeted raves and put faces back in advertising circulation we hadn’t seen since … well, The Golden Age Of Comedy. Youngson worked show-biz magic of heating up years-past names, and not just among oddballs pre-disposed toward the brand. Ones among us that revere voiceless comedy probably heard opening gun at a Youngson show. I sure did, for it was seeing Big Business played off as When Comedy Was King’s dessert that made me go looking for 8mm silent comedies to own.

Noah's 1957 Challenge To Moses

Being a silent movie adherent was like donning a dunce cap in early 50's Hollywood. Anyone proposing commercial life for non-talkers, outside a Chaplin, was for birds, or unemployment lines. Robert Youngson proved adept enough with novelty shorts at Warners to sneak by single-reel sampling of once done up big, but since discarded, relics. His were like Castle Film highlights from Don Juan, Old San Francisco, Isle Of Lost Ships, and one RY particularly liked, Noah's Ark. A super-spectacle this was, with everything but dialogue (there were chat passages, awkwardly done, and no way useful for latter play). This all put brakes on reissue chance. WB could bank on Little Caesar and Public Enemy for 1954 dates, both nearly old as Noah's Ark, but at least these talked throughout. Silents were for scrap-heaps, or fattening libraries sold by mid-50's to voracious TV. Warners made their vid deal for whole of its pre-49 library, including what voiceless flickers survived. Receiving Associated Artists Productions sought value, however slight, that might derive of least desirable among WB's fabled stock, screening vaulties toward possibility, however remote, of peddling same to art and specialty houses. AAP came to meeting of minds with no-longer Warners employed Youngson over the one pearl he'd championed, Noah's Ark, which had the Bible for story origin, just like mega-smash The Ten Commandments, then on roadshow march. Could Noah's Ark get by being old, so long as it was Old Testament?

Every theatre in the country wanted The Ten Commandments in mid-1957, but most couldn't get it, DeMille's spectacular having pitched tent among biggest houses and staying for what promised forever. AAP figured Noah might pinch hit for audiences waiting on Moses, and they had subsidiary Dominant Pictures to handle distribution, latter's purpose to eke out the last buck from theatres before they (the Warner titles) were shown on television, according to Variety. Noah's Ark would be an experiment, said the company, to see if extreme oldies might sell. To hedge bets, AAP and Youngson cut the 1929 release nearly in half and laid over music and narration. Dominant would treat Noah's Ark like a new picture, saturation booking it through the country one area at a time, according to Variety. One hundred dates for late July and August 1957 were set in tri-states Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Full-page ads went into Philadelphia newspapers, but none disclosed Noah's Ark being a silent made decades before, ID'ing it instead as simply The Most Spectacular Picture Of All Time.

Ten of the first thirty theatres held over Noah's Ark for seven-day runs, better than what Dominant anticipated. With floods, spearing, and columns falling, this was no art-house cast-off. Showmen could bally Noah to hilts as next-best Ten Commandments, so long as Paramount's biggie eluded them (our Liberty wouldn't get TC until September 19, 1957). Dominant had offices mostly on the east coast, so arrangement was made with Manhattan Films International to handle Noah's Ark in eleven western states, Alaska, and Hawaii. Aggressive Manhattan got the film into LA just as The Ten Commandments wrapped forty-six weeks playing first-run, timing just right for another biblical, whatever its vintage. Response to Noah's Ark was mixed overall, depending on territory and how it was pushed. Baltimore saw torrid biz at its Little Art Theatre, wherein records were beat, but faces turned red when St. Paul, Minnesota patrons, lured by Bigger Than Biggest ads, found to chagrin that this was an epic sans talk. More than a few moviegoers attending it became so upset when they learned the truth that they jumped up and demanded their money back, said the St. Paul Dispatch's movie columnist. They'd thought Noah's Ark was a brand new epic that somehow was made with no publicity. Still, despite refunds, the show performed above average for Minneapolis-St. Paul houses, and certainly beat typical revenues for a reissue, even if Noah's Ark wasn't necessarily revealed as such.

Small towns reveled in Noah's Ark, Biblical themes always welcome in Southeast climes. That collecting Moses that guided me to promised land of 16 and 35mm acquisition, Moon Mullins, was handed an exchange-discarded Noah and ran same to his movie club during the early seventies. A Pilot Mountain, NC showman (right) got Noah's Ark into the town's Christmas 1958 parade to some pretty good results, said Boxoffice. Well, it's not as though there were other Noah and the Flood pics to compete with. Perhaps realizing this, the Mirisch Company announced in July 1958 intention to make a new and multi-million $ Noah's Ark (didn't happen). The original meanwhile floated through circuits starved for product. Part of why reissues boomed was lack of small or B titles to fill in weeks, thus Noah's Ark was back in Los Angeles in September 1958, this time with AAP/Dominant's Yankee Doodle Dandy, another Warner fave withheld so far from TV. The duo saw but a mild $4,500 and was gone in a week. AAP had entertained possibility of reviving WB silents beyond Noah's Ark, with maybe a festival group for art-houses ... that announcement came to nothing. Of all pre-talkers they now owned, it appears AAP and successor United Artists included only Noah's Ark among features syndicated to TV (Noah became available for broadcast in the mid-sixties). Back in ownership Warners recently did right by venerable Noah's Ark by issuing a complete-as-exists 1928 version, this a first time the McCoy has been available on video. It's a solid DVD well worth having, though bittersweet is disapperance of Robert Youngson's revamped version. Will that ever surface on TCM or disc?

More Noah's Ark at Greenbriar Archive.