Clara Bow

Silent Laughter 2024 is on the way…

It’s back! Mark your diaries for giggles, chuckles and belly laughs! On November 9th & 10th, Kennington Bioscope present another Silent Laughter Weekend: two days of live silent cinema showcasing the cream of silent comedy films.


This year features one of our most packed programmes ever, a wide-ranging and eclectic selection of the funniest, rarest and most unusual gems from comedy’s greatest era. From the best-loved comedians to the most obscure; from wild slapstick to the subtle and sophisticated; from surreal stop-motion animation to European clowns, there’s a smorgasbord of silent hilarity spread over twelve programmes.

You’ll find plenty of familiar favourites, including classic shorts starring Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Laurel & Hardy. But there’s so much more to silent comedy than the well-known stars, and as always we also spotlight the undeservedly forgotten comedy talents, such as Marion Davies (in The Patsy), Danish comedy team Pat & Patachon, Richard Dix, Charlie Murray and Charley Chase.

 
Regular attendees will know that we always pull some real rarities out of the hat. This year is no exception, as we’ll be hosting the U.K. premieres of several recently rediscovered films. On Saturday evening, Charlie Chaplin’s brother Syd stars in Oh! What a Nurse!  one of the big hits of last year’s Pordenone, it hasn’t been seen in this country for almost 100 years! We’re also thrilled to be showing the newly rediscovered spooky comedy thriller The Gorilla, starring comedy stalwart Charlie Murray. Murray also features alongside Clara Bow in another previously lost film, The Pill-Pounder. Bioscope favourite Charley Chase will feature in a programme of newly restored short comedies that have been unseen in many, many years and we’ll also be showing some incredibly rare films starring the likes of Monty Banks, Harold Lloyd and Dorothy Devore.



There is also a spotlight on the iconic Keystone Kops, as well as the work of Vitagraph Studios. An ‘Animations and Illusions’ programme will feature camera trickery, from Meliés’ experiments to the mind-blowing madness of Charley Bowers.  You won’t want to miss a very special presentation of 9.5mm rarities by Christopher Bird, shown on film using amazing vintage projectors. Bioscope favourite Charley Chase will feature in some of his rarest comedies, newly restored and presented by Hal Roach expert Richard M Roberts.


We’ve even got a silent film appearance of a Marx Brother! There’s a rare screening of Too Many Kisses, a 1925 comedy featuring a supporting role from none other than Harpo Marx.

Every programme features live musical accompaniment from London’s finest silent film pianists. A roll call of comedy film authors, enthusiasts and collectors will contextualise the films, and share stories of the filmmakers. And it all takes place in the wonderful surroundings of London’s Cinema Museum. Oh, and it’s just £30 for the whole weekend!

 
So come and join us on the 9th-10th November for a lafftastic weekend of live silent cinema. It’s the best selection of rare and classic silent comedy you’ll find anywhere!

Here’s the link to the full programme, and to buy tickets:

http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/2024/kennington-bioscope-silent-laughter-weekend-3/

Silent Laughter: Banjo Eyes & The It Girl

Take a couple of dozen silent comedians, rare and rediscovered film, brilliant accompanying musicians, special guests, some insane acrobatics, bomb duels, a murdered rooster, a song and dance craze and one very drunk pantomime horse, and what do you get?

The London Silent Laughter Weekend, of course! Hosted by the wonderful folk at The Kennington Bioscope, magnificently curated by silent comedy expert David Wyatt and upgraded from last year’s inaugural one day event, the festival consisted of 12 shows turning the spotlight on some unfairly neglected but often brilliant performers (Oh, and Jimmy Aubrey…). Over the next few blog posts, I’ll be revisiting some of the films we saw, including stars such as Syd Chaplin, Lupino Lane, Dorothy Devore, Walter Forde, Harry Langdon, Max Linder and Laura La Plante

Over the course of the weekend, we had a peek into several different areas of silent comedy not often seen. For instance, it’s easy to forget that, as well as the very visual, film-trained Hollywood performers,several Broadway stars made silent films. Will Rogers, Leon Errol, Eddie Cantor, WC Fields all came from the Ziegfeld Follies and all, improbably enough, transferred their largely verbal acts to silent films.sometimes, they transferred stage hits directly (in fact, even The Marx Brothers very nearly made a silent film version of THE COCOANUTS). While these stars all had much bigger success in films once sound came in, several of their siLents hold up very nicely indeed. Eddie Cantor’s KID BOOTS(1926) , kicking off the show, was a nice example. He had been playing in the hit show for three years when he made this film version. To atone for anything that was lost in translation from stage to screen, Paramount added in Clara Bow, just on the threshold of ‘It girl’ mega stardom, and a host of visual comedy sequences.

kid-boots-ad

Ol’ Banjo Eyes is Kid Boots, a tailor’s assistant. He is fired but can keep his job if he sells burly Malcolm Waite a suit. He makes a mess of it, of course, and makes a hasty exit before bumping into Clara, who is Waite’s girlfriend. Gazing into her eyes, he offers to sew her skirt, but distractedly sews his own suspender into it at the same time; this leads to a great sequence where he is pulled along the road after Clara. Bumping into Waite again, Kid Boots hides in a hotel, and finds himself becoming a key witness in Lawrence Gray’s divorce case. Gray has come into a fortune, which is enough to persuade his conniving ex wife (Natalie Kingston) that maybe she doesn’t want a divorce after all… Gray hides out at a golf resort with Kid Boots to escape the ex and her lawyer; who should be staying there but Clara and Malcolm? Things gather pace now as Cantor tries to woo Bow, while avoiding Malcolm, and Gray tries to avoid his ex and her lawyer, who are trying to frame him in a compromising situation to nullify the divorce.

There are some great sequences to replace the dialogue comedy of the original show. Some are slightly adapted versions of familiar silent comedy material—a brutalkid-boots physio routine borrowed from Chaplin’s ‘THE CURE’, some high and dizzy thrills and a race to the courthouse that owe a debt to Lloyd’s ‘GIRL SHY’, and others more original. The highlight is a sequence where Kid Boots tries to make Clara jealous; his date has stood him up, but that won’t stop him! With the aid of a carefully placed screen door, he acts out a date with himself, baring his left arm and adding powder and a bracelet to simulate an imaginary girlfriend’s arm. Milking it for all it’s worth, he manages, in a pantomimic tour de force, to make it appear as though his ‘girlfriend’ can’t keep her hands off him. One of the funniest sequences we saw all weekend, this scene shows that Cantor, despite his predominantly verbal style, could master visual comedy as well as anyone.

Mention must also be made of Clara Bow’s great performance. She simply pops off the screen with life and vitality in every scene, and adeptly handles comic timing. It’s plain to see that super stardom was about to happen to her, and indeed it did. By the time KID BOOTS was released, the NYPD had to hold back crowds at the film’s premier. All in all, KID BOOTS is a wonderful little film, and appeared even more so in a beautiful new restoration by Paul Gierucki.

.Take a look at the whole film here: (not as nice a looking print, but certainly decent enough)

 

 

 

 

 

Next up: some Laurel & Hardy rediscoveries!