Snub Pollard’s bowler and moustache might not be as iconic as Chaplin’s or Oliver Hardy’s, but he’s still a sort of silent comedy totem. That worried little face with the upside-down Kaiser Wilhelm ‘tache is shorthand for a whole genre of delightfully deranged, gag-happy comedies from the early 20s. IT’S A GIFT is an acknowledged classic of surreal gadget comedies, but it’s far from the only great Snub film. He was a busy man, turning out dozens of terrific one and two-reelers for Hal Roach in the early 1920s. Gag-for-gag, these are among the funniest silent comedy shorts, but there’s never been a proper, high-quality collection of his films. Until Now.
Dave Glass’s latest Kickstarter will hopefully change that. It aims to shine a light on our boy Snub, in a packed BluRay collection of some of his best – and rarest – films. A mammoth TWENTY SIX of them, in fact! As well as private collections, many of these come from archivists such as Serge Bromberg, EYE, and The Library of Congress, and they’ll all be restored and scored by some of the finest silent film accompanists around. This is simply an unmissable Kickstarter, and will hopefully give Snub the due he deserves. To take a peek at the riches that will be featured, take a look at Dave’s great little promo video:
As always, when one tugs at a strand in the tangled silent comedy web, one finds it is attached to many others: Charley Chase directed several of these films, James Finlayson shows up in a few, and there’s even a couple of long-unseen Harold Lloyd films included, with Snub as his sidekick. So, this isn’t just for diehard Snub fans, by any means. If you enjoy gagged up silent comedy on any level, you’ll find something to enjoy here. Make sure you don’t miss out: the Kickstarter runs until September 15th. here’s the link. Go go go! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reelcomedy/snub-pollard-silent-comedian/creator
By the way, if you want more info about Snub, there’s a detailed article about him in issue 13 of THE LOST LAUGH magazine. You can download that for free here: The Lost Laugh magazine.
For over twenty years, Roscoe Arbuckle made enormous contributions to screen comedy, in front of and behind the camera. This is a man who not only mentored Buster Keaton, but also gave valuable help to both Charlie and Syd Chaplin in their early careers, as well as many other comedians like Charley Chase and Al St John. Later, he was instrumental in directing films for St John, Lloyd Hamilton, Lupino Lane and many others. As a performer, he inspired a wave of ‘jolly fat man’ performers: Babe Hardy, Hughie Mack, Walter Hiers, ‘The Ton of Fun’.
Yet for all that, Arbuckle often seems slightly taken for granted. His image is so sewn up with Keystone slapstick that his broader achievements in gentle situation comedy, farce and feature length comedies and as a director, are overlooked.
It’s hard to believe that it’s now twenty years since the definitive DVD set, ‘ The Forgotten Films of Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle’. This was the first set to really illuminate Roscoe’s wider achievements, and set a high bar. In the years since then, crowdfunding projects, access to Archives and digital technology have advanced, and the time is ripe to showcase some of the previously unseen and newly restored Arbuckle gems out there.
Among the highlights culled from Archives and private collections around the world are Arbuckle’s first Keystone THE GANGSTERS, THE SEA NYMPHS with Mabel Normand, rarely seen feature CRAZY TO MARRY, the Al St John shorts DYNAMITE DOGGIE and NEVER AGAIN and loads more! Overall, it’s a terrific sampler of silent comedy gold from one of tits finest talents. The Kickstarter campaign runs til Feb 14th and provides your opportunity to help bring these films to new audiences.
Crazy to Marry
Behind the Kickstarter campaign are silent comedy expert and author of ‘Rediscovering Roscoe’, Steve Massa, and producer Crystal Kui, with the new project being distributed through Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions.
Steve and Crystal very kindly offered to talk us through the new project, and some of the highlights it features. Read on for more…
This new Kickstarter release features a wealth of restored and reconstructed films, sourced from a range of archives and private collections. What are some of the logistical challenges in pulling all these disparate sources together?
Crystal Kui: In this Arbuckle release will be 11 shorts plus a feature sourced from seven different archives and two private collectors. Logistically, it will be quite a challenge to keep track of the shipping, scanning and restoration on all these films. We’re very fortunate that all of the participating archives were keen to provide access to their prints and are supportive of our efforts to share these treasures with the public. Thanks to Steve’s enthusiasm and deep knowledge of the films, we have been able to work with the archives on our side. After we draw up contracts with the participating archives, the next step is to coordinate the shipping or scanning of the film prints. A few archives have facilities on site to scan and restore the films, while for others we are able to ship the prints either to the Library of Congress for scanning on the east coast or to USC on the west coast. We have a team of digital restorers and color graders who are archive conscious and work diligently to bring the end result as close as possible to the original viewing experience. Not all films are complete, but we work with the best surviving or only surviving copies. My favorite aspect of working on this project is doing the research to reconstruct the missing parts or titles, finding out whether there was tinting and how it was used, and comparing foreign versions or reissues to the original domestic releases.
Were there any particular technical challenges involved in working with such rare and precious film elements?
CK: Several films in our release are sourced from foreign release prints including Crazy to Marry (1921) with Russian titles, The Sea Nymphs (1914) with Danish titles, and Fatty and the Broadway Stars with Norwegian titles. Instead of simply translating the titles into English, we tried to source scripts and censorship records in an attempt to reconstruct the titles as they were written originally in English. This requires a lot of close scrutiny and comparison. In studying the scripts, we also learned that Crazy to Marry had three tinting colors: yellow, blue and amber, which are detailed by reel, and will be recreated digitally by our graders Chris Crouse and Graham Brown, using original tinting samples from the early 1920s. Our regular collaborator, Jesse Pierce, an expert at recreating the intertitles, will design titles that faithfully match the original style of a Paramount feature, Keystone Comedy or Triangle release, for example.
Is therea particular restoration effort on this set that you’re most proud of?
CK: Perhaps ask me this in a year; the real in-depth restoration work is only beginning now that the Kickstarter has met its initial goals. We have a lot of work ahead of us!
Steve, this set comes on the heels of your book, ‘Rediscovering Roscoe’. Championing Arbuckle is clearly a passion project for you. What is it about him and his comedy style that speaks to you?
Steve Massa: I grew up hooked on silent comedy, and although I got a steady diet of Chaplin, Keaton, and Laurel & Hardy there was almost no Arbuckle to be seen. This was probably due to left over stigma from the scandal. My first real look at Roscoe was thanks to film historian William K. Everson. In a 1983 all-Arbuckle evening at New York’s Collective for Living Cinema, Professor Everson showed The Waiter’s Ball (1916), his feature Leap Year (made in 1921), and the comeback sound short Buzzin’ Around (1933). Seeing the comedian from his first full flowering to his last hurrah was an eye opening experience and inspired me to try and get as much of his work seen as possible. Since then I’ve taken every opportunity I could to present his films – at places like The Museum of Modern Art and Library of Congress, on DVD, and in print.
The fact that Arbuckle made feature films is often overlooked. ‘Crazy to Marry’ shows him mixing polite comedy plots with slapstick. Where do you think his comedy style might have headed in the 20s, if fate had not intervened?
SM: Mabel Normand and Roscoe were the first stars of slapstick shorts to move into feature films. Their type of comedy shorts, while loved by audiences, didn’t get much respect in the film industry itself, where they were often treated like poor step-children. To be taken seriously they had to appear in more serious fare and be “legitimized” as feature stars. Roscoe’s first feature was the dramatic western The Round Up (1920). The films that immediately followed, such as The Life of the Party (1920) and Brewster’s Millions (1921), were polite drawing room comedies based on popular stories, novels or plays, and were very plot heavy.
Unfortunately we don’t have access to all of his features, but by the time of Crazy to Marry and Leap Year he moved to farce comedy – which was better suited to his talents and gave him more situations to react to and opportunity to work in more helpings of slapstick. At the time of his banishment from the screen Paramount had very similar properties lined up for his next projects, so it seems likely that he would have stayed in that style.
It’s great to see Arbuckle’s directorial career represented as well. What led you to choose the particular films featured here? ( ‘Dynamite Doggie’, ‘Home cured’, ‘Never Again’, ‘Stupid But Brave’, ‘Honeymoon Trio’)
SM: The particular directorial films chosen for the set were picked for their excellence as well as their rarity and unavailability. In all of them Roscoe uses a very restrained and low-key approach that has the slapstick growing logically out of the situations. He gets very natural performances from the actors, with wonderful close-ups and reaction shots. His early sound short Honeymoon Trio (1931) will be a surprise to many people. It’s Roscoe’s “road film” – a black comic version of Detour (1946) and The Hitch-Hiker (1953), as Al St John and Dorothy Grainger head off on their honeymoon motor trip with Al’s former rival Walter Catlett in tow. Powerless to thwart or even shut up the obnoxious Catlett, Al is symbolically cuckolded as he’s caught in a never-ending honeymoon from hell.
Do you each have a favourite film or gag from the set?
SM: One of my favorite films on the set is The Gangsters (1913). This was Roscoe’s very first film for Mack Sennett, it’s amazing to see how he hit the ground running. Besides being very funny he pulls the focus whenever he’s on screen, and his “Fatty” character is already developed at this early date. When this was made Roscoe was already a well-seasoned performer, having spent a decade touring with various stock companies around the U.S. and Asia. His film experience before this had been very limited – brief sojourns for Selig and Nestor, but he instinctively seemed to understand the intimacy of the movie camera. Understanding it, he used that intimacy extremely well and quickly became an audience favorite around the world.
CK: These films are so rare, I won’t have a chance to see the films until the scans have come in from the archives. We received our first film last week, The Sea Nymphs (1914) from the Danish Film Institute, and it was so much fun to watch, with extended scenes shot on Catalina Island.
What do you hope viewers will take away from this set? Is there a particular facet of Arbuckle’s talents you’d like them to have a new appreciation for?
SM: I’d like viewers to get a full picture of what an excellent overall comedy creator Roscoe was. He’s best remembered for his on screen persona, but his work behind the camera gets taken for granted. He was a very sophisticated writer and director – even as early as 1915 his sure hand can be seen in films like That Little Band of Gold, Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916), and He Did and He Didn’t (1916). That’s why after the scandal he was able to transition so easily to just writing and directing. He was already a pro, and turned out excellent shorts with comics such as Al St John, Lloyd Hamilton, Lupino Lane and Johnny Arthur.
So there you have it: a fantastic set rammed full of rarities featuring one of the true comic pioneers. I’m sure you won’t want to miss out on this chance to rediscover Roscoe! Here’s the link to the Kickstarter, and the full planned contents:
The Gangsters(1913) – 10 min, Museum of Modern Art Roscoe had been making sporadic appearances for Selig and Nestor since 1909. The Gangsters is his very first film for Keystone, where he shares the picture with Fred Mace and becomes an overnight Mack Sennett star.
A Noise From the Deep (1913) – 10 min, Museum of Modern Art The earliest surviving film of Roscoe with his frequent co-star Mabel Normand. It is also considered to have the first use of a thrown Keystone pie.
An Incompetent Hero (1914) – 12 min, Library of Congress Roscoe is a victim of circumstances in this rarely seen comedy, which also highlights Edgar Kennedy, Minta Durfee, Al St John, and Roscoe’s tight rope walking skills.
The Sea Nymphs (1914) – 25 min, Restored by the Danish Film Institute Mabel, Roscoe and a seal have fun in the surf at Catalina, in a new scan made from the only known surviving print.
Crazy to Marry (1921) – 40 min, Restored by Cinematek (Brussels) This was the sixth of Roscoe’s starring features, and was only in theatres for about a week before being yanked out of distribution and vanishing. This rare survivor illustrates how Roscoe was taking polite comedy plots and working in more and more of his signature physical gags and slapstick.
Bonus: New reconstruction of Fatty and the Broadway Stars (1916) – 7 mins, Nationalbiblioteket (Oslo) & Private collection / Restored by theUSC HMH Foundation Moving Image Archive Only a few 35mm and 9.5mm chunks are all that’s known to exist today of this short. The Triangle Film Corp. had hired famous stage stars like Weber & Fields and William Collier to give prestige to their films, and used Roscoe to introduce some of these stage personalities to movie audiences.
Disc Two
Never Again (1924) – 12 min, Lobster/Blackhawk Roscoe here reworks the plots of Fatty at San Diego (1913) and A Reckless Romeo (1917) for his nephew Al St John. Scanned from the only surviving print.
Stupid but Brave (1924) – 21 min, Private collection / Restored by the USC HMH Foundation Moving Image Archive Having been banned from the screen, Roscoe focused on writing and directing, creating excellent comedies with Ned Sparks, Poodles Hanneford and Al St John.
Dynamite Doggie (1925) – 24 min, Lobster/Blackhawk Al St John co-stars with Pete the Pup in this rarity that reworks material from Love (1919) and Sherlock Jr. (1924), as well as early films that featured Roscoe’s dog Luke.
Home Cured (1926) – 10 min, Library of Congress Roscoe launched the series of Tuxedo Comedies for Educational Pictures which starred the fairly new screen comic Johnny Arthur. Scanned from the only known 35mm material, Johnny is a hypochondriac whose wife has had enough.
Honeymoon Trio (1931) – 12 min, Library of Congress This early sound short is Roscoe’s “road film,” a black comic version of Detour (1946) or The Hitchhiker (1953) that details Al St John on a never-ending honeymoon from hell.
Bonus: Video essay on Roscoe Arbuckle’s life and career.
Huge thanks to Steve and Crystal for giving their time to answer my questions, and for their efforts in making this project happen. I’m really excited for this set!
Monty Banks is one of the most underrated silent comedians, in my opinion. A likeable performer and great gagman, he made a string of shorts and, yes, features, that hold up very well but are rarely seen. One of those features, PLAY SAFE, is a bit of a classic in the silent thrill comedy genre, featuring an epic stunt-filled train chase that was excerpted by Robert Youngson in DAYS OF THRILLS AND LAUGHTER.
Now, Dave Glass has just launched his newest Kickstarter project, putting the spotlight on Monty. Included is the FULL version of PLAY SAFE, for the first time anywhere! There are also lots of other goodies, too – this is going to be an essential release. Take a look at the video below and head to the link to get your copy. But don’t delay, it’s only a 30-day window to pledge your support!
Walrus-moustached Billy Bevan is one of the most iconic faces of slapstick. However, while many of us know classic gags and routines featuring him, his complete films have often been elusive. Now Dave Glass and Dave Wyatt are planning to remedy that with a follow up to last year’s Lupino Lane BluRay, throwing the spotlight on Mr Bevan. Hooray! The Kickstarter campaign has just been launched – take a look at the video below:
Here’s more detail from Dave Glass:
So here we are again!…. with our 3rd Kickstarter…and this time… we’re throwing the spotlight onto Billy Bevan (cue sound effect!)
Billy was THE face of Sennett slapstick comedies in the 20s. Whenever you watch a compilation of silent comedy clips, his face usually pops up.
And for many of us, when we were young, it was HIS comedies that hypnotized us the most.
So as before, we’ve been in touch with some archives and collectors, to try and unearth some of the best but lesser seen Mack Sennett films that featured Billy Bevan. And we’ve got some real goodies!!
Our first port of call was Lobster Films. Serge Bromberg kindly sent his humungous list of Billies and after we’d been resuscitated, we found some real rarites for starters:
MUSCLEBOUND MUSIC (1926) – extremely rare complete print (35mm French) which contains a couple of scenes familiar to fans of Robert Youngson’s ‘Golden Age of Comedy’.
THE QUACK DOCTOR (1920) – another rarity and a great example of one of the early 20s Sennetts that Billy made with Louise Fazenda. This one co-stars many of the Sennett favourites too including Ben Turpin.
NIP AND TUCK (1923) – a real treat this one. It has a terrific chase with cops galore and Cameo the Wonder Dog! A few minutes worth were used in Youngson’s ‘Golden Age of Comedy’, but other than that, it’s not been available. This is the complete 35mm fine grain camera neg (from the Youngson collection!) – in other words, it looks spectacular. PLUS Lobster will be doing the restoration on this one themselves.
We’ll return to the Lobster farm in a moment….. but in the meantime, we’d contacted Elif at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam.
They offered us their super rare 2K scan of CALLING HUBBY’S BLUFF (1929) – which also stars Dot Farley and Vernon Dent and is a very funny example of the late 20s situational style of comedy that Mack Sennett was producing then. Great stuff.
However, we’d also heard that EYE had a real treasure tucked away. One of THE iconic Mack Sennett comedies is a film called LIZZIES OF THE FIELD (1924), which features so many scenes of mayhem that have been used time and time again in comedy compilations. Welllllll….. this film has only ever been available in the world as a 1 reel version…. until NOW! I’d heard that EYE had a TWO REEL version in their basement… and yes, Elif confirmed that was true. Yippeeee!!! And when I happened to tell fellow ‘Lizzies’ fan Serge about this, he said “Yippeeeee” even louder! In fact, he got so excited, he’s now arranged with Elif to borrow and re-scan the original nitrate print, and restore it, using the sparkling Blackhawk film materials, to create the ultimate version of this favourite classic…. for us to use.
….. so there will now be a slight intermission, to allow you to catch your breath and restore your heart beat back to a normal rate…..
ok. ready to continue?…… ok…… sorry, but there’s MORE!!!
Serge told me he’d also been chatting about Billy to fellow fan and film enthusiast Jon Mirsalis, so after a quick chat with Jon, he’s kindly letting us use his super rare print of FROM RAGS TO BRITCHES (1925), which is another hilarious rare Bevan film co-starring Madeline Hurlock and Kewpie Morgan. Lobster have already made a 2K scan of this, so it just needs the restoration work.
And another? Well, this one wasn’t even known to exist… until recently.
If you’re a Sennett / Bevan fan, you’ve probably heard of WANDERING WILLIES and WHISPERING WHISKERS, which both contain some of the most iconic Sennett scenes ever seen!
Right, well hold on to your pants, because we’ve found….. WANDERING WAISTLINES! (1924) – And it’s a real treat!! It’s a similar gag packed slapstick fest, co-starring Sid Smith, Kalla Pasha and some of the most eye ball tickling stunts you’ll ever see. (Even Brent Walker hasn’t seen this one!) Thanks go to the Library of Congress for this print.
So those are the 7 main films in the collection. But there IS more!
As you may know, I’ve been uploading the occasional rare silent comedy to my You Tube channel (‘Reel Comedies’) and there’s one particular film I uploaded a few years ago, which has now gained more views than all of the other films combined. And what film is that Dave? Well Dave…. it’s a Billy Bevan rarity called ON PATROL (1922) which contains so many classic comedy scenes.
This “lost” film only exists in fragments, which have been found in various comedy clip compilations and those have been the main source for the restoration I produced. But it’s in need of an upgrade. So fresh new scans of the various film elements will be made, to provide you with the best possible looking version of this “lost” film that we can. (p.s. the picture on the front cover of Brent Walker’s book is from ON PATROL!)
And the other classic Bevan we’ve been asked to include is the restored version of WALL STREET BLUES (1924), which again doesn’t exist in any archive that we know of, but features some unforgettable scenes. This will be an updated version containing newly scanned footage.
Loads of fantastic content to look forward to there! The great news is that the Kickstarter has already been successful, so the Blu Ray is guaranteed to go ahead; there’s still until the 26th July to make your pledge and grab yourself a copy of what’s sure to be a great disk.
Very excited to be able to share this. Dave Glass & Dave Wyatt, who recently put out a fabulous DVD of rare Lloyd Hamilton films, are turning their attention to Lupino Lane.
One of my favourite forgotten clowns, Lane was an appealing performer somewhere between Keaton and Harry Langdon. He was also one of the most amazing tumblers and acrobats to ever have stepped in front of a movie camera. Schooled in a family tradition of pantomime and tumbling going back centuries, he had an extraordinary ability at visual comedy and slapstick. This was seen to full advantage in a string of eye-popping, gag and acrobatic-filled two-reelers for Educational Pictures in the 1920s. Often writing and directing the films as well as starring, he drew on a vast bank of gags and routines to create some unique films.
These are usually only seen in grainy, miserable quality, but Dave & Dave’s new Kickstarter project collects some fabulous prints from archives and collections. Here’s more from Dave Glass on the contents:
“We’re delighted to say that we have some exceptional prints (most are 2K scans of nitrate) of some VERY rare films.
Through the generosity of Serge Bromberg and Lobster Films, Elif & Co at the EYE Film Museum and Patrick Stanbury (Photoplay) we present the following films:
HELLO SAILOR (1927) (one of the special event hits at Pordenone 2019)
SWORD POINTS (1928) (35mm 4K restoration)
FISTICUFFS (1928) (even Steve Massa hasn’t seen this one!!)
SUMMER SAPS (1929) (complete 2 reel version!)
GOOD NIGHT NURSE (1929) (new scan of 35mm nitrate)
JOYLAND (1929) (the complete ‘Toyland’ rarity – a Joy!)
AND….. we hope to add one more to that list. (We’re still “negotiating”, so we don’t want to commit to anything just yet. But it’ll be a goodie!!)”
Here’s the trailer for the project, showing just how gorgeous these films look:
Amazing! I’m really proud to be contributing an essay to the booklet for this amazing project. Historian Glenn Mitchell is too, and there will be wonderful accompaniment for the films by Neil Brand and others TBC.
Silent film accompanist, historian and DVD producer Ben Model has produced some wonderful releases over the last few years, highlighting forgotten comics such as Marcel Perez, Monty Banks and Johnny Hines. Now he’s just announced his next Kickstarter project: some prime works from wonderful but forgotten comedienne Alice Howell.
Alice was a big star in the late teens and early 20s; she was one of the few women permitted to be funny in her own right in the male-dominated world of screen comedy. Her image was quite unique; piled-up frizzy red hair and a permanently surprised expression made look rather like a manic doll. With her scatty but carefree working girl was an ancestor to Lucile Ball. You can read more on her here.
Sadly, all but a few of her films have been lost, and many of those only exist forgotten in archives. This release hopes to free some from the vaults of the Library of Congress. A worthy project indeed, and one I’ll certainly be backing. Here’s the info direct from Ben’s page, and the link below.
“This Kickstarter will fund a project that brings 6 extremely rare Alice Howell silent comedy shorts to DVD, made from 1915-1925, selected by me (Ben Model) and by silent comedy film historian Steve Massa. The films that will be on the DVD will be seen in new digital scans of archival 35mm and 16mm materials preserved by the Library of Congress, and will be scanned by the Library of Congress’ lab. I will create a brand new custom musical score for each film.
All of the films will require exposure adjustments and some may need new intertitles or main titles.
The DVD box art will be created by professional graphic designer and silent era aficionado Marlene Weisman. The DVDs will be professionally authored and they will be made available for sale on Amazon.com, as I have been doing using successfully for 18 of my DVD releases, and will be publicized.
This Kickstarter covers all costs for the DVD’s production and release, as well as of the making of and shipping of backer DVDs.
Films scheduled to be on the DVD (subject to change):
Very excited to be able to share this. Dave Glass & Dave Wyatt, who recently put out a fabulous DVD of rare Lloyd Hamilton films, are turning their attention to Lupino Lane.
Silent film accompanist, historian and DVD producer Ben Model has produced some wonderful releases over the last few years, highlighting forgotten comics such as Marcel Perez, Monty Banks and Johnny Hines. Now he’s just announced his next Kickstarter project: some prime works from wonderful but forgotten comedienne Alice Howell.
The Lost Laugh 