OT-Museum of Modern Art Comedy Screenings
Matt Barry
comedy during 1976. This is kind of related to silents since some
silent comedies were shown for the tribute. Does anyone have an entire
list of all the comedies screened for this program? I understand that
they showed everything from Harold Lloyd's FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE to John
Waters' PINK FLAMINGOS. If anyone has a list of the films they
screened, or a website with the info, let me know.
Matt
ChaneyFan
comedy during 1976. This is kind of related to silents since some
silent comedies were shown for the tribute.
I believe Leonard Maltin put the entire thing together. I recall that he wrote
Chaplin directly and got permission to do the first public screening of A WOMAN
OF PARIS with Chaplin's new orchestral score. I don't have a complete list of
all the films, but I saw it once and it was indeed an impressive list.
===============================
Jon Mirsalis
e-mail: Chan...@aol.com
Lon Chaney Home Page: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan
Jon's Film Sites: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan/jonfilm.htm
John Aldrich
Re: A Woman Of Paris...that makes for a nice story, but doesn't jibe
with history. AWOP was actually reissued worldwide in 1972-73. The
LaserDisc/DVD releases include a reissue trailer from 1972. I first
saw it myself in 1973.
Leonard's 1976 MOMA tribute to comedy was indeed a phenominal
undertaking. I have the program from that series and it lists some
450 films..many of which were being seen for the first time since
their original release.
The was, and probably still is, the most comprehensive tribute to film
comedy ever presented anywhere. The program notes are a literal
textbook on film comedy.
--John A.
Bob Birchard
> Re: A Woman Of Paris...that makes for a nice story, but doesn't jibe
> with history. AWOP was actually reissued worldwide in 1972-73. The
> LaserDisc/DVD releases include a reissue trailer from 1972. I first
> saw it myself in 1973.
I think Jon is closer to being right about this. I graduated from UCLA in the
spring of 1972, and after various adventures I went to work for rbc films in the
latter part of 1973. rbc had the non-theatrical rights to the Chaplin pictures, and
when I first went to work there "A Woman of Paris" was not part of the Chaplin
package. It was negotiated separately--along with "Sunnyside"--after Black, Inc.
(Mo Rothman and Bert Schneider's company that controlled the world wide rights to
the Chaplin films) had demonstrated a fair level of success with the Chaplin package
overall. I worked at rbc for about a year and was laid off, then several months
later I was brought back to head up the Super 8mm rbc Chaplin release program. I
attended Herb Graff's 1976 New York Cinecon on behalf of rbc, and at that time we
still did not have rights to "A Woman of Paris," though I believe the negotiations
were in the works. The very fact that "A Woman of Paris" could be included in the
MoMA comedy program strongly argues for the fact that no one had seen the picture,
which is subtitled "A Drama of Fate" and which is lacking in any sort of comic
element. But at the time we were relying on the memory of critics who described the
long-unseen film as a frothy confection that had inspired Ernst Lubitsch to turn to
sophisticated comedy from dramatic spectacle. We now know, of course, that Lubitsch
made such comedies in Germany in the Teens--long before he ever saw "A Woman of
Paris" and that if there are any laughs in "A Woman of Paris" they are largely
unintentional.
--
Bob Birchard
bbir...@earthlink.net
http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/Guest/birchard.htm
James L. Neibaur
> I was brought back to head up the Super 8mm rbc Chaplin release program.
I remember those being available for a 15 year lease, or some such thing. Did
anyone ever return their prints after the lease was up?
JN
Please visit the most poorly designed web pages online:
my Favorite Movies web page:
http://hometown.aol.com/jimneibr/myhomepage/movies.html
and my Favorite Performers web page:
http://hometown.aol.com/jimneibr/myhomepage/rant.html
ChaneyFan
>>>Re: A Woman Of Paris...that makes for a nice story, but doesn't jibe
with history. AWOP was actually reissued worldwide in 1972-73. The
LaserDisc/DVD releases include a reissue trailer from 1972. I first saw it
myself in 1973.
Sorry John, but your memory is playing tricks with you. You might have seen a
bootleg copy (and I know there were bootleg 8mm prints in the mid 70s...minus
the brief scene with Chaplin), but the first release was in 1976. This is from
the Jan 10, 1977 Time magazine:
For half a century Charlie Chaplin's A WOMAN OF PARIS has been one of the great
"lost" films of movie history. Now it is being released by Chaplin, with a new
musical score by him, after a premiere at New York's Museum of Modern Art,
whose enterprising young guest film curator, Leonard Maltin, had called the
87-year old Chaplin in Switzerland on the long chance he could get a shot at
this treasure.
Chaplin did *not* release the film earlier because he was working on a new
score and didn't want it released without the score. It definitely did *not*
play with the big Chaplin reissue cycle of 72-73...I still have the program
booklet from the original release of that series and it isn't included.
John Aldrich
I apologize, Jon. You are right. While a reissue date of 1972 is
given on the A Woman of Paris LaserDisc, a check of the reissue
trailer itself shows the date as 1976. Therefore, it must have been
1977 that I caught up with this one.
I confirmed that in The Chaplin Encyclopedia, where a nice discussion
of the cuts made in the film for reissue is contained.
--John A.
Bob Birchard
> Bob stated:
>
> > I was brought back to head up the Super 8mm rbc Chaplin release program.
>
> I remember those being available for a 15 year lease, or some such thing. Did
> anyone ever return their prints after the lease was up?
The reason the Chaplin Super 8mm prints were "leased" and not sold was due to
a clause in the Chaplin/Black, Inc. contract that stipulated that no film prints
could be sold. There was another clause that said something like due to the nature
of the medium, cassettes could be sold. Now this was really before home video hit
and there was no definition of the word cassettes--but Super 8mm was developing as
a somewhat viable medium and Bert Schneider and mo Rothman wanted to get in on the
action. We toyed with the idea of packaging the films in the Technicolor Super 8mm
cassette system, but ultimately decided that there were too few projectors in
private hands equipped for this system (which was largely used as a sales tool in
department stores), so the only alternative was to "lease" the films for the life
of the print or the expiration date of the Black, Inc. contract, which at that time
had some fifteen years to run.
We hired some hoity-toity entertainment law firm to draft the lease agreement
and the job was given to the idiot son of one of the partners. He was more
interested in collecting art than in doing legal work, but he managed to come up
with a 25 page lease agreement that was totally useless for our purposes. I was
given the job of drafting a lease document that could fit on a coupon that could be
clipped from a catalogue and returned with the orders. With a couple of minor
revisions, it was my version of the lease agreement that was finally used.
We attempted in every way we knew how to make it clear that the rbc police
were not going to be knocking on the door of those who leased the films. A simple
statement that the film had been destroyed would have been sufficient. Still,
there was a lot of resistance from collectors, because although life of print
leases were common for deposit rental libraries, nothing like this had been tried
in the collectors' market.
rbc was ultimately sold to Paramount, where it became Paramount non-theatrical
and was the parent to Paramount Home Video. By the time the fifteen years were up
rbc was long gone, and Bert Schneider no longer had offices at 933 N. La Brea, so
if anyone did send back a print it would have been returned with an "addressee
unknown" stamp.
Rob Farr
> The was, and probably still is, the most comprehensive tribute to film
> comedy ever presented anywhere. The program notes are a literal
> textbook on film comedy.
As is William K. Everson's monograph for the 1971 MOMA tribute to Hal Roach.
Its amazing that the little booklet, "The Films of Hal Roach", is still the
only book ever written about that legendary producer. Did Maltin rework
1976 his notes in "The Great Movie Comedians"?
Rob Farr
John Aldrich
Yes, to a degree, although The Great Movie Comedians contains career
overviews of the major comedians whereas the program notes discuss
the individual films in detail...including many that do not
necessarily feature 'Great Comedians'.
I agree with you about The Films Of Hal Roach by Everson. I first saw
that in the library of the college I attended in the mid-1970's and I
spent the next 20 years looking for it in used bookstores and thanks
to the internet I finally tracked down a copy a few years ago. It's a
must have, and, as you mentioned, the best overview of the Roach
Studio so far.
Those printed programs are real collectors items now. Shortly after
the comedy tribute, Leonard did a tribute to animation at MOMA that
grew into OF MICE AND MAGIC. And I still have a program to a MOMA
tribute to Universal Pictures that Leonard gave me and signed. It's
probably the most definitive history of Univeral I have seen.
Another good one to look for is The Rivals of D.W. Griffith that was
printed to accompany a film series at the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis in the 1970's. Well worth having, with articles by
Everson, Slide, Brownlow, Kozarski, etc.
--John A.
James Roots
Is that rare and/or valuable?
(Coincidentally, I read the Hal Roach booklet about a month
ago. It's practically becoming a sure thing that whenever I
watch a silent or read a book about silents, someone will
mention it here within four weeks! Obviously, great minds
think alike... Exhibit A: Mike Schlesinger and George
Shelps, soul-mates and kindred political spirits.)
Jim
Bruce Calvert
<a9ebpv$hjs$1...@slb2.atl.mindspring.net>, when replying change nine to ix
stated...
>As is William K. Everson's monograph for the 1971 MOMA tribute to Hal Roach.
>Its amazing that the little booklet, "The Films of Hal Roach", is still the
>only book ever written about that legendary producer. Did Maltin rework
>1976 his notes in "The Great Movie Comedians"?
>
>Rob Farr
There is one of these for sale at abebooks right now...
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/BookDetails?bi=131347384
Bruce Calvert
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Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://home.attbi.com/~silentfilm
JimReid56
>>only book ever written about that legendary producer. Did Maltin rework
>>1976 his notes in "The Great Movie Comedians"?
>>
>>Rob Farr
>
>There is one of these for sale at abebooks right now...
I have been trying to find a copy of that lately, and have discovered that just
because it is listed as "for sale" doesn't mean they actually have a copy of
it. After going through four different online dealers, I finally found a copy
on the west coast, and for only $14!
Jim Reid