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Hacking through a wall of human flesh at Cinevent 36

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Max Nineteennineteen

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May 31, 2004, 8:56:26 AM5/31/04
to
Have no fear, my grisly title merely refers to a running gag in
MISSISSIPPI; it was not actually necessary even in the most crowded of
dealer rooms. I feel certain this will be the earliest Cinevent
report this year, since it's still going on and I bugged out a day
early. Nevertheless, even in an abbreviated visit I learned many
valuable things:

• Sooner or later, you WILL have to fight a duel with pistols (as
happened in MISSISSIPPI, CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE and some cartoon)

• Serutan is the most comedically promising product name (it turned up
as the source of a gag in both some cartoon I forget and A THOUSAND
AND ONE NIGHTS)

• The number one problem in America is poor girls wanting to marry
rich boys (or vice versa) and parents standing in the way, especially
when there's some slimy guy preferred by the parents waiting in the
wings (nearly every movie shown)

• Stick your hand out without looking and with any luck, a drink will
be thrust into it (MISSISSIPPI, CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE and something else--
BROADWAY BAD?)

• There is a Bob Evans on every fricking corner in Columbus (not
actually a lesson of the festival per se, but...)

Anyway, here's what I saw and thought, hopefully others will finish
off the weekend for the historical record. (My four-star scale works
like this: 4=highlight of the fest, 3=well worth catching,
2=reasonably worth watching, 1=vault fire candidate.)

FRIDAY

YOUR UNCLE DUDLEY (***)-- An Edward Everett Horton comedy, WILD MONEY,
was one of the best talkies at the last Cinesation, and this was
another good one (which raises the question-- how many of these
starring vehicles for him are there?) Sort of like one of W.C.
Fields' domestic comedies (but less caricatured), here he's a civic
do-gooder being played for a patsy by both his fellow Babbitts (who
get rich while he gets trophies of appreciation) and his grasping
sister-in-law (the first of the weekend's parental obstacles to
marriage, for both her daughter and Horton's plans to wed his
secretary). The material (a play cowritten by Howard "Life With
Father" Lindsay) is more heavy-handed than WILD MONEY, with its
one-dimensional villainess, but the playing was delightful and the
third act wraps up everything with satisfying gusto.

SUNSHINE OF PARADISE ALLEY (*)-- If Sylvester Stallone hadn't already
demonstrated to your satisfaction that no movie with "Paradise Alley"
in its title is any damn good, this Chadwick Production ("If it's a
Chadwick, it's sentimental treacle") settles it. Max Davidson makes
the first part of this, set in the aforementioned slum full of poor
but plucky folk, fun, but after a reel or so poor but plucky Sunshine
(Barbara Bedford) falls in love with the rich boy and it leaves the
slum setting entirely to turn into The Villain Still Pursued Her.
After about the 11th convenient coincidence (I think it was the bad
guy leaving a note explaining his entire criminal plan in the taxi run
by The Poor But Plucky Lad Who Secretly Loves Her-- I'm not joking) I
just checked out emotionally and couldn't care less. Poor But Plucky
Phil Carli cast pianistic pearls before this swine, and gave it far
more than it deserved.

THE COUNTY CHAIRMAN (***)-- A very nice Will Rogers comedy about
politics, with maybe a little more bite than the average thanks to the
George Ade play it's based on; he sets up his young law partner to run
against legislator Berton Churchill for his own reasons, regardless of
the fact that it will screw up the orphan lad's hopes of marrying
Churchill's daughter. Lots of good zingers that, unlike many of
Rogers' famous quips about politics, actually zing. Not directed by
John Ford, but I'd bet he saw it while he was working at Fox-- since
it's the only OTHER movie I've ever seen that depicts a
turn-of-the-century political convention in Wyoming....

BIG BUSINESS (****)-- Like I need to introduce this. I'll just point
out that even though I've seen it 20 times, I laughed out loud a lot
seeing it with an audience. That's why you come to these things.

THE LAST WARNING (***)-- Paul Leni's last is a weaker, more improbable
retread of THE CAT AND THE CANARY set in a New York theater (as the
notes pointed out, a much less convincing setting for gothic scares
than a remote manor house), but it's so full of bravura camerawork
that you hardly notice it's junk food. I often tell people who whine
about LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT being lost that this is the best you could
hope for from a similar plot-- and odds are Browning didn't deliver
anything near what Leni does here.

MAX DAVIDSON FEST-- Even after this concentrated dose I can't say I'm
a full-fledged member of the Max Davidson cult-- he still strikes me
as the Jewish Finlayson, not a Jewish Hardy, more a reactive figure
with a fairly limited bag of tricks (but then how many faces did
Finlayson make?) That said, a good Roach comedy is by definition a
really good comedy short, and the three shorts in this program (all
directed by Leo McCarey) absolutely killed.

WHY GIRLS SAY NO (***), apparently Max's first starring part, is a
pleasant domestic comedy in which Max's daughter is wooed by a goyishe
boy (ironic to see Max complaining about an Irish boy when his own son
is Spec O'Donnell!) FLAMING FATHERS (****) is riotously funny, nearly
as good as BIG BUSINESS in terms of developing a series of comic
situations involving Max at the beach (and probably the best single
film I saw at the fest). And SHOULD SECOND HUSBANDS COME FIRST (****)
was about its equal, as Spec O'Donnell and older brother David Butler
(future director of Just Imagine etc.) try everything to keep Mama
from marrying Max, finally interrupting the wedding to claim that Max
fathered O'Donnell's baby and then abandoned "her"!

MISSISSIPPI (**)-- 2 parts Bing to one part Bill Fields seems exactly
backwards to me. But, easy enough to sit through, and glad to see it
since it's in un-PC TV limbo at the moment (the word "darkies" appears
twice, I think).

SATURDAY

ANIMATION PROGRAM-- A nice selection of animation, some familiar
(Bimbo's Initiation, The Gorilla Mystery), some less so (a visually
dazzling Harman-Ising cartoon called Bottles, a typically
incomprehensible Van Beuren called The Haunted Ship). I was glad to
see Hell's Bells, an early Silly Symphony (a la Skeleton's Dance)
which never played on Ink & Paint Club on Disney Channel because it's
about, well, devils; the oddest, not very good but interesting, was a
Columbia, Willoughby's Magic Hat, by the future UPA crowd that was
visually like a 40s dry run for Fractured Fairy Tales.

THE GREAT K&A TRAIN ROBBERY (****)-- I'd never seen this Tom Mix,
somehow, so I was delighted that it turned out to be the best Jackie
Chan movie of 1926 (and does anybody else think that John Wayne's
early career was owed in no small part to the fact that he looked so
much like Mix?) David Drazin, who I heard say that he had never seen
it (but then if he'd ever played for it in Chicago, I'd have been
there), did an excellent job that coulda fooled me.

EARLY PARAMOUNT MUSICAL SHORTS-- Early musical one-reelers like this
aren't my cup of tea generally, but I sat through Chinese torch singer
Anna Chang (the notes said, a rival to Anna May Wong-- yeah, call her
Anna Sten Wong), and a pretty painful Borrah Minnevitch one (the
harmonica was not meant for early sound recording), to see a too-brief
clip of the very funny Frances Williams and a short with Lee Morse
(who turned out to be a dead ringer for Holly Hunter). Here's what
struck me about these creaky early shorts-- these were all TV prints.
Even in the late late show days of the late 60s and 70s I don't
remember 1929 one-reel musical shorts playing TV-- anybody know how
they tended to play these? As filler?

CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE (****)-- I mentioned to Richard M. Roberts that I
had walked out of the 30s music hall adaptation CHU CHIN CHOW at
Cinesation but was looking forward to this 40s musical about Victorian
music hall performers because it was directed by Cavalcanti, and he
growled menacingly, "Anybody who doesn't like CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE had
better keep it to themselves."

Well, if there was such a person after this fast-paced,
handsome-looking, irrepressibly good-humored Ealing production, which
reminded me a bit of one of my favorite feelgood films, Walsh's
Gentleman Jim, they did indeed hide it well. To be honest, I found
the charms of lantern-jawed star Tommy Trinder at least partly
resistible, but Stanley Holloway stole every scene he was in as a
pompous rival, and Betty Warren was fun as a matronly star who guides
Trinder's career. Preceded by some Lantz-era Oswald short (I missed
the title), which was terrible and basically a promo for KING OF JAZZ
(look-- when Paul Whiteman breathes in he gets skinny! What a great
gag, let's repeat it about 1000 times in seven minutes!)

LOVE ‘EM AND WEEP (***)-- One of those early Laurel and Hardys where
they aren't actually a team yet, this is actually a Finlayson starring
vehicle (and was also Mae Busch's first Roach short, apparently), but
the formula about Finlayson trying to keep the wife from meeting the
angry ex-girlfriend was close enough to prime L&H material that they
remade it as CHICKENS COME HOME.

WHAT HAPPENED TO ROSA (**)-- Apparently the only surviving Goldwyn
feature of Mabel Normand, this was another poor girl/rich boy story,
with a nice comic premise-- she's a mousy clerk who imagines she's a
Spanish lover-- which was inexplicably played so straight that it was
a bit pathetic and sad.

BROADWAY BAD (**)-- Joan Blondell as a chorus girl who loses her
morals and gains stardom. Like a lot of pre-Code movies (in fact it
bears more than a passing resemblance plotwise to Clara Bow's Call Her
Savage, made at the same studio, Fox, a couple of years earlier), it
starts out as a wild and racy comedy, then turns into a less enjoyable
maternal sacrifice yarn. Preceded, incidentally, by Raymond
Griffith's one talkie short, THE SLEEPING PORCH (***) which was pretty
good for a Christie comedy but rather sad for showing the vocal
problems which would end his career (he plays a man with a bad cold,
not a viable long term screen persona).

LILAC TIME (****)-- The legend of the French girl left behind after
WWI was strong enough, especially after THE BIG PARADE, that I suppose
it's not surprising that some female star should have conjured up a
vehicle in which the war is just a backdrop for her romantic drama.
LILAC TIME devotes rather too much time to Colleen Moore's comedic
antics at first for a war picture, but once flyer Gary Cooper
(impossibly young and gorgeous) appears, and then the big offensive
starts, this really kicked in emotionally in a way that seemed
inspired by Seventh Heaven to me (and Phil Carli played his heart out
to give it the lushly romantic accompaniment it needed). Thanks in
particular to Phil's playing, one of the highlight experiences of the
weekend, even though the print (I guess all prints of this title) was
kind of gray and dupey.

THE HOUSE BY THE RIVER (***)-- Fun, minor Fritz Lang about an
accidental killing, the sensation of which makes its culprit (author
Louis Hayward) famous, rich and increasingly cuckoo, to the dismay of
his responsible brother (Lee Bowman) who was wheedled into helping him
dispose of the body. As someone behind me said, kind of like a good
Alfred Hitchcock TV episode.

SUNDAY

TORCH TOONS-- A retrospective of Columbia cartoons that proved that a
studio with good budgets but no consistent characters or artistic
personality could produce enough excellent one-offs to fill a
70-minute retrospective-- but still not be more than an also-ran.
From the Charles Mintz era, ALASKAN NIGHTS (**) with Krazy Kat is a
letter-perfect early Mickey ripoff (they don't even try to make Minnie
look different, no wonder Disney's so touchy about trademark
infringement), while SCRAPPY'S PARTY (***) covers up its lead
character's utter lack of personality with the broadest assortment of
celebrity caricatures ever-- not just Garbo and L&H but Gandhi,
Einstein, Mussolini and John D. Rockefeller Sr.! SWING, MONKEY SWING
(***) was a handsome, energetic color cartoon and about the worst
example of thoughtless racism (monkeys put on a jazz show-- why would
anybody find THAT offensive in 50 years, C.M.?) I've ever seen.

MERRY MANNEQUINS (***) was done freelance by Ub Iwerks, and an already
dated (1937) story about mannequins coming to life at night is totally
transformed by amazing art deco backgrounds. A Li'l Abner cartoon,
SADIE HAWKINS DAY (**) is faithful but as grotesque as every attempt
to film that comic. The remaining in-house cartoons are all skillful,
but personality-low, Warner/MGM imitations-- not surprising in that
Tashlin produced the first, TOLLBRIDGE TROUBLES (***), the second
(SILENT TWEETMENT, ***) contains a Sylvester-Tweety-like duo, and the
third (LOCO LOBO, **) pits a wolf against a (here's an original idea)
wily rabbit.

In the end Columbia gave it up and went to distributing UPA cartoons.
CHRISTOPHER CRUMPET (**) was a weak imitation of GERALD McBOING BOING
notable only for its severely abstracted style, but PINK AND BLUE
BLUES (****) was an excellent Mister Magoo whose ultra-moderne 50s
color palette was a joy to see on the big screen in Technicolor. As
someone who grew up on the bad TV Magoos, I'd love to see a
retrospective of the best of the theatrical Magoos.

A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS (***)-- Typically-- okay, even more than
typically-- preposterous 40s escapism with Cornel Wilde and Phil
Silvers showing what Arabia looked like centuries before Bob & Bing
discovered a road to Morocco; it's got Seussian sets, lysergic
Technicolor and lots of pretty harem gals and topical gags. Michael
Schlesinger's notes called this "ripe for rediscovery'; I'm inclined
to think most of the audience for its very 40s goofiness and shtick
was there that morning, and it could have had a peppier pace. But as
I walked into the Wexner Center theater I noticed framed posters for
India Song, A Taste of Cherry, and Safe, which would be a pretty good
short list for The Most Tedious Art Films I've Ever Sat Through.
Under the circumstances, this was the perfect piece of Hollywood fluff
with which to profane such a sacred temple of cinemahhh.

And that was when I had to hit the road, but it was a pleasure as
always to meet various faces to go with names, including at the AMS
dinner beforehand, and be able to talk movies at about nine levels
further in than usual (ie, starting sentences with "Wasn't Nestor
Paiva the bad guy in...") I look forward to finding out what I will
bitterly regret missing, and thanks to everyone who makes these great
events possible. It was richly appreciated, and pistols at dawn, suh!

Early Film

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May 31, 2004, 9:32:08 AM5/31/04
to
Max 1919, while giving a review of CineVent prior to its completion, writes:

>SUNSHINE OF PARADISE ALLEY (*)

(Rest of review, snipped)

Two words embody the highlight of this festival for me (unless today's last
silent hold still more surprises):

Tui Lorraine!!!!!!!

Yes, Clara Bow's mother-in-law, secretary, traveling and partying companion,
actress, the suer and counter-suer of Clara, whom most writers dismiss as
simply cashing in on Clara's good name.

She has the second female lead, "Queenie" in "Sunshine of Paradise Alley".

She completely steals the show from the more experienced actors!

And, as Joe Yranski pointed out, she did her own tightrope walking stunt
without the use of a double! (In all fairness, the rope was probably closer to
the ground than the photography made it appear.)

She was simply a delight to watch!

Earl.

Eric Stott

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May 31, 2004, 2:04:28 PM5/31/04
to

Max Nineteennineteen wrote:

>
> • Serutan is the most comedically promising product name (it turned up
> as the source of a gag in both some cartoon I forget and A THOUSAND
> AND ONE NIGHTS)
>

Author William Saroyan once reported overhearing two old women discussing
a poster for one of his plays. One said "His name isn't really Saroyan-
it's 'Natures' spelled backwards"

Stott


Max Nineteennineteen

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May 31, 2004, 9:50:05 PM5/31/04
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earl...@aol.comedy (Early Film) wrote in message news:<20040531093208...@mb-m06.aol.com>...

> Max 1919, while giving a review of CineVent prior to its completion, writes:
>
> >SUNSHINE OF PARADISE ALLEY (*)
>
> (Rest of review, snipped)
>
> Two words embody the highlight of this festival for me (unless today's last
> silent hold still more surprises):
>
> Tui Lorraine!!!!!!!
>
> Yes, Clara Bow's mother-in-law, secretary, traveling and partying companion,
> actress, the suer and counter-suer of Clara, whom most writers dismiss as
> simply cashing in on Clara's good name.
>
> She has the second female lead, "Queenie" in "Sunshine of Paradise Alley".
>
> She completely steals the show from the more experienced actors!

She had the only genuinely moving moment in the second half of the
picture-- the scene at the end where she and "Bum," the ragged little
boy (described in his introductory title as "a piece of human
flotsam") commiserate and he gives her the old Jackie Coogan chin-up.

Doing a search I see that she was Clara's friend, and the IMDB credits
her as "Tui Bow" (and shows credits into the 1980s!), but how did
someone a year younger than Clara Bow become her mother-in-law and
wind up with the same last name?

Early Film

unread,
Jun 1, 2004, 7:36:07 AM6/1/04
to
Max 1919 asks:

>> Tui Lorraine!!!!!!!

> but how did
>someone a year younger than Clara Bow become her mother-in-law and
>wind up with the same last name?

Simple.

Clara's pappy married her.

Do you think D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin had a monopoly on young brides.


RIchard M Roberts

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Jun 1, 2004, 12:52:55 PM6/1/04
to
Max Nineteennineteen wrote:
>

> • There is a Bob Evans on every fricking corner in Columbus (not
> actually a lesson of the festival per se, but...)

There's not a Bob Evans on every corner of Columbus, there's a Bob Evans
on every corner in OHIO!!!!!

Sorry to correct you there, Max, but it's not Davidson's first starring
part (he did THE RAG MAN and OLD CLOTHES before he joined Roach and had
his own comedy series in 1914), but WHY GIRLS SAY NO is the pilot comedy
for the Roach-Davidson series and it was released as an All-Star comedy.


is a
> pleasant domestic comedy in which Max's daughter is wooed by a goyishe
> boy (ironic to see Max complaining about an Irish boy when his own son
> is Spec O'Donnell!) FLAMING FATHERS (****) is riotously funny, nearly
> as good as BIG BUSINESS in terms of developing a series of comic
> situations involving Max at the beach (and probably the best single
> film I saw at the fest). And SHOULD SECOND HUSBANDS COME FIRST (****)
> was about its equal, as Spec O'Donnell and older brother David Butler
> (future director of Just Imagine etc.) try everything to keep Mama
> from marrying Max, finally interrupting the wedding to claim that Max
> fathered O'Donnell's baby and then abandoned "her"!
>
> MISSISSIPPI (**)-- 2 parts Bing to one part Bill Fields seems exactly
> backwards to me. But, easy enough to sit through, and glad to see it
> since it's in un-PC TV limbo at the moment (the word "darkies" appears
> twice, I think).
>

Actually, the Fields-Crosby ratio is rather nicely balanced in
MISSISSIPPI, and since I'm a Crosby fan as well, I have no trouble with
Der Bingles footage. Field's stuff is quality on top of it (I think the
poker game and the Indian Story are both vintage Fields bits). Did
anybody else notice that Crosby with a moustache looks a bit like a
blonde Raymond Griffith?

>
> EARLY PARAMOUNT MUSICAL SHORTS-- Early musical one-reelers like this
> aren't my cup of tea generally, but I sat through Chinese torch singer
> Anna Chang (the notes said, a rival to Anna May Wong-- yeah, call her
> Anna Sten Wong), and a pretty painful Borrah Minnevitch one (the
> harmonica was not meant for early sound recording), to see a too-brief
> clip of the very funny Frances Williams

Did anyone else think that the Frances Williams/Yacht Club Boys short
looked like Paramount stuck two screen tests together and released them?
Definitely needed more Frances Williams.


and a short with Lee Morse
> (who turned out to be a dead ringer for Holly Hunter).

With a touch of Sean Young thrown in. Lee Morse is great, but her other
Paramount short, A MILLION ME'S (1931) shows her off to better
advantage.

And you forgot the luscious Lillian Roth in PUFF YOUR TROUBLES AWAY,
looking terrific as she passes out happy cigarettes to the sad
millionaires.


Here's what
> struck me about these creaky early shorts-- these were all TV prints.
> Even in the late late show days of the late 60s and 70s I don't
> remember 1929 one-reel musical shorts playing TV-- anybody know how
> they tended to play these? As filler?

Yep, there was even a Republic syndicated video package in the 1990's
that was using some of these UM&M/NTA Paramount shorts as filler.


>
> CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE (****)-- I mentioned to Richard M. Roberts that I
> had walked out of the 30s music hall adaptation CHU CHIN CHOW at
> Cinesation but was looking forward to this 40s musical about Victorian
> music hall performers because it was directed by Cavalcanti, and he
> growled menacingly, "Anybody who doesn't like CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE had
> better keep it to themselves."

Damn straight. Again, as I said in my notes, CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE is one of
my favorite films, and those who don;t get it are sub-human on my part.


>
> Well, if there was such a person after this fast-paced,
> handsome-looking, irrepressibly good-humored Ealing production, which
> reminded me a bit of one of my favorite feelgood films, Walsh's
> Gentleman Jim, they did indeed hide it well. To be honest, I found
> the charms of lantern-jawed star Tommy Trinder at least partly
> resistible, but Stanley Holloway stole every scene he was in as a
> pompous rival, and Betty Warren was fun as a matronly star who guides
> Trinder's career. Preceded by some Lantz-era Oswald short (I missed
> the title), which was terrible and basically a promo for KING OF JAZZ
> (look-- when Paul Whiteman breathes in he gets skinny! What a great
> gag, let's repeat it about 1000 times in seven minutes!)
>

Your memory's playin tricks on you Max, MY PAL PAUL(1930) played before
MISSISSIPPI and was a delightful promo for KING OF JAZZ featuring some
of the Whiteman musicians on the soundtrack. Then it ended with a neatly
cartooned version of the Universal logo and the words "Boop-boop-a-doop,
Boop-boop-a-doop, it's Oswald!" Worth every one of the six minutes it
ran.

> LOVE ‘EM AND WEEP (***)-- One of those early Laurel and Hardys where
> they aren't actually a team yet, this is actually a Finlayson starring
> vehicle (and was also Mae Busch's first Roach short, apparently), but
> the formula about Finlayson trying to keep the wife from meeting the
> angry ex-girlfriend was close enough to prime L&H material that they
> remade it as CHICKENS COME HOME.
>
> WHAT HAPPENED TO ROSA (**)-- Apparently the only surviving Goldwyn
> feature of Mabel Normand, this was another poor girl/rich boy story,
> with a nice comic premise-- she's a mousy clerk who imagines she's a
> Spanish lover-- which was inexplicably played so straight that it was
> a bit pathetic and sad.
>
> BROADWAY BAD (**)-- Joan Blondell as a chorus girl who loses her
> morals and gains stardom. Like a lot of pre-Code movies (in fact it
> bears more than a passing resemblance plotwise to Clara Bow's Call Her
> Savage, made at the same studio, Fox, a couple of years earlier), it
> starts out as a wild and racy comedy, then turns into a less enjoyable
> maternal sacrifice yarn.

The dissapointment of the Cinevent. A great first fifteen minutes with
the tracking shot of lingerie-clad beauties in the rail-car, then
plummets into Helen Twelvetrees territory. Ginger Rogers was completely
wasted. Once again, Fox made possibly more lousy precodes than any other
studio. Still happy for the opportunity to see it. A definite rarity!


Preceded, incidentally, by Raymond
> Griffith's one talkie short, THE SLEEPING PORCH (***) which was pretty
> good for a Christie comedy but rather sad for showing the vocal
> problems which would end his career (he plays a man with a bad cold,
> not a viable long term screen persona).

Well, end his acting career. No tragedy in Griffith's life there as he
was much more successful as a producer in the thirties and early forties
than he ever was as a comedy star.

THE SLEEPING PORCH has now played Columbus, Syracuse and Cinecon, I'm
ready to see it put to bed.

>
> LILAC TIME (****)-- The legend of the French girl left behind after
> WWI was strong enough, especially after THE BIG PARADE, that I suppose
> it's not surprising that some female star should have conjured up a
> vehicle in which the war is just a backdrop for her romantic drama.
> LILAC TIME devotes rather too much time to Colleen Moore's comedic
> antics at first for a war picture, but once flyer Gary Cooper
> (impossibly young and gorgeous) appears, and then the big offensive
> starts, this really kicked in emotionally in a way that seemed
> inspired by Seventh Heaven to me (and Phil Carli played his heart out
> to give it the lushly romantic accompaniment it needed). Thanks in
> particular to Phil's playing, one of the highlight experiences of the
> weekend, even though the print (I guess all prints of this title) was
> kind of gray and dupey.

No they're not. In fact, I have an 8mm print of LILAC TIME that is one
of the loveliest 8mm prints ever made and looks infinitely better than
the one Cinevent showed (in fact, that 16mm print looked like a dupe of
the 8mm!). A pity because LILAC TIME is a warhorse that needed another
airing at one of the Cinephile conventions.

The interesting picture Max didn't mention that was shown after he left
was SIX HOURS TO LIVE (Fox 1932) with Warner Baxter. Due to my allergic
reactions to Fox precodes and Warner Baxter in general, I was going to
avoid this one but came in to catch most of the second reel and saw a
beautifully directed (by William Dieterle) and photographed (John Seitz)
little fantasy with tragic and science-fiction overtones nicely acted by
Baxter (who always acted like he was dying or returned from the dead, so
he worked in the part) and the rest of the cast. Definitely a suprise
and highly recommended.

As always, the Cinevent is a smooth-running, terrific Convention. Kudos
to Steve Haynes, John Stangley, Dave Snyder, Bob Hodge, Lance Curwile,
Michael Haynes, Dr P. Camillo Carli, Dave Drazin, and the rest of the
Cinevent crew for another ripping show. here's to 36 and keep `em
coming!


RICHARD M ROBERTS

Max Nineteennineteen

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Jun 1, 2004, 2:39:40 PM6/1/04
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earl...@aol.comedy (Early Film) wrote in message news:<20040601073607...@mb-m29.aol.com>...

On the other hand, I remember walking by one of the tables and seeing
a country music show playing which was hosted by Rod Cameron, who if
memory serves ditched his wife... for HER mother. That's got to be a
rare feat in H'wood, where even marrying a woman your same age borders
on perversity....

Harlett O'Dowd

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Jun 1, 2004, 9:04:07 PM6/1/04
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"RIchard M Roberts" <repro...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:40BCB2C8...@earthlink.net...

> > EARLY PARAMOUNT MUSICAL SHORTS-- Early musical one-reelers like this
> > aren't my cup of tea generally, but I sat through Chinese torch singer
> > Anna Chang (the notes said, a rival to Anna May Wong-- yeah, call her
> > Anna Sten Wong), and a pretty painful Borrah Minnevitch one (the
> > harmonica was not meant for early sound recording), to see a too-brief
> > clip of the very funny Frances Williams
>
> Did anyone else think that the Frances Williams/Yacht Club Boys short
> looked like Paramount stuck two screen tests together and released them?
> Definitely needed more Frances Williams.

I'm happy whenever I get to see either. What numbers did they do?


> And you forgot the luscious Lillian Roth in PUFF YOUR TROUBLES AWAY,
> looking terrific as she passes out happy cigarettes to the sad
> millionaires.

WHA WHA WHAT????????!!!!!!!! Why didn't anyone tell me there would be
reefer musicals at this thing?

Ja50nch3a5er

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Jun 2, 2004, 10:12:01 AM6/2/04
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>There's not a Bob Evans on every corner of Columbus, there's a Bob Evans
>on every corner in OHIO!!!!!

Mmmm...Oreo pie! :)


Brent Walker

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Jun 2, 2004, 2:49:34 PM6/2/04
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RIchard M Roberts <repro...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<40BCB2C8...@earthlink.net>...
> Max Nineteennineteen wrote:
> >
>
> > ? There is a Bob Evans on every fricking corner in Columbus (not

> > actually a lesson of the festival per se, but...)
>
> There's not a Bob Evans on every corner of Columbus, there's a Bob Evans
> on every corner in OHIO!!!!!


The kid REALLY stays in the picture there.

Brent Walker

Stephen Cooke

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Jun 2, 2004, 3:58:02 PM6/2/04
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Although from the look of her, Ali McGraw never ate at one of those
places.

swac
Mmmmm...country fried steak...

StormChaser

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Jun 4, 2004, 12:40:27 AM6/4/04
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"RIchard M Roberts" <repro...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:40BCB2C8...@earthlink.net...
> Max Nineteennineteen wrote:

<snip>


> >
> > > SUNSHINE OF PARADISE ALLEY (*)-- If Sylvester Stallone hadn't already
> > demonstrated to your satisfaction that no movie with "Paradise Alley"
> > in its title is any damn good, this Chadwick Production ("If it's a
> > Chadwick, it's sentimental treacle") settles it. Max Davidson makes
> > the first part of this, set in the aforementioned slum full of poor
> > but plucky folk, fun, but after a reel or so poor but plucky Sunshine
> > (Barbara Bedford) falls in love with the rich boy and it leaves the
> > slum setting entirely to turn into The Villain Still Pursued Her.
> > After about the 11th convenient coincidence (I think it was the bad
> > guy leaving a note explaining his entire criminal plan in the taxi run
> > by The Poor But Plucky Lad Who Secretly Loves Her-- I'm not joking) I
> > just checked out emotionally and couldn't care less. Poor But Plucky
> > Phil Carli cast pianistic pearls before this swine, and gave it far
> > more than it deserved.
> >
>

<snip>

After her performance in LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1920),
I would assume Barbara Bedford went on to a stellar career with acting
honors. However after reading on this newsgroup negative reviews of
her subsequent surviving work, MOCKERY (1927), for example, I
have to conclude that LOTM was not characteristic of her work.

Did she just choose the wrong projects?


Mark

> RICHARD M ROBERTS

StormChaser

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Jun 4, 2004, 12:40:28 AM6/4/04
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"RIchard M Roberts" <repro...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:40BCB2C8...@earthlink.net...
> Max Nineteennineteen wrote:

<snip>
> >


> > > SUNSHINE OF PARADISE ALLEY (*)-- If Sylvester Stallone hadn't already
> > demonstrated to your satisfaction that no movie with "Paradise Alley"
> > in its title is any damn good, this Chadwick Production ("If it's a
> > Chadwick, it's sentimental treacle") settles it. Max Davidson makes
> > the first part of this, set in the aforementioned slum full of poor
> > but plucky folk, fun, but after a reel or so poor but plucky Sunshine
> > (Barbara Bedford) falls in love with the rich boy and it leaves the
> > slum setting entirely to turn into The Villain Still Pursued Her.
> > After about the 11th convenient coincidence (I think it was the bad
> > guy leaving a note explaining his entire criminal plan in the taxi run
> > by The Poor But Plucky Lad Who Secretly Loves Her-- I'm not joking) I
> > just checked out emotionally and couldn't care less. Poor But Plucky
> > Phil Carli cast pianistic pearls before this swine, and gave it far
> > more than it deserved.
> >
>

<snip>

Max Nineteennineteen

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Jun 4, 2004, 9:29:32 AM6/4/04
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"StormChaser" <nth...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<03Tvc.37155$zO3....@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net>...

> "RIchard M Roberts" <repro...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:40BCB2C8...@earthlink.net...

> After her performance in LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1920),


> I would assume Barbara Bedford went on to a stellar career with acting
> honors. However after reading on this newsgroup negative reviews of
> her subsequent surviving work, MOCKERY (1927), for example, I
> have to conclude that LOTM was not characteristic of her work.

Well, not that Sunshine O'Day would have been much of an opportunity
for anybody, but it's basically the same plot and character that
Colleen Moore plays in Twinkletoes, and she's alive and sparkling
throughout the picture and more or less wins you over. Bedford is
quite pretty-- she resembles Mary Astor at times-- but she just didn't
light up the screen, indeed, I find it hard to remember anything she
did a week later.

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