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It's been just the opposite in my experience. I've seen DUCK SOUP several times in packed theatres, from the old Beverly in West Hollywood to the AFI's Silver in Maryland. In every case, audiences roared so loud and so long after the first few seconds, that the lack of music and sound was absolutel...

Louie, I hope you are still working on your El Brendel book...I mean, look at my Magnum Opus - Wheeler & Woolsey, for corn sakes! McFarland published it, and it even returned as a paperback, people generally liked it, even those who dislike W&W's films (or W&W themselves). As Richard sai...

Boy, do I have lots of catching up to do...a few years' back someone from this family reached out to me, inquiring if I could help them secure 16mm prints on certain RKO titles. (I later learned that a certain movie buff, who is not a member of this site, pointed the Saltzmans in my direction.) The ...

Two years on, and I'm still reveling in Brent's Mack Sennett book, I'm just as pleased as that Christmas Day in 2009. I don't believe I've carried a book around with me so often since my ninth birthday when I received THE FILMS OF LAUREL & HARDY, back in '67. Brent, your book is an almost-perman...

I just like the way that McCarey stages both versions with Chase and the Marxes. And he must had to since many of the same shots from SITTING PRETTY are in DUCK SOUP. ) In my experience with audiences, the Marx Brothers version is one of those rare examples where a classic comedy scene plays better...

Speaking of Educational's pick-ups from other producers - were any of the Stan Laurel comedies for Joe Rock issued by Educational with music tracks (soon after Van Bueren reissued the Chaplin Mutuals)? I used to own a beat-up print of HALF A MAN with synchronized 1930's music & effects but it wa...

I don't believe Joe Franklin passed on...he used to show some of the Paramount Christies (that's how I saw POST MORTEMS on his "Memory Lane" TV show in the 1960s). Joe had a huge collection of shorts that he picked up for peanuts from the Select Film Library: Hal Roach Pathes like DON KEY,...

Has anybody identified the Harold Lloyd one reeler (excerpted anonymously IIRC in Brownlow's THE THIRD GENIUS) where Harold and Gaylord do their version? (I don't mean the bit Harold & Gaylord do together in HIS ROYAL SLYNESS, which resembles Chaplin's business in THE FLOORWALKER.)

A number of other L&H films, and a few selected Max Davidson comedies from Edition Filmmuseum's superb DVD release, will also screen in late December / early January. Uli A very BIG Thank You, Uli, for sharing your 35mm nitrate material on Max Davidson for that magnificent Filmmuseum release......

It sounds as though the ever-popular Mirror Routine was being beaten to death during the mid-1940's: in 1944 Bob Hope & Victor McLaglan do their version in THE PRINCESS AND THE PIRATE, in '45 it's Lou Costello & Joe Sawyer in NAUGHTY NINETIES, and then in '46 it's this Errol Flynn picture! I...