Ed Watz wrote:This treasure trove of Bill Everson's lectures is pure gold - it's much like listening to a Richard Roberts commentary track - wonderful, indeed!
Thank you Richard for sharing this, how fortunate we are that these tapes were made, saved, and now available.
Ed
I take that as a great compliment Ed, because I always took Bill Everson as my high watermark of what a Film Historian should and could be at their best. He was one of the first to buck the academic attitudes and aesthetics and push the concept that the standard Hollywood product: comedies, precodes, horror films, B westerns, serials, etc., were also important and a lot more fun to watch. He expressed his enthusiasm for those films in his writing, which was always well-written and entertaining, and he introduced so many of us to so many great movies. His books remain required reading for anyone wanting to immerse themselves in this area of interest.
We were friendly acquaintances, we corresponded, traded films a time or two, but the opposite coastal thing sadly limited my face to face time with him, I cherished every meal and conversation we had together, and these recordings do indeed bring him back to us, they are true treasures and bless whomever brought their cassette recorder along with them to Bill's shows and made them.
RICHARD M ROBERTS