Eileen Bowser RIP
Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 8:11 pm
She was one of our last links to the early days of MOMA and film archiving, someone whom you could ask about Seymour Stern or Iris Barry or any of the early names in that history. She was also an early promoter of silent comedy beyond the Big Three and did much to move MOMA to start actually preserving two-reel comedies (something thought too low-class for the folk who started that archive).
I didn't know her as well as I would like to have, that opposite coasts thing again, but we did correspond over the years, run into each other at various festivals, and I knew we were doing something right when she started coming to Slapsticon regularly several years into its existence, tiny but tough, feisty but with a genuine sense of humor and lack of pretension unlike so many of the New Yorkers, it was good that she was with us for so long.
Rest in Peace Eileen.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
I didn't know her as well as I would like to have, that opposite coasts thing again, but we did correspond over the years, run into each other at various festivals, and I knew we were doing something right when she started coming to Slapsticon regularly several years into its existence, tiny but tough, feisty but with a genuine sense of humor and lack of pretension unlike so many of the New Yorkers, it was good that she was with us for so long.
Rest in Peace Eileen.
RICHARD M ROBERTS