Comedy News from Mostly Lost

[Rob Farr]

Exciting day for silent comedy fans at Mostly Lost 3. Biggest surprises came in Serge Bromberg's presentation: a complete print of Charley Chase and Polly Moran (Gale Henry must have been unavailable) in Are Brunettes Safe? (Pathe, 1927) followed by a comparison of the first reel of Buster Keaton's The Blacksmith with the newly discovered B version. Later that night we were treated to two top-flight comedy shorts, both just the surviving second reels, but they played just fine. Charley Bower's Whoozit (1928) animated unshelled oysters all the better to creep his human actors out, similar to his later Wild Oysters. And if anyone had doubts as to the comic energy that Marcel Perez aka Tweedy Dan brought to his films, Camouflage (1918) put that to rest. It is a hilarious WWI spy-vs-spy comedy directed by none other than William A. Seiter.

Earlier comic highlights came from Dino Everett's failed film formats presentation, including an unknown Newlyweds and their Baby and an unidentified Eddie Boland Roach comedy in 9.5mm, but the best of all was a hilarious trick film in 28mm called The Mysterious Villa.

Can't wait to see what's on tap just an hour from now!

[Gary Johnson]

Is that what we are now calling the newly discovered version of THE BLACKSMITH, the B version? I need to keep this straight because I tend to go online to Amazon and order DVD's that I already own. "Damn! I bought the A version of THE BLACKSMITH once again..."

BTW, I think we should just call it Keaton's final cut.