Need info on "Help Yourself" (1927) NOW WITH PICTURES

[Louie Despres]

Thanks for the info Frank. I am 99% sure this is the only short Brendel made for the Big Three Exchange or any other independent company during his lull in activity between his leaving Paramount and joining Fox. He and his wife did make an early short for Vitaphone and although the discs exist at LOC (according to Ron Hutchinson of the Vitaphone Project), the film portion has not been found and I have one review where the critic claims he made a test short for MGM, but I have never found any other details on that one.

[Louie Despres]

El Brendel's lost 1928 short, "Help Yourself" had surfaced. I am EXTREMELY happy to announce I have been able to acquire a one reel cutdown which has a voiceover instead of title cards. Along with the film, the collector who sold it to me, said he had another 800' reel which had some other footage from another film and "may" contain other parts from "Help Yourself" which were cut out of the one-reel version but he couldn't get the reel apart as it was "stuck together". I agreed to purchase both reels sight unseen and put a call out to a film friend who said he could help with scanning both reels. When I received them through the mail, I didn't even bother projecting them and sent them straight to the lab. When they arrived, I was told the reason the film was stuck together was film splices and that both reels could be scanned without issue. Luckily, the 2nd reel did include film from "Help Yourself" which was cut from the one reel version!! The other film on the reel is from Charlie Murray's 1923 short, " The Life of Riley". After looking at all the footage, the film person told me with all the film edited together, there is approximately 21 minutes of film from “Help Yourself”, meaning nearly the complete short has survived! A restoration of the “full” silent version is currently underway.

[Tommie Hicks]

Louie,

If the short of LIFE OF REILLY is the Hodginson short, not the later feature, there is a chance Clara Bow is in it. If that is the case you will be beloved by the silent film intelligentsia.

Congratulations Louie. To seek for years an obscure, lost comedy short, and to finally find it is not only gratifying to you, but to some of us non-involves also.

[Louie Despres]

Louie,

If the short of LIFE OF REILLY is the Hodginson short, not the later feature, there is a chance Clara Bow is in it. If that is the case you will be beloved by the silent film intelligentsia.

Congratulations Louie. To seek for years an obscure, lost comedy short, and to finally find it is not only gratifying to you, but to some of us non-involves also.

Does the short not exist?

[Tommie Hicks]

Louie,

Over the years I had not known any of Murray's Hodginson comedies to exist. That doesn't mean they all didn't I just hadn't heard of any. Last year, I think, THE PILL POUNDER turned up (the owner of the 16mm print was afeard the the print might "blow up" being projected). Bow was in it and she became the sole focus of the communication of the find, not Charley Murray, the very talented star of the film. I have not heard of THE LIFE OF REILLY short being around, so I assumed it was lost until you acquired a print of it..

[Richard M Roberts]

Tommie, I have to correct you on those C.C. Burr Charlie Murray comedies not existing, they may likely ALL exist, and they all exist in the same place, the old inventory of Kent Smith's Modern Sound Pictures, that's where the collector who found THE PILL POUNDER found that print, in a batch of material from Modern Sound that he bought at a dump sale.

Kent Smith picked the negatives to those films back at a dump sale of his own in the late 30's-early 40's. He put out home prints on several of them, including THE FOUR ORPHANS, which I have a Modern Sound print on, and when the few he did make prints on did not sell in the late 1950's (I bought a new one at a Modern Sound close-out sale in the 90's), he did nothing with the rest of the negatives. As the last of Modern Sound's holdings are being disseminated, more of them are popping up. The sad truth is that no one would have given a shit if Clara Bow hadn't popped up in THE PILL POPPER.

Louie, if you can't directly trace the prints you got to Kent Smith's company, ask the guy you bought them from where he got them.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Louie Despres]

Richard,
That's where they came from.