How I love ‘lost films’. Especially when they resurface! There’s something so ghostly, so other-worldly, about a vanished movie that is, in fact, waiting patiently somewhere bizarre to be rediscovered. Many lost films turn up in New Zealand of all places. That’s because that was the last stop for prints
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgGhc2PglO0 ‘Habeus Ciorpus’ co-directed by Leo McCarey and James Parrott was filmed on July 16–24 and 30–31, 1928. Since the jerk-offf who posted the film disabled the sharing of it on other websites you’ll have to click the above ‘watch on Youtube’ link to see it. It’s worth the not
“Two Tars” (1928) is, for my money, the teams greatest silent film and requires two viewings. To that end, I’ve posted two different versions of ‘Two Tars’. The above is of lesser picture quality but uses the original synchronized score/effects track which is far superior to the re-do on the
“Hats Off”, a silent 1927 Laurel and Hardy comedy, is a lost film. It was last seen in Germany in 1930, where it presumably retired itself to the countryside and hopefully didn’t wind up a victim of the coming war. Why the film vanished is a mystery–there are no other
On this Xmas/Hanukah/Kwanza/whatever day, please enjoy “Should Married Men Go Home” (1928), a lovely old L&H silent with some fascinating views of a very different Los Angeles than the one that I am currently in as I write this. More silent L&H comedies as the final week of 2024 grinds
Let’s enjoy the last week of 2024 by spending twenty minutes a day with Laurel and Hardy in the late 1920s. If you love L&H (and lets face it, you have to be a bit of a hard case not too) you undoubtedly know their early-to-mid 1930s sound shorts. Since
Yesterday I posted five hours of radio programming of a local Washington DC station in 1939. I find these non-dramatic radio broadcasts particularly evocative of the era and the above is no exception. It’s a broadcast from 1943 that aired on Christmas Eve as a Christmas special for those home
This is a pretty nutty find. It’s close to six hours of a normal broadcast day on a local Washington D.C. radio station, WJSV, on September 21, 1939. In other words, if you were a housewife sitting around your house and put your radio on in the background and left
Behold this nifty hour-long mini-doc called ‘Home Again; The Marx Brothers and New York City’. It’s a very well done and charming look at how the comedian-brothers grew up, what their heritage was and how New York City formed and shaped their personas. I realize that it’s not exactly breaking
On Friday I posted a colorized look at footage shot in Paris in the 1920s. The same person who restored that footage–their YouTube handle is NASS–also did this look at New York City in 1911 and it is equally evocative and fascinating. We see a city in transition–it still feels