Café Roxy is an IDEA for coffee houses, cafés, restaurants, libraries and wherever people gather to eat, drink and have a good time. To attract customers during off hours: Show Free Movies! Movie Theaters as well can offer Saturday Matinees for $1.00 and profit off concessions. Public domain programs that include feature films, TV shows, cartoons and serials still hold the power to entertain. www.fesfilms.com
I would describe myself as a casual fair-weather baseball fan. As a kid the family traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2 or 3 times to see the Milwaukee Braves play when Hank Aaron was their main star. Win or lose, don't recall, but it was quite an event. I do remember the ball park and the 90 minute car ride to get there. I have lived most of my life in the Twin Cities and follow the Minnesota Twins. I saw a couple of games in the 1970s in the old Met Stadium whose site is now occupied by the Mall of America. The spot inside the mall where home plate sat is memorialized by a bronzed home plate set into the concrete of the amusement park. An immense distance away on the far wall is the actual stadium chair that Harmon Killebrew dented with an upper deck home run, placed the exact distance from home.
I also saw a few games in the domed Metrodome where the Twins next played for many years. In 1981 I somehow got tickets to the 7th game of the World Series and took my ten-year-old son Jeff. The game (Twins Win!) has gone down in baseball legend as the "Most exciting one-run game ever played." The scariest moment was when the other team had the bases loaded, the ball trickled a few feet ahead of home and we got a double play catcher to first back to catcher. Jack Morris pitched into the tenth inning after demanding to be kept in. Manager Tom Kelly said, "OK, it's only a game."
The Twins are now in their third season in a gorgeous, fan-friendly new ballpark called Target Field. I saw one game in the sold-out first season, a standing room only ticket in which they fell behind 4 nothing in the first inning and eventually lost, but it was great fun and Jim Thome hit a homer. They won their division that year but lost in first round of the play-offs. Last year the Twins fell to last - worst team in baseball. This year they are 2 wins & 4 losses today, but hope springs eternal.
Moving on to movies, I am about to release on DVD a rare baseball documentary called "Touching All Bases" made in 1939. It was produced by Kellogg Company, so kind of a commercial for them, and was made available on 16mm film at no charge to schools and civic and sports organizations throughout the country. 1939 was touted as the 100th birthday of baseball, or at least in America, although the once accepted story that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839 has been debunked by historians over the years. Still, in 1939 they opened the famous National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb spoke at the dedication and this footage is among the many highlights of this 44 minute film!
The film starts with kids playing sandlot baseball, who are then invited to see a Boston Red Sox game and baseball movies by the Boston manager. The film visits 8 of the 10 American League parks in 1939, the museum dedication ceremony at Cooperstown and an exhibition game by Father Flanagan's Boy's Town. Part of the film is instructional baseball about how to bat and field conducted by pros like Joe Di Maggio. Preparation for the first night game is shown. Highlights from the 1939 World Series include Di Maggio's steal of home in the tenth inning.
This is a terrific "Lost & Rare" film for all baseball fans, to be available with other sports films on May 1 from Festival Films. Watch for the official announcement and a new website right here. Meanwhile, here is a sneak peak at "Touching All Bases."
Just one week ago today, and all day from 1:30 in the afternoon until 10 at night, my wife Chris, son Jeff and I were experiencing the single most memorable and unforgettable movie event of my life: Napoleon at Oakland's Paramount Theater. I can't really speak for them, but Jeff was impressed and Chris was bowled over by the live 43-piece orchestra conducted by her hero Carl Davis, whose score overflowed with movements by her favorite composer, Beethoven. We sat in the center section of the lower balcony. Our view of the screen is shown in this photo that Chris took before the performance. No photos were permitted during the show.
The dark squares to the right and left of the lighted screen are curtains hiding the two screens revealed during the last 20 minutes for the grand "tryptic" finale similar to Cinemascope or even Cinerama years later. The audience gave a huge ovation when the curtains opened up. Two temporary projection booths were installed in the back corners of the main floor to provide the additional 35mm cameras needed to project on the added screens. All 3 projectors were synched so that horses could ride from the left screen thru the center and out the right side. The variety and creativity of the 3 screens was amazing. In some scenes the 3 images formed a single wide shot like my picture at the top, while in others 3 separate scenes played at the same time, or the right was reversed and repeated on the left while the center was different. My favorite part was when Napoleon stood on a hill envisaging the future in the clouds, with shots of revolving globes and Josephine close-ups. In the very last shots the 3 screens were red, white and blue duplicating the French flag as "La Marseillaise" played once more for a rousing conclusion.
Some early promotion of the event: "The Brownlow restoration, produced with his partner Patrick Stanbury at Photoplay Productions in association with the BFI, is the most complete version of Gance’s masterpiece since its 1927 premiere at the Paris Opéra. The SFSFF screenings also mark the U.S. premiere of the renowned orchestral score, written over 30 years ago (and twice expanded since), by Carl Davis, who will conduct the Oakland East Bay Symphony."
"The spectacular presentation at the 3,000-seat, Art Deco Oakland Paramount will be climaxed by its finale in “Polyvision”—an enormous triptych, employing three specially installed synchronized projectors, that will dramatically expand the screen to triple its width. The logistics and expense of screening "Napoleon" properly with full orchestra and special equipment have made it nearly impossible to mount. Gance’s "Napoleon" hasn’t been screened theatrically in the U.S. with live orchestra for nearly 30 years and there are no plans to repeat the SFSFF event in any other American city."
The screening we shared on Saturday, March 31, 2012, was essentially sold out. The orchestra played for 5 1/2 hours of film divided into 4 segments. The event will never be repeated in the USA, or not with Carl Davis conducting. (We heard the cost for the orchestra over the four shows was $750,000!) After the first two parts there was a long break for dinner. Nearby restaurants were packed. A number of friends had come from long distances just to see the film. I have never gone anywhere before just to see a single movie. I may not do so ever again. No regrets. Only memories. The Paramount Theater in Oakland is king! Chris took this photo after the show as the audience hesitated to leave.
Jeff and his wife Amanda live in San Francisco so we visited a few more days with them. Among other activities we enjoyed the amazing Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio, which I highly recommend. But all I can think about looking back is Napoleon, the film and the event.
When Turner Classic Movies paid a fond farewell yesterday to the final "Bomba, the Jungle Boy" movie, Ben Mankiewicz informed us that star Johnny Sheffield tried to continue with his character in a TV series.
The precocious Sheffield, of course, first appeared as Boy in the 4th Johnny Weismuller Tarzan film "Tarzan Finds a Son" in 1939, and was loved by audiences around the world. After 8 Tarzan movies, the teenager went on to star in his own jungle movie series. In 1949, he made "Bomba, the Jungle Boy" with co-star Peggy Ann Garner. In all, he appeared as Bomba 12 times ending in 1955 with "Lord of the Jungle." He then made a pilot for a television series, "Bantu the Zebra Boy," which was created, produced and directed by his father, Reginald Sheffield. Although the production values were high compared to other TV jungle shows of the day, a sponsor was not found and the show was never produced as a weekly series.
1955 was also the year TV saw "Jungle Jim" with Weismuller and "Sheena, Queen of the Jungle" starring Irish McCalla. Another jungle series, "Ramar of the Jungle," had already played out in two full seasons from 1953-'54, which explains why audiences may have had all the jungle shows they wanted, or at least why no sponsor was found to produce Bantu. Perhaps they should have licensed the "Bomba" name since "Zebra Boy" is rather ludicrous. Bantu gets around by riding a zebra, which does not look that speedy, but the wild animal stock footage is rather impressive. Naturally they never appear in the same shot. You can watch the opening of the pilot show HERE.
I had never heard of Bantu before, but I am here to talk about TV pilot films since I am on the verge of releasing my own DVD of 5 Pilot Films in a new "Lost and Rare" series. I will discuss them in detail when the release is ready for sale in mid-April. Four of them star famous actors, but the fifth I would venture to say no one has ever heard of before. It is not listed on the IMDB or under screen credits for any of the "stars" and was never shown on TV like some TV pilots were shown on "The ComedySpot."(Summer replacement series for "The Red Skeleton Show" during their annual hiatus from 1960-1962, this series featured unsold pilots for comedy series as well as reruns from other comedy anthology series.)
So with great fanfare, presenting for your viewing pleasure and mystification, the one and only ...
MUNROE (1963)
Munroe is a dog -- a lovable army mutt who doesn't quite make it in the K-9 corp at an army base. The actors who were not able to add this show to their credits are Guy Marks (Joey Bishop Show), Jan Stine (never made it in various TV shows 1959 to 1966), Joan Freeman (TV Bus Stop), James Flavin (in films and TV 1932 to 1976!) and guest starring Sig Ruman, who steals the show as a lion tamer. The plot: Munroe chases cats. To break him of the habit his trainer, Guy Marks, sets a supposedly tame lion loose on the base to scare Monroe, but two lions get mixed up and Satan the Killer terrorizes the post. Does Munroe save the day? Actually ... no.
TV Pilots are still made today to test on audiences as to whether they might be successful, but they are mainly made to sell to a sponsor. At the end of MUNROE the four stars plus mutt talk directly to any potential sponsor trying to convince them it will be a great hit. If a pilot is sold and produced, then the pilot episode often becomes the premiere episode in the series. If not sold, that's all folks and the producers often fail to even copyright them.
MUNROE might have made it through a season or two on television. You can judge for yourself from these clips:
I have always loved serials and talk about them here often. They are the first films I recall ever seeing. They were totally unique with their high action, certain-death cliffhanging endings. Frankly, they were made for kids and mostly boys. I must have felt that at a young age like having an affinity for superhero comic books. And parents did not approve of any of the action adventure mayhem. (I should have asked my parents what they liked as a kid. I did find my dad's collection of 1920s books about the adventures of boy inventor Tom Swift and my mother's first editions of Nancy Drew, which I read.)
All the serials I saw before the age of 12 were mostly Mascots and Universals. 16mm prints of most Mascots circulated to TV stations in the 1950s. Would sure like to have some of those now, though many current video versions like "The Miracle Rider" seem to exist in excellent shape due to these prints. My first serial experience written about recently was "Junior G-Men," but I also saw the other two Dead End Kids ones at the Free Movies in the Park -- "Junior G-Men of the Air" and "Sea Raiders" with one thrilling ending (stock footage) of Billy Halop wrestling with an octopus. Other serials of my youth: "Mystery of the Riverboat," "Great Alaskan Mystery," "Phantom Creeps," "The Lost Jungle," "Gang Busters" and "Lost City in the Jungle." "The Lightning Warrior" on TV had a lasting effect because of the hooded mystery villain The Wolfman; I would dearly love to get a mint copy so I could share this public domain serial, but the existing ones are missing footage and poor picture quality.
In high school a serial revival came out of the blue when some movie theater showed all 15 chapters of "Batman." It caught on as high camp because of the WW-II Jap menace hammily played by J. Carroll Naish. Packed theaters led directly to the Batman TV series. It came to Madison and I went and ... wrong film! They showed the anemic "New Adventures of Batman and Robin" instead. Of course it did well, so the same theater brought in a Saturday Matinee for two weeks, 6 chapters and then the next 6 chapters, of an atrocious Columbia serial from 1953 "The Lost Planet." I went the first week but could not stand it because of, well everything, but particularly the scene where two space ships meet in outer space and open their cockpits so the pilots can talk to each other without even space suits. Can this possibly be a correct memory?
I thought I had put serials behind me along with comics when I got into college, but suddenly one day in 1965 the first Republic serial entered consciousness -- "Captain America." The University of Wisconsin Student Union had a large lunch room that suddenly started showing chapters every Wednesday from noon to two. They showed the same chapter four times, then the next one the following week. I missed chapter #1 that has one of the great cliffhangers ever -- CA is fighting baddies on the top floor of a skyscraper that is completely demolished due to an earthquake machine. The elevator is out of commission, so he escapes by .... The serial features the most deaths by falls from a high place, plus some of the best choreographed fist fights ever. In every chapter the Captain fights two henchmen in a setting like a generator room where a time bomb ticks down. Last shot shows the entire block blowing up! I watched all four shows each week. The series continued though I am drawing a blank as to which ones other than "The Desert Hawk" with Gilbert Roland. I think they showed "Captain Marvel," but I should really remember, huh?
I owned some 16mm serials for awhile, mainly "Daredevils of the Red Circle" which is A-1 tops except the last chapter is a dud and shot mainly at night so I couldn't see much on my dupe. I owned the first Flash Gordon serial, one of the best ever, that I had seen on TV as a child. Love the ending of chapter #2 where he is grabbed by a dragon. I still have "Spy Smasher" which is my all-time favorite though I only watch it on video these days. Those two have the two best chapters endings of all time, both of Chapter #1, and I will discuss that someday.
For years I had some great serial trailers on 16mm but I lost them. They were from Republic serials and rather hard to find since oddly VCI had issued lots of serial trailers but not famous ones like Captain Marvel, Perils of Nyoka and Spy Smasher. Only recently did I get all but Spy Smasher on DVD thanks to a friend. Quality is quite nice and I believe they came from the Republic laser discs of quite a few years ago now. I made the following montage from some of them for a new project. Enjoy a few thrills!
After no blog posts in January, and I am not sure why, I have put up comments that are hopefully of interest to some over the past five weeks. This week I had no inspiration until I found this poster for the 1939 World's Fair on Facebook. I just wanted to share the poster! Our future may be brighter than the past and we can rocket into it quickly. Just take off and there it is. Optimism in 1939 ended in war in 1940. But tomorrow is another day and here we are in 2012 when the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the 4th age of man, but not the end of the world, rather the start of a much brighter 5th age of man. Ask me at the end of the year if we all blast off by then and where we might be going!
There are endless wonderful images on Facebook, I guess if you have the right "Friends" who post on similar interests. I found this one posted by Matthew C. Hoffman, who is a Facebook friend who I don't really know. He is running a Screen Deco film series in Park Ridge, Illinois. Here is His Album of terrific stills and posters from art deco classics like She, Cleopatra, Madame Satan and Things to Come.
1939 has been heralded as Hollywood's finest year. Memorable as they are, I would not pick Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind as my favorites today. Here are some I do really like and will watch again and again whenever I find them on TCM: Stagecoach, Destry Rides Again, Gunga Din, Young Mr. Lincoln, Of Mice and Men, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Four Feathers, Drums Along the Mohawk and Man in the Iron Mask. Outstanding serials of 1939 are Zorro's Fighting Legion, Daredevils of the Red Circle, Dick Tracy's G-Men and The Phantom Creeps.
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Drastically shifting topics, for some years I have sought out films that made an impression on me as a kid, say before the age of 14 or even younger. I need to accept the fact that some movie memories may have never been filmed, they are dreams or false memories based on films I did see. I did see the attack of the Giant Vulture Bats at the age of 8 in "Tarzan Escapes," since extensive research supports the memory, and I still hold out hope that this scene will someday be found.
Here is a memory I still have but can't find the scene in any film. It is a jungle serial chapter ending that I saw on 1950s TV. I recall the first chapter ending in a plane crash in the jungle, a very logical way to start a serial. The ending of either chapter 2 or 3 is the one I can't find. The hero and I am pretty sure the heroine with him are in a pit of crocodiles on a ledge just above all those snapping jaws. In order to escape they need to make their way along the ledge to the other side where there is an escape door. A stone slips and they appear to fall in the pit as the chapter ends. I also thought this was a Clyde Beatty serial. His 1934 Mascot serial The Lost Jungle ends with a dirigible crash in chapter one. Chapter 4 is called "Pit of Crocodiles" but at the end he is dangling above the crocs hanging on for dear life -- no ledge or escape door. There is no scene like I recall in his 1936 Republic serial Darkest Africa either. I have looked through every other jungle serial I can find and no crocs-with-ledge scene. I do have a few rare ones to someday acquire and look through, like Buster Crabbe's 1952 King of the Congo. (Could I possibly have seen the lost Crabbe serial Tarzan the Fearless as a child?)
For Christmas I got myself the first two volumes of Floyd Gottfredson's collected Mickey Mouse newspaper comic strips. Floyd was the equal of Carl Barks in high adventure stories set in the old west, haunted houses, pirate islands or the Yukon. Comic fans must read these superb stories as they originally appeared in newspapers starting in 1929. The 1932-33 story "Blaggard Castle" involves Mickey and Horace Horsecollar vs. 3 mad scientists in a haunted castle. The setting either inspired the Mickey cartoon "The Mad Doctor" (1933) or was inspired by it since Floyd was aware of every Mickey cartoon in production. I suspect he saw the storyboard for the cartoon and turned the idea into the cartoon strip that ran about the same time the cartoon hit theaters.
In the comic strip, but not the cartoon, Mickey enters a crocodile pit and walks along a ledge, as shown in the few panels just below. Could I have seen a reprint of this strip as a child and transposed it to a jungle serial I saw on television??? I don't think so, but who knows? I will keep looking.
The film event of a lifetime happens this month just four times. Four shows. One magnificent setting in Oakland's Paramount Theater. A Symphony orchestra. Silent movie fans gathering from around the world. Do not miss ... Abel Gance's Napoleon. Complete information about the film, the theater and how to get tickets is at the San Francisco SILENT Film Festival website. Here are a few notes from this site:
Abel Gance’s epicNAPOLEONis the Holy Grail of silent masterpieces. In the early 1980s, Francis Ford Coppola toured a 4-hour road show version that many still consider their most unforgettable movie experience ever. Now, over 30 years later, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival is finally presenting legendary film historian Kevin Brownlow’s complete 5 1/2 hour restoration in the United States, along with the American premiere of the magnificent score by Carl Davis, at the Art Deco Paramount Theatre, Oakland. Mr. Davis will conduct 48 members of the Oakland East Bay Symphony for these four unique screenings, which also feature the original “Polyvision” three-screen finale. Due to the expense, technical challenges, and complicated rights issues involved, no screenings are planned for any other American city. This monumental event is being presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, in association with American Zoetrope, The Film Preserve, Photoplay Productions and BFI.
The list below is the top ten reasons why every cineaste must attend one of the four rare, never-to-be-repeated showings if at all possible The list was compiled by Thomas Gladysz with a few additional notes by me in parentheses.
10) BACKGROUND: "Film historian Kevin Brownlow has spent much of his life piecing together this lost masterpiece which had been dismissed, neglected, cut up, reworked, and scattered by the winds of time."
9) KEVIN BROWNLOW: "In the March issue of Vanity Fair, Martin Scorsese wrote, 'If you love silent movies, Kevin Brownlow should be your hero.'" (Mr. Brownlow will attend each screening. A dinner gala can be attended on March 24 and he will give a lecture about his lifetime restoration of the film on March 30.)
8) SETTING: "Thanks in part to the Oakland Paramount - a temple to the motion picture experience - movie-goers who attend Napoleon may well find themselves spellbound in darkness." (Numerous photos of the Paramount or on view at the website.)
7) MUSIC: "Carl Davis' score is a marathon and masterful work of film scoring which has twice been expanded to keep up with newly found footage."
6) CARL DAVIS: "Davis has written music for more than 100 television programs and feature films, but is best known for creating music to accompany silent films, including key Brownlow restorations." (Carl Davis will conduct 48 members of the Oakland East Bay Symphony at each performance!)
5) BIGGER AND BETTER: "This current and likely final restoration, completed in 2000 but not previously seen outside Europe, reclaims more than 30 minutes of additional footage discovered since the earlier restorations while visually upgrading much of the film."
4) GREATEST FILM EVER MADE: "Here is what Vincent Canby had to say in 1981 in the pages of the New York Times. '...One suddenly realizes that there once was a film that justified all of the adjectives that have subsequently been debased by critics as well as advertising copywriters. Napoleon sweeps; it takes the breath away; it moves; it dazzles.'"
3) POLYVISION: "There are few movies so innovative, so daring and so hugely ambitious... For the finale, the screen expands to three times its normal width - a kind of triptych - while showing panoramic views and montages of images. There really hasn't been anything else like it, not even Cinerama... Prepare to be amazed."
2) VALUE: "For a five and a half hour movie (the length of three contemporary films) accompanied by a live symphony orchestra (a concert ticket too), the ticket prices to Napoleon are rather inexpensive."
1) EXPERIENCE: "In ten or twenty or thirty years, when this screening of Napoleon is only a memory, film lovers will ask - were you there? 'Did you see the Napoleon at the Paramount in 2012?'"
The lobby cards in this blog are very rare from an acquaintance who was looking to sell them some time ago. I don't know what they are worth or whether they did sell, only that they are super rare. The one at the top does NOT picture Napoleon or it would be worth a whole lot more.
The Oscars are tomorrow and the black-and-white, silent movie "The Artist" may well sweep the awards and even win Best Picture of the year. I am not rooting for it to win since I haven't seen it yet. I loved "Hugo" that is about the great pioneer of silent movies, Georges Melies. Both have caused me to reflect back on my history with the Real Silent Movies made before 1929. A fascination with them as a teenager truly set my life on the course that has led right up to today.
There were plenty of earlier movie influences on my childhood that made me want to see more. Foremost was being deprived of seeing many films. I have no memory of seeing anything before I was four, which is when the family moved from Texas to Wisconsin. Then I grew up in a small town that had no movie theater, but did have a series of free movies in the park every summer. I saw hardly any horror films before getting my first issue of "Famous Monster of Filmland" around 1961.
I devoured 1950s TV, saw my first mysteries, serials and cartoons there, Howdy Doody and the Mickey Mouse Club, Crusader Rabbit and later Rocky and Bullwinkle, all the TV western series and on and on. I also had good taste at times and one love was Ernie Kovacs. By coincidence or fate, in addition to his many TV specials, which often featured "silent" routines, Ernie also hosted the 1960-61 series called "Silents Please" that presented cut down versions of silent movies. The introduction and closing segments featured a quick shot of Lon Chaney as "The Phantom of the Opera" that particularly sparked my imagination several years before I was able to actually see the film. So every week I tuned in Ernie and "Silents," said "Please" and hoped my best to see more of the Phantom. As it turns out from this episode guide the show never ran "The Phantom of the Opera" even though it was in the public domain! Ernie sadly died in 1962, and there was only one 39-episode season of "Silents Please." In Madison about the same time we enjoyed a similar series "The Toy That Grew Up" out of the PBS station in Chicago. I recall seeing Johnny Hines and Rod LaRoque half-hour abridgements. Jay Ward's "Fractured Flickers" (1963) gave other tantalizing glimpses of Silents from Stan Laurel cavorting as Dr. Pyckle to the robot in Harry Houdini's "Master Mystery."
In college at University of Wisconsin, Madison (1964-1968) I attended a packed auditorium showing of "When Comedy Was King" in which the entire room convulsed with laughter for 75 minutes. They also had occasional outdoor silent screenings of Laurel and Hardy shorts with live organ accompaniment. I met Harold Lloyd when he came to the campus testing his compilation film "The Funny Side of Life." It contained most of "The Freshman" (1925) and was a huge hit with the young audience. At the reception was pioneer producer and Wisconsin resident Harry Aitken, now in his mid-90s, who had co-founded Triangle Film Corporation in 1915 with his brother Roy. The most gracious Harold said, "You know, Mr. Aitken, I always wanted to meet you because I started my career working for your company but never got the chance until today."
Somehow I heard about Blackhawk films during this period and traded in some old 8mm cartoons for my first Laurel and Hardy 8mm -- "Leave 'Em Laughing." This started my hobby as a film collector. Then the Blackhawk bulletin one day mentioned a tiny publication for collectors called "The 8mm Collector." Sam Rubin started the paper in 1962 to find silent movies to watch and also other collectors. I must have gotten my first issue in 1967 since I ordered a dozen or more of the early issues. This led me to...
The Society for Cinephiles, Ltd, was established in 1965 by Tom Seller, an avid reader of The 8mm Collector magazine, and Cinecon 1 was sponsored by Samuel K. Rubin, publisher of The 8mm Collector, in Indiana, Pennsylvania. It was a small affair with only a handful of die hard film fans. They gathered in a small room at the local Holiday Inn and showed each other 8mm silent films from their personal collections. This was 1965 before videos and DVDs, a time when, if you wanted to see your favorite old film, you had to wait until it turned up on TV or else you had to buy a projector and start your own film collection in 8mm or 16mm.
The following year (1966) another cinephile, Clark Wilkinson, hosted the show in Baraboo WI and Cinecon officially became an annual event. For the next several years the Cinecon moved from city to city as a sort of moveable cinematic feast. Today, the fanzine 8mm Collector is known as the respected Classic Images magazine, and since 1990 Cinecon has made its home in the Los Angeles area.
Ironically, in 1966 I was a 20-year-old sophomore in Madison, Wisconsin, and Baraboo was less than an hour drive away. I could easily have attended Cinecon 2. I saw a newspaper article after it was over but did not know about the event in advance. In fact Leonard Maltin flew there as a 17-year-old in high school. I could also have attended Cinecon 3 in Chicago the next year but was unaware. I did make it to Cinecon 4 in Hollywood over Labor Day in 1968, but that's a longer story.
Wanting to see as many silent films as possible, then to own them and finally to share them with others led to attending Cinecons from 1968 on, running the Xanadu Film Festival in Minneapolis 1971-1974, meeting my future wife Chris, making friends with film dealers, fans and collectors, and eventually starting Festival Films in 1976. Meeting Chris, who came to the film society to make audio tapes of Marx Brothers films, stands above all else. Chris also loved Ernie Kovacs, who perhaps set me on a course that brought us together ten years later.
Here is the opening to "Silents Please" that some of you my age may recall:
