A Baby Peggy Rediscovery — or: When “Circus Clowns” Doesn’t Mean “Circus Clowns” I was pretty much set with additional material for the DVD of the Library of Congress’ restoration of The Family Secret. After playing for MoMA’s restoration of… Read More »Finding More of Baby Peggy
A Rare Comedy Short Made When the Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread Was Still Sliced Bread A CBS Sunday Morning Report on people who collect toasters included a factoid that made me think of Wallace Lupino, brother of Lupino Lane.… Read More »Finding Wallace Lupino’s Lost Laugh
A lot of one-reel comedy shorts from the late 1920s seem to only survive in 16mm home use prints from the 1930s. Wedding Slips (1928) with Monte Collins now only exists as a digital file. Luckily I snagged this one… Read More »Saving Monte Collins
The Ninety and Nine was one of a handful of stage properties that were very popular and which toured a lot in the early 1900s. Like a few other of its type — such as Ben Hur, East Lynne and… Read More »A Racing Locomotive, a Town on Fire and Colleen Moore
One of the reasons a majority of people associate the piano with silent film, as opposed to theatre organ or orchestra, is that it had been the type of accompaniment utilized the most on a majority of home video editions of… Read More »The Sounds of the Silents — Theatre Organ on DVD
The crowdfunding phase of my Douglas MacLean DVD project just concluded. I like to refer to the process as “fan-funding”. It’s not so much a crowd that’s funding these projects, to me — it’s a loyal, enthusiastic and interested consortium… Read More »Fan-Funding Douglas MacLean
I should know if Harry Watson, Jr. and Marion Davies appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies together (alas, for the moment, I don’t). If they didn’t, Watson was certainly on Davies’ radar as he has supporting character roles in two of… Read More »Musty Boxes Wolheim to Save Harrison Ford’s Bacon
Back when my interest in film collecting had whittled itself down to trying to pick up silent comedy shorts in 16mm that no one was bidding on on eBay, I turned up what turned out to be a lost film.… Read More »Who Wants to Watch a Lost Silent Film About Watches?
My current Kickstarter funded in 9 hours. This is not an anomaly for me. My last one funded in 8, the previous one in 12, and the one before that in 8. These, like all 8 of the crowdfunding campaigns… Read More »A Head Start on a Kickstarter
I have released two DVDs of films identified at the Mostly Lost film identification workshop. Whether they realize it or not, the participants at Mostly Lost from 2012 through 2017 had a hand in making this disc happen. It’s an… Read More »Curatorial Crowd-Sourcing For The “Mostly Lost” DVDs