“Sing ‘Fly, Birdie, Fly’,” Angela Fish is prompted by her father in a scene from “Bell Boy 13”. She sits at the piano, beckons Douglas MacLean to join her on the bench, and launches into the song. What do I… Read More »When a Pop Tune in a Silent Movie Isn’t Real…or Is It?
Owners of Blackhawk Films 16mm and 8mm prints of “A Tour of the Thomas Ince Studios” probably had no idea why the smiling gentleman, seen racing to the studio in one segment, keeps popping up throughout the film. His is… Read More »Douglas MacLean-Spotting Around the Ince Lot
I’ve just been down a bit of a rabbit hole, thinking about the trajectory of the feature-length comedy in the early 1920s. (Yeah, I know…” — said no one, ever”). I’ve been revisiting the effect that Chaplin’s The Kid had… Read More »The Silent Comedy Landscape 1921-1922
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
Douglas Fairbanks spent six years making feature-length light comedies, mainly playing a semi-typical middle-class young man on a series of adventures. Once he made The Mark of Zorro, there was no turning back to that format. The five- or six-reel… Read More »Silent Comedy Features Without All That Slapstick