A-Z of Silent Film Comedy

A-Z of Silent Film Comedy PDF Author: Glenn Mitchell
Publisher: B.T. Batsford
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
An encyclopedic look at silent film comedy that covers all the greats, from the Keystone Kops to Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton, as well as myriad lesser-known figures. Readers will delight in reacquainting themselves with the movies that first made audiences laugh.

A-Z of Silent Film Comedy

A-Z of Silent Film Comedy PDF Author: Glenn Mitchell
Publisher: B.T. Batsford
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
An encyclopedic look at silent film comedy that covers all the greats, from the Keystone Kops to Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton, as well as myriad lesser-known figures. Readers will delight in reacquainting themselves with the movies that first made audiences laugh.

100 Essential Silent Film Comedies

100 Essential Silent Film Comedies PDF Author: James Roots
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442278250
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
This book celebrates 100 significant silent film comedies from around the globe, including The Circus, The General, Safety Last, and Steamboat Bill Jr. Each entry contains information about the cast and crew, production details, DVD availability, and an explanation of why the film is essential viewing.

American Silent Film Comedies

American Silent Film Comedies PDF Author: Blair Miller
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This illustrated compilation identifies people, studios, technical companies, and terms associated with silent film comedy from about 1890-1930. More than 300 entries are biographical, including actors, studio and other corporate executives, directors and other technical personnel, inventors, etc. These sketches usually include birth and death dates and a summary of the contributions of the person to the genre; some entries include a photograph, selected filmography, and movie-magazine excerpts. For the more than 100 entries on studios and companies there is a brief history, emphasizing the firm's contribution to the development of silent film comedy. The third category of entries is quite a miscellany, including Blacks in Silent Film Comedies, Edison Kinetogram (a bulletin announcing new Edison films), Keystone Kops, Nickelodeons.

Too Funny for Words

Too Funny for Words PDF Author: David Kalat
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476678561
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
American silent film comedies were dominated by sight gags, stunts and comic violence. With the advent of sound, comedies in the 1930s were a riot of runaway heiresses and fast-talking screwballs. It was more than a technological pivot--the first feature-length sound film, The Jazz Singer (1927), changed Hollywood. Lost in the discussion of that transition is the overlap between the two genres. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd kept slapstick alive well into the sound era. Screwball directors like Leo McCarey, Frank Capra and Ernst Lubitsch got their starts in silent comedy. From Chaplin's tramp to the witty repartee of His Girl Friday (1940), this book chronicles the rise of silent comedy and its evolution into screwball--two flavors of the same genre--through the works of Mack Sennett, Roscoe Arbuckle, Harry Langdon and others.

Lame Brains and Lunatics

Lame Brains and Lunatics PDF Author: Steve Massa
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781593932688
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
Silent Film Comedy was a fortuitous combination of art and technology, where the physical comedy skills and artistry passed down from the Commedia dell'Arte, English music hall, and American vaudeville were captured for posterity by the newly created motion picture camera. While the Chaplins, Keatons, and Laurel & Hardys are still remembered and celebrated, this book profiles unsung practitioners such as Billie Ritchie, Marcel Perez, Lige Conley, and George Rowe, with special focus on the neglected comediennes Alice Howell, Gale Henry, Fay Tincher, and Josie Sadler. Popular icons on the order of Mack Sennett, Marie Dressler, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, and W.C. Fields are re-examined, plus detailed histories of silent comedy teams and kid's comedies are offered. The book also includes selected filmographies and is lavishly illustrated with more than 225 rarely-seen photographs and advertising images. Steve Massa is a leading enthusiast of silent comedy, who has devoted 45 years to researching the genre. A librarian in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, he has organized comedy film programs for the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. In addition to consulting with the Eye Film Institute, Netherlands and other archives, and writing for film journals such as Griffithiana, he is a founding member of Silent Cinema Presentations which produces NYC's Silent Clown Film Series. Steve has also contributed articles and commentary tracks to many comedy DVD collections such as The Forgotten Films of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Becoming Charley Chase, and Kino Video's Buster Keaton: The Short Films Collection.

Slapstick Comedy

Slapstick Comedy PDF Author: Tom Paulus
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135966230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
From Chaplin's tramp to the Bathing Beauties slapstick comedy supplied many of the most enduring icons of American cinema in the silent era. This collection of fourteen essays by film scholars challenges longstanding critical dogma and offers new conceptual frameworks for thinking about silent comedy's place in film history and American culture.

The Silent Clowns

The Silent Clowns PDF Author: Walter Kerr
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
'A lavishly illustrated, affectionate treatment by one of the finest critics of our time...Kerr is more than a brilliant master of verbal description; he is a penetrating, lucid theorist. This book is as much about comedy as about movies, about eyes and ears and how and why we laugh.'-Thomas Wills, Chicago Tribune Book World

Slapstick Divas

Slapstick Divas PDF Author: Steve Massa
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781629331324
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 644

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Book Description
Funny girls, those comediennes from the silent movies, knew shtick from slapstick. Mabel Normand, Marie Dressler, Bebe Daniels, Dorothy Gish, Constance Talmadge, Marion Davies, and Colleen Moore brought riotous laughter to millions around the world, yet their hilarity may seem hidden to those only familiar with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and Harold Lloyd. Discover the women of wit, from the supporting players to the stars. Author Steve Massa covers their contributions to comedy with in-depth analyses of the most hilarious heroines of humor, followed by 459 biographies of other droll divas from the famous to the forgotten. Illustrated with 440 rare movie scene shots, formal portraits, candid behind the scenes photos, film frame enlargements, trade magazine advertisements, lobby cards, stage photographs, artist's renderings and caricatures, and casting guide entries. Bibliography, and an Index. About the author: Steve Massa is the author of Lame Brains and Lunatics: The Good, The Bad, and The Forgotten of Silent Comedy and Marcel Perez: The International Mirth-Maker. He has organized and curated comedy film programs for the Museum of Modern Art, The Library of Congress, The Museum of the Moving Image, The Smithsonian Institution, and The Pordenone Silent Film Festival.

An American Comedy

An American Comedy PDF Author: Harold Lloyd
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504082265
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
This autobiography by an influential silent film star gives an insider’s view of the motion picture industry in the early twentieth century. It’s one of the most enduring images in film history: a young man in circular glasses, dangling from the hands of a clock high above Los Angeles. The actor performing this daring stunt was Harold Lloyd, a highly successful comedian from the silent film era. Lloyd made nearly two hundred comedies, both silent and “talkies,” between 1914 and 1947. He is best known for his “Glass” character, a bespectacled everyman who captured the mood of the 1920s. In this fascinating autobiography, which was written just around the time sound was revolutionizing cinema, Lloyd chronicles his experiences as a performer and producer of silent films, preserving firsthand details of Hollywood’s bygone period. This extraordinary memoir, originally published in 1928, discusses actors both comedic and dramatic, stage to film adaptations, producers, directors, and primarily, how early silent movies were made. It is a must-read for film historians and movie buffs alike.

Three Classic Silent Screen Comedies Starring Harold Lloyd

Three Classic Silent Screen Comedies Starring Harold Lloyd PDF Author: Donald W. McCaffrey
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838614556
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The focus of this book is on three of Harold Lloyd's features, Grandma's Boy (1922), Safety Last (1923), and The Freshman (1925), and it presents a thorough investigation of the structure, characters, and comic techniques employed in these films.