The Mack Sennett Collection: 100 Years of Keystone Comedy

[Paul E. Gierucki]

As TCM will be screening twenty-two of CineMuseum’s new Sennett reconstructions tomorrow night at 8pm, I would like to take this opportunity to openly thank everyone for the all of the help, donations, suggestions and encouragement to complete this project. We are grateful to have been granted access to your photographs, memorabilia, research materials and rare films. We hope that you are pleased with our work.

The usual suspects have also been indispensible: Associate producers Brent Walker Richard Roberts and Steve Massa , along with David Pearson, Ed Watz, Sam Gill, Robert Arkus, Joe Adamson, Andy Coryell, Eric Grayson and dozens of other SCM members have been deeply involved with this production -- helping to select, secure and execute the reconstructions. They have dedicated an extraordinary amount of research, materials, time and effort to help get everything done right. These fine scholars are at the very core of breathing new life into the long neglected Sennett comedies and we are all in your debt.

David Shepard and Serge Bromberg are also deserving of the highest praise. Both men have supported this project from the beginning and have generously provided an incredible number of rare titles from the fabled Blackhawk and Lobster archives. They have answered every request in the affirmative and have gone to extraordinary lengths to locate and quickly provide the best materials available. In fact, were it not for the help and support of David Shepard it is highly unlikely that this project ever would have left the planning stage. We are eternally grateful for this and his many other kindnesses.

Add to that our deepest thanks, respect and admiration for the artists, musicians (Ben Model, Donald Sosin, Andrew Simpson, Rodney Sauer, Fredrick Hodges, Philip Carli, Maurice Saylor and other greats) the Kinetic Studio technicians, support staff, The Margaret Herrick Library, The Niles / Essanay Silent Film Museum, Nitrateville, The Silent Comedy Mafia, Leonard Maltin, Charles Tabesh, and the Turner Entertainment Network. All of these people, and many others not mentioned here, are responsible for helping us to bring this massive project to fruition.

Thank you all!

Sincerely,
Paul E. Gierucki & Brittany Valente
CineMuseum, LLC

[Gloria Rampage]

Thank you Paul and Cinemuseum for now we are going to enjoy seeing these classic comedies.

[Paul E. Gierucki]

Thank you, Gloria. It is truly a group effort.

[greta de groat]

Sigh. My VCR is broken, and the first night is on opposite the Democratic National Convention which my husband will insist on watching. Much as i like Barak Obama, he's no Mack Sennett!

Oh well, i'll catch what i can. The quality of the clips on the trailer is amazing! Kudos to all involved.

greta

[Brooksie]

It must be terrifically exciting to see this all coming to fruition, Paul. Congratulations on a mammoth effort, and bring on Thursday!

[Gloria Rampage]

Will eagerly be looking forward to the release of the DVD set. Got the DVR all set for now.

[Smari1989]

I wish to give all my thank-you's in the world to everyone involved in this project. An important but invariably neglected part of film history, of cultural history, has finally received its rightful treatment. Perfect timing, too; 100 years since the opening of Sennett's studio! (I think?)
I can't view American TCM, so that's out for me, but will I be first in line (or at least nearly so) to get hold on the upcoming DVD set! Please inform us all when a definite release date has been set (I know you will).

[Agnes]

Absolutely, kudos to Paul & all who helped him.

I will absolutely buy the box set. It is coming out in DVD & in Blu-Ray.........any possibility of a conbination box ?

Please give us the street date as soon as possible .

In the mean time, I want to see the part of the set that was licenced by TCM. Since many run quite late on the east coast ( & our schools run the Back-To-School meetings on Thursdays) I need to record some to watch .
How real are the slots for the shorts? Are there intros at certain times? Do all the one-reelers fit in the 12 minute slots that TCM has put them in? Are there any that we should watch out for in a sense that the film can't fit in the time-slot given by TCM?

Agnes

[Richard Finegan]

Absolutely, kudos to Paul & all who helped him.

How real are the slots for the shorts? Are there intros at certain times? Do all the one-reelers fit in the 12 minute slots that TCM has put them in? Are there any that we should watch out for in a sense that the film can't fit in the time-slot given by TCM?

Agnes

The way the Thursday night schedule is set here:

http://www.tcm.com/schedule/index.html? ... 2012-09-06" target="_blank

it shows which shorts are grouped together in blocks. It is probable that the introductions will be before each block of films.

For what it may be worth, there's some discussion on the subject in this TCM Message Board thread:

http://forums.tcm.com/thread.jspa?threa ... 6&tstart=0" target="_blank

[ILoveMary68]

Can't wait for tonight. Don't have a dvr or vcr, so I have to give it a valient effort to stay up & watch all of these. So, on the West Coast do these start at 5pm, or is it still at the 8pm slot like here on the East Coast?

[Gloria Rampage]

8PM East coast, 5PM West coat.

[Paul E. Gierucki]

Thanks, all. We are 5 minutes away from the first TCM broadcast and everyone here in the studio is very excited.

Many of the prints that you will see for this first broadcast, and an incredible number from the subsequent airings, were generously provided by associate producer Richard M. Roberts. Many of these titles are unavailable elsewhere and, as you will see, look amazing after the lengthy reconstruction process. We are all very grateful to him and all of the other contributors and private collectors who made this massive project possible.

Thanks again! Enjoy the show!

-- Paul E. Gierucki

[westegg]

Does anyone know anything about Vivian Prescott? She appeared in many shorts through 1917 and then what? I think she had an interesting presence.

[Richard M Roberts]

Thanks, all. We are 5 minutes away from the first TCM broadcast and everyone here in the studio is very excited.

Many of the prints that you will see for this first broadcast, and an incredible number from the subsequent airings, were generously provided by associate producer Richard M. Roberts. Many of these titles are unavailable elsewhere and, as you will see, look amazing after the lengthy reconstruction process. We are all very grateful to him and all of the other contributors and private collectors who made this massive project possible.

Thanks again! Enjoy the show!

-- Paul E. Gierucki

And with THE MALTESE BIPPY as the lead-in, it can only get better from here.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Holmes]

Although I'm missing the premiere tonight, I'm anxiously awaiting the DVD release! I don't have cable, so I have to wait until the DVD set is released. Any idea on when that will be? I have no problem waiting, so when it happens, it happens. A huge THANK YOU Paul, and everyone else who have contributed to this project! You've been keeping us updated on all the progress, but I know there were a lot of other people that made this happen. Thank you all... thank you, thank you! I've been saving my pennies anticipating this release. I'm positive tonight was a true success!

[ILoveMary68]

Wow, amazing so far. 100 yr. old shorts looks like they just rolled out. I loved "A Dash Through the Clouds" with that airplane. beautiful. Question, i noticed Fatty Arbuckle first in "Mabel's Dramatic Career", (sitting in the theater), then in "The Speed Kings". Were these the first appearances of him on film?? A "Flirt's Mistake" just ended (early by the way, as a few of these were under the 12min. time limit they give), leaving roughly 30min. before the 11pm set. Laurel & Hardy shorts now (talkies)?

Awesome job on these Paul. Thank you so much!!!

[Richard Finegan]

A "Flirt's Mistake" just ended (early by the way, as a few of these were under the 12min. time limit they give), leaving roughly 30min. before the 11pm set. Laurel & Hardy shorts now (talkies)?

They're running the 3-reel version of Laurel & Hardy's 1931 short LAUGHING GRAVY to fill up the half hour gap in the schedule.
Later they will be running two one-reel Vitaphone shorts as fillers during gaps in the overnight schedule - and they're two of the BEST!:
Shaw & Lee and Mayer & Evans.

[Unclehulot]

Deleted due to a couple of people complaining about what some of us post.....sorry, but a couple of bad eggs here make posting a distinct displeasure!

[boblipton]

Well, Unclehulot, looks like you'll have to buy the dvd! Bwahahah!

Bob

[Smari1989]

Question, i noticed Fatty Arbuckle first in "Mabel's Dramatic Career", (sitting in the theater), then in "The Speed Kings". Were these the first appearances of him on film??

They are definitely among the earliest, at least of the ones that survive, but I mean to remember that PEEPING PETE is the earliest surviving Arbuckle-film (in which he appears in drag), am I right? Also, before his entrance at Keystone, Arbuckle appeared in a few Selig-films, of course, though none of these seem to survive.

[Steve Massa]

THE GANGSTERS is Arbuckle's earliest surviving film (there's a nice 35mm print at MoMA). It was his first Sennett appearance and released on 5/29/1913. PEEPING PETE is also very early as it came out a month later on 6/23/1913 (together with A BANDIT). Roscoe made pre-Sennett appearances for Selig and Nestor, but none of them are known to exist at the moment.

[barafan]

Unclehulot, I'm sorry to hear about your problems with Dish. I was irritated that TCM didn't arrange everything in one block; I had to spend about ten minutes laboriously getting my box to record each and every one of the shorts. I'll probably still continue taping, but I'll get rid of them once the DVD set comes out (when?)

I was pretty tired, though, so I went to bed after A Dash Through The Clouds. Mabel Normand looked absolutely delicious in that, but I felt sorry for her poor boyfriend at the end (even if he deserved the snub for fooling around on her). I'm looking forward to going through the whole program this weekend.

Out of curiosity, was that Normand in The Manicure Lady? It looked like her, but I wasn't sure.

[Brooksie]

That made for a terrific night's viewing! I didn't expect to watch the whole thing, but yes, I was still at the TV well after Tillie's Punctured Romance was over. Some of those prints looked just gorgeous. Thank you all for bringing it to us.

[CoffeeDan]

Unclehulot, I'm sorry to hear about your problems with Dish. I was irritated that TCM didn't arrange everything in one block; I had to spend about ten minutes laboriously getting my box to record each and every one of the shorts. I'll probably still continue taping, but I'll get rid of them once the DVD set comes out (when?)

I got around this simply by slapping an 8-hour cassette into my VCR and setting the timer. I find that my VCR is the best thing for capturing long programs like this one, and it saves space on the DVR. Yeah, the quality isn't as good, but it'll do until I get the DVDs.

[Kelly]

I really enjoy last night i wonder this might be begining of upstream on silent comedy especially Mack Sennett keystone cops we may have find more prints of other movie he probably did we really don't know about it that be cool

[Unclehulot]

Well, Unclehulot, looks like you'll have to buy the dvd! Bwahahah!

Bob

Deleted due to a couple of people complaining about what some of us post.....sorry, but a couple of bad eggs here make posting a distinct displeasure!

[mndean]

In any case, my backup didn't work last night because some last minute programming change to Dish's guide caused my 5 hour extended recording to turn into ONE 30 minute recording, and then the receiver turned itself off due to inactivity!

That's why I like my DVD recorders dumb! They do what I tell them to, nothing more or less. I had a friend with a DVR and he was in constant battle with it.

[gjohnson]

Damn that Gierucki and those restored Sennett films! They're getting in the way of all of this incredibly interesting DVR recording talk. You folks need to write a 'How-to' book on the subject..........and then read it!

I remember watching A DASH THROUGH THE CLOUDS (12) as a kid (I love that title) and because of the murky prints of the time, it was generally a toss-up ascertaining when the troupes were in the clouds or on the ground. And so despite being rather familiar with a majority of the titles shown last night, the beautiful print quality was like revisiting many of these shorts for the first time. It was the same feeling I got with the Chaplin at Keystone set (Hold on Richard! I'm talking image quality, not film speeds). Nothing serves a silent film better than to actually be able to see an actor's face register an emotion. Or so I've been told........

I posted this impression over at SCM of a Sennett Biograph I was not familiar with before...

I was surprised by the sly irony found throughout THE MANICURE LADY (11). Mack's gentle barber yearning for the gold-digging manicurist plays out with subtle touches of wit that I didn't know the old boy had in him at the time. There is nothing worse than a distracted barber with a 12 inch blade in his hand. At one point he is so preoccupied with the manicurist's coquettish behavior toward her client, that Mack's ignored customer grabs the razor and proceeds to shave himself. And is this the first time we see the old gag of an engagement ring being declined because of it's size? Class boundaries plays into this short film also - which didn't surprise me - but juxtaposing the two luncheon scenes and watching our flirt become uncomfortable with her high-toned surroundings helps humanize her for the ending clinch.

A charming, little film for 1911.

And now, back to your recording talk.

[boblipton]

Like all right-thinking Nitratevillains I have been enjoying the Sennett films on TCM -- my DVR works well, thank you. I have been writing some reviews for the Internet Movie Database based on the viewings and have noticed that my opinions are infused by Brent's Walker's MACK SENNETT'S FUN FACTORY, which is full of insights. It's certainly not cheap -- the discounted price at Amazon.com is $113, but given its influence on my understanding of these films I think it's worth it.

Bon

[Unclehulot]

Deleted due to a couple of people complaining about what some of us post.....sorry, but a couple of bad eggs here make posting a distinct displeasure!