Back in October of last year, I had
a post up on the blog
concerning a project at
Kickstarter.com, in which Sam Nelson—son of Ricky and
grandson of Ozzie & Harriet—was raising funds to restore all 435 episodes
of his nana and papa’s classic TV sitcom (
The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet)
to DVD. Like most of your public
television pleas for money, the project had several tiers at which you could
pledge…and I’m pleased that my contribution netted me some nice goodies, one of
which was a T-shirt with the sitcom’s logo imprinted on it that my mother wears
often, much to the amusement of the staff at Publix.
As someone who’s made classic film, TV, old-time radio and
other nostalgic forms of entertainment a passion during my brief stay on this
planet, I’m always enthusiastic about kicking in some money in kitties (and I
don’t mean in the feline sense) if and when I have two nickels to rub
together. (The joke around our house
goes: “Money is no object…mostly because we don’t have any.”) But a search of the couch cushions here at
Rancho Yesteryear recently turned up some spare coinage that allowed me to
donate to another Kickstarter project that will be of interest to both silent comedy fans and students of film preservation.
Ben Model is a name that I’ve mentioned a time or two on the
blog; he’s a film historian and filmmaker, as well as one of the
USA’s
leading silent film accompanists. A
small list of his credits would include…well, if you own a copy of Shout!
Factory’s
Ernie Kovacs Collection you’ve seen his name on it (he was the
curator of that box set), he also curates/produces the Museum of Modern Art’s
annual
Cruel and Unusual Comedy
retrospective and for the past fourteen years has produced (as co-founder) NYC’s
Silent Clowns Film Festival. He asked me
for a solid some time back when he came across a review I did for the 1970 Robert
Youngson compilation film
4 Clowns (he
needed a copy of it), and in return he sent me a DVD of the 1920 Lon Chaney
film
The Penalty, complete with his
own personally composed score. Not to
put too a fine point on it…he’s good people in my book.
As a film historian, Ben has also amassed a rather
impressive collection of silent films on 16mm…and in many instances, these
prints are all that’s remaining of the originals. He’s
initiated a Kickstarter project to
produce a DVD for classic film buffs that will, as he nicely puts it, “get
these films out of cans and onto peoples' screens so they can be enjoyed and
studied.” The movies will feature HD
transfers and new musical scores, and will also be put on
YouTube for future
generations of film fans to enjoy.
The project—titled “Accidentally Preserved”—has set a goal
of raising $3,600 to produce a DVD that will contain 8-9 of these rare and/or lost
silent classics…and with two weeks left to go, he’s $3,065 in as of this
writing. Ben recently e-mailed the
backers to let them know that three of the films on the DVD will be one-reel “Cameo”
comedies (the title that the Educational Pictures studio used for their
one-reelers; their two-reelers were known as the “Mermaid” comedies) featuring
the talents of Cliff Bowes, Wallace Lane (brother of Lupino Lane) and future
Columbia second banana Monty (Monte) Collins.
Ben’s “reasonably certain” that these films constitute the only
surviving copies of these treasures from the past.
As always—every little bit helps…and there’s several tiers
for people to donate. If this project is
successful (and with your help, it’s practically a shoo-in) there’s a darn good
chance that future volumes would also be produced—and Ben’s connections with
other silent film collectors would insure that the material for these discs
consist of true cinematic treasures. If
you can contribute, I urge you to do so—and when you do, be sure to mention my
name. (It won’t do you any good, of course, but it helps to spread my name
around.)
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