Click to return to the first page



Click to return to previous page



29 May 1940: Buster Keaton and Eleanor Ruth Norris are married
by Superior Court Justice Edward R. Brand.
After two nightmarish marriages, Buster struck gold.
Coincidentally enough, Edward R. Brand was the son of Harry Brand,
Buster’s previous publicist.


Revival Cinemas?
In the 1940’s and 1950’s?
Really?

Richard J. Anobile’s photonovel includes a transcript of Ray Rohauer’s on-stage interview with Marion Mack at the Ontario Film Theatre, housed in the Ontario Science Centre, 770 Don Mills Road, Toronto, on Monday, 18 December 1972. The interview was conducted on stage at a screening of The General. Marion mentioned that when the movie had first opened (she surely meant at the Metropolitan in Los Ángeles, 11–17 March 1927), she and her husband purchased tickets to watch it. She went on to say, “And in later years, every once in a while I used to go to one of the revival theaters when THE GENERAL was showing. At first I used to tell them I was the co-star, but I think they either didn’t believe me, or it meant nothing to them.”


That drove me crazy, because I had been unaware of any revival cinemas. The first commercial 35mm revival houses appeared in 1960, and in the US The General had ceased circulating in 1931 and was not available again commercially until 1970. So, what was Marion talking about? I could not make any sense of her claim. Yes, there was a little 16mm cinema in Los Ángeles, run by John and Dorothy Hampton, that devoted itself to silent films, but even so, The General was simply not available. Was Marion referring to screenings of MoMA’s 16mm print in museums or classrooms or churches or libraries? Perhaps she was, but those aren’t exactly revival cinemas.


Then Olga Egorova sent me a news clipping from March 1941. It was Louella Parsons’s syndicated INS gossip column, which told an anecdote about Buster attending a screening of The General at a revival cinema just a few days before. What?!?!?!?!?!!!! How could that be? I spent six days scouring the newspapers of the time, and that is how I discovered a subculture that is now completely forgotten. What follows is what I discovered and how I pieced the shards together to form some sort of story that probably resembles the truth. If you catch any errors or omissions, if you have more details, I’m all ears. Please write to me to tell me what you know. Thanks!


Almost from the beginning, there had been occasional revivals and even a few reissues. The revivals were usually accidental. A cinema needed a film, but the only affordable item from the local exchange was an obsolete and antiquated print that had been collecting dust for a decade or more. It’s never a good idea to go dark, and so if a moldy oldie was all that was available, then the cinema would anger its loyal patrons by showing them a moldy oldie. That was usually why films were revived. Simple as that. It was really quite rare for a cinema deliberately to book an older film.


There were intentional revivals, of course, a great many of them, entire series of revivals, but they were at museums and in classrooms and in churches and synagogues and libraries and private clubs. The revivals were not held in cinemas. More often than not, they were 16mm prints from the Museum of Modern Art, though other distributors also made 16mm films available for such purposes. It was tax-exempt nonprofits that booked these films, usually as part of an educational program.


Well, what do I know? When Olga sent me Louella Parson’s gossip column of 10 March 1941, I realized that my understanding of cinema history was all wrong. Yes, there were revival cinemas that regularly booked silent films, intentionally, as early as 1940, and even earlier than that. I fell to the floor. Olga was right!


Here is one such rental catalogue from as early as 1918, from the United Projector and Film Company in Buffalo of all places: Library of Safety Standard Films. Note the disclaimer on page 2: “Every film listed is on Standard Safety non-inflammable material and bears the approval label of the National Board of Fire Underwriters FOR USE WITHOUT FIREPROOF BOOTH. Because these Standard Safety films cannot be run on theatre machines, we cannot violate the contracts of the theatre men with the producers by renting a particularly popular subject to a competing theatre. It is for this reason that practically all the film producing companies give us permission to reproduce from their original negatives new prints for use in our library.” Steep that paragraph in your memory; let it hover behind your thoughts as you read the rest of this story.



If this does not display, download it.


You will notice that a goodly number of the films on pages 31 through 62 were among the films continually revived at the below venues. Yet this “Library of Safety Standard Films” was a rental catalogue; nothing listed was for sale. In later years, other companies offered many of these films for sale, but I do not know what catalogues those were.


Other films were made available in 16mm for home use, and many of these were abridgments. The Kodascope Library operated from 1924 through 1939. It was a rental catalogue; its films were not available for purchase, though in 1948 the defunct company’s film holdings were sold off to collectors. There was also the Pathéscope Film Catalogue of 16mm (and 9.5mm) films, most or all of them abridgments. That was introduced in 1922 and it seems to have continued at least through the late 1960’s. Universal Studios introduced its Show-at-Home Library catalogue, which, unusually, offered films not only for rental but also for sale to collectors. There was also something called Ganz Home Film Library, as well as some eighteen others. I have not worked out how the venues listed below acquired their films originally. If you can elucidate, please do so. Thanks!


Bud Abbott’s Windsor House



Let us start with a venture that was not a cinema, but it will tie in to the common pattern. Bud Abbott (yes, of Abbott and Costello) owned and operated a restaurant. Just out of curiosity, here’s a little sumpn I found on eBay, a matchbook that predates Bud’s tenure:




This restaurant is of no particular interest to me except for its series of Monday-night shows, not all of which were announced in the newspapers. Though nightclub performers sang songs and whatnot at this location, this was a restaurant, not a theatre. There was no auditorium, no proscenium, no booth. It was just a restaurant. It was surely not licensed to show 35mm film. The screenings could only have been 16mm. Herb Sterne was the programmer. He was a playwright among other things, as well as a personal friend of D.W. Griffith (Herbert Sterne, 6 January 1906, NYC – 4 June 1995, Woodland Hills, SSN 545-14-8957). The films he showed at the Windsor House may have been rentals. Or they may have not been rentals. I do not know. Were they part of Sterne’s private collection? Rental catalogues included these titles. For instance, page through the National Cinema Service Film Rental Library Catalog of 1942/1943. There were surely plenty of other such services on both coasts.


To my surprise, it was common to show silent movies at nightclubs.



The above article skirts the issue of legality, copyrights, royalties.
Below the article is a pair of advertisements for suppliers.
Was it those two suppliers who offered the movies shown at nightclubs?
There were other suppliers as well, but the trades did not go into much detail.
I wish I could find the catalogues for all these 16mm distribution companies.


One of the following films, Arctic Adventures, an unauthorized abridgment of Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, came from Cine Film Products of Paterson, New Jersey. I would love to learn more about that firm. I would love to find its catalogues. It seems to me that Cine Film Products purchased its prints from larger supplier, whose identity is unknown to me. I wonder if Cine Film was the source of the other films in the Windsor House series.


Here is a list of most of the silent-movie programs at the Windsor House:


Mon 27 May 1940 Fatty and Mabel Adrift
His Prehistoric Past
Her Indian Hero
Shadows of Doubt
Mon 03 Jun 1940 [NOT ANNOUNCED]
Mon 10 Jun 1940 Dancing Mothers (Clara Bow, Alice Joyce, Conway Tearle)
a Harold Lloyd-Bebe Daniels comedy
Mon 17 Jun 1940 [NOT ANNOUNCED]
Mon 24 Jun 1940 The Spanish Dancer (Pola Negri, António Moreno, Adolphe Menjou, Wallace Beery)
a Larry Semon comedy
Mon 01 Jul 1940 Beau Brummel (John Barrymore, Carmel Myers, Mary Astor, Irene Rich)
Mon 08 Jul 1940 The Americano (Douglas Fairbanks)
Mary Pickford
Wm. S. Hart
Mack Sennett
Mon 15 Jul 1940 The Forbidden City (Norma Talmadge, Thomas Meighan)
Mon 22 Jul 1940 Tiger Rose (Lenore Ulric, David Belasco)
Easy Street (Charlie Chaplin)
Mon 29 Jul 1940 [NOT ANNOUNCED]
Mon 05 Aug 1940 A Pair of Silk Stockings (Constance Talmadge)
Never Weaken (Harold Lloyd)
Mon 12 Aug 1940 Daddies (David Belasco, Mae Marsh)
The Immigrant (Charlie Chaplin)
Mon 19 Aug 1940 [NOT ANNOUNCED]
Mon 26 Aug 1940 A Mack Sennett comedy (Carole Lombard, Sally Eilers)
The Coming of Amos (Jetta Goudal, Rod LaRocque)
Mon 02 Sep 1940 Charley’s Aunt (Sydney Chaplin)
The Female Impersonator (Charlie Chaplin, clip from A Woman)
Mon 09 Sep 1940 The Virgin of Stamboul (Priscilla Dean, Wallace Beery, Tod Browning)
Captain Kidd’s Kids (Harold Lloyd, Bebe Daniels)
Mon 16 Sep 1940 [NOT ANNOUNCED]
Mon 23 Sep 1940 Shore Leave (Richard Barthelmess, Dorothy Mackaill)
a Mack Sennett comedy with Carole Lombard, Sally Eilers, and Daphne Pollard
Mon 30 Sep 1940 The Lost World (Lewis Stone, Bessie Love, Wallace Beery)
a comedy with Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand
Mon 07 Oct 1940 Shadows (Lon Chaney)
Lady of the Law (Texas Guinan)
Mon 14 Oct 1940 The Grinning Gringo (Douglas Fairbanks, 2-reel abridgment of The Lamb)
The Cat and the Canary (Laura LaPlante)
Mon 21 Oct 1940 Arctic Adventures (Charlie Chaplin, a pirated abridgment of The Gold Rush)
The Wishing Ring (Vivian Martin)
Mon 28 Oct 1940 The Thieves of Bagdad (retitled edition of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp)
Veiled Adventure (Constance Talmadge)
Mon 04 Nov 1940 Lady Windermere’s Fan (Ronald Colman, Mary McAvoy, Bert Lytell, Irene Rich)
The Bull Fighter (Eddie Quillan, Mack Sennett, 1927)
Mon 11 Nov 1940 The Rink (Charlie Chaplin)
The Drop Kick (Richard Barthelmess, Hedda Hopper)


Oh, you thought that was all? Ohhhhhhh noooooooo. For starters, take a look at this. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.


Eddie Kohn’s Movie Parade
1737 North Highland Avenue (upstairs)
Hollywood

The Movie Parade is what Olga Egorova told me about at the end of March 2024, and her revelation knocked the wind out of me. I don’t think she could have realized how radically this would upset my conclusions about cinema history. Since I had never heard of the Movie Parade, the first thing I had to do was locate it, and I quickly discovered that it was in Hollywood, operated by an Eddie Kohn, who was a film agent, at one time for the Bob Goldstein agency, later for Franklyn Underwood of the Twentieth Century-Fox scenario department (see The Hollywood Reporter vol. 40 no. 2, Thursday, 17 June 1937, p. 3). Kohn devoted his Movie Parade exclusively to revivals of silent pictures. His screening room was up a flight of stairs above, I think, a storefront restaurant, probably the Aulic Club Café, a/k/a (Edward) Tierney’s Place, a/k/a Consolidated Distillers, Ltd., a/k/a The Pall Mall, a/k/a the Hot Spot.


This edifice seems to have been built in 1912. Nope nope nope nope nope. Bill Counter has determined that it was built before 1907. By 1912 the upstairs was used as a funeral parlor operated by Gates & Crane. The upstairs hall in 1930 was the Hollywood Humanist Society under the directorship of Theodore Curtis Abel, a Unitarian minister. Beginning in about January 1937 it was called the Creative Theater managed by someone named Karol Morell Waxman, with Lester Shafer and Thad Sharetts also on staff. It lasted only half a year. In 1938 the L.B. Williams real-estate office rented the space to train salesmen.


Was the Movie Parade a commercial venture? I wasn’t sure, but I supposed it was tax-exempt. WRONG ! It was a commercial venture. The full name of the venue was The Movie Parade Museum of Silent Pictures. Curiously, its programming was extremely similar to the programming at the Windsor House. Some of these films may have been rentals, but some were definitely in Kohn’s personal collection.


The building was brick and was built as storefronts; it surely did not have a fire rating for 35mm film screenings. It was on the second story above a restaurant, reachable by what appears to have been a very narrow staircase. That was absolutely not the construction permitted for 35mm projection.


By the way, Eddie was not alone. From Saturday, 9 November 1940, and for the next two months or so, the Tele-View newsreel cinema switched policy and operated as a revival house, and then quickly switched again to reviving exclusively westerns, upon which management changed its name to the Hitching Post. That was surely a 35mm operation. Surely. The films it ran were surely leftover prints collecting dust at the exchanges, available for a mere few dollars each, flat rate probably.


Time to learn what little we can about the building at 1737 North Highland Avenue. The Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Los Ángeles, 1919, Volume 10, revised up to November 1950, shows us where 1737 was. Shall we take a look?




1737 was most likely a narrow staircase to the second floor. The yellow outline that indicates RAISED over 1733 and 1735 was probably the assembly hall, which at various times was repurposed as a performance space or as a screening room.


I can find no clear photographs of 1737 North Highland Avenue. Here. Allow me to steal an image that appears on Bill Counter’s blogspot. The photo is twenty years newer than the Movie Parade, alas, and much had changed by then. We are facing south. Take a look:




The photo, or at least the scan of the photo, is too blurry to allow me to pick out which building the Movie Parade was once in. Still, though, I have a suspicion. Allow me to enlarge a detail. I plugged in the street numbers, and I think I’m right, maybe, possibly, perhaps.




The building that I marked as 1733/1735/1737 looks like a newer building, less than two stories. Darn it!


Bill Counter looked at my detective work and gave me an F. He thinks the Movie Parade was further north, behind the camera. So, let us walk southwards to Hollywood Boulevard, turn around, and then look towards the north. He thinks it’s the building circled in red:





If this does not display, download it.
Posted at LADBS Online Building Records.


Let us look at Windsor House and Movie Parade in parallel. You will notice that there was one screening in particular that interests us.


WINDSOR HOUSE
THE MOVIE PARADE
Mon 18 Nov 1940 (1 show)
 Kismet (Otis Skinner, Rosemary Theby)
Mum’s the Word (Virginia Pearson)
Wed 20 Nov 1940 (8 days)
 Charley’s Aunt (Sydney Chaplin)
The Grinning Gringo (Douglas Fairbanks, 2-reel abridgment of The Lamb)
The Fireman (Charlie Chaplin)
Shadows of Doubt (Mary Pickford)
Mon 25 Nov 1940 (1 show)
 The Vagabond (Charlie Chaplin)
Hands Up! (Raymond Griffith)
Thu 28 Nov 1940 (7 days)
 Lady Windermere’s Fan (Ernst Lubitsch, Ronald Colman)
Step Lively (Harold Lloyd, Bebe Daniels)
The Desert Rat (Franklyn Farnum)

Mon 02 Dec 1940 (1 show)
 Orchids and Ermine (Colleen Moore, Jack Mulhall)
The Ropin’ Fool (Will Rogers, Irene Rich)
Thu 05 Dec 1940 (7 days)
 The Lost World (Lewis Stone, Bessie Love, Wallace Beery)
Chaplin & Langdon comedies
Mon 09 Dec 1940 (1 show)
 The Covered Wagon (J. Warren Kerrigan, Lois Wilson)
The Knockout (Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle)
Thu 12 Dec 1940 (7 days)
 Behind the Front (Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton)
A Night at the Show (Charlie Chaplin)
Mon 16 Dec 1940 (1 show)
 Romola (Ronald Colman, William Powell, Gish sisters)
Thu 19 Dec 1940 (7 days)
 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Lon Chaney)
A Night in the Show (Charlie Chaplin)
Safety Last (Harold Lloyd)
The Forbidden Woman (Jetta Goudal)
vintage newsreels
Mon 23 Dec 1940
 The King on Main Street (Adolphe Menjou, Bessie Love, Greta Nissen)
a Nick Stuart/Sally Phipps comedy
Thu 26 Dec 1940 (held over)
 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Lon Chaney)
A Night in the Show (Charlie Chaplin)
Safety Last (Harold Lloyd)
The Forbidden Woman (Jetta Goudal)
vintage newsreels
Mon 30 Dec 1940 (1 show)
 The Spanish Dancer (Wallace Beery, António Moreno)
Aladdin (Virginia Lee Corbin, Francis Carpenter)
Thu 02 Jan 1941 (held over)
 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Lon Chaney)
A Night in the Show (Charlie Chaplin)
Safety Last (Harold Lloyd)
The Forbidden Woman (Jetta Goudal)
vintage newsreels
Mon 06 Jan 1941 (1 day)
 Peck’s Bad Boy (Jackie Coogan)
Charlie Chaplin comedy
Thu 09 Jan 1941 (7 days)
 The Covered Wagon (J. Warren Kerrigan, Lois Wilson, Ernest Torrence, Alan Hale)
Robin Hood (excerpts, Douglas Fairbanks)
The Great Train Robbery
Laurel & Hardy
Charlie Chaplin/Mabel Normand
vintage newsreels
Mon 13 Jan 1941
 His Wonderful Chance (Rudolph Valentino, Eugene O’Brien)
Thu 16 Jan 1941 (held over)
 The Covered Wagon (J. Warren Kerrigan, Lois Wilson, Ernest Torrence, Alan Hale)
Robin Hood (excerpts, Douglas Fairbanks)
The Great Train Robbery
Laurel & Hardy
Charlie Chaplin/Mabel Normand
vintage newsreels
Mon 20 Jan 1941 (1 show)
 Nomads of the North (Lon Chaney)
One Week of Love (Elaine Hammerstein, Conway Tearle)
Mon 20 Jan 1941
 The Covered Wagon
The Lost World
Thu 23 Jan 1941 (7 days)
 Manhandled (Gloria Swanson)
The New York Hat (Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore)
Charlie Chaplin
Texas Guinan
Mon 27 Jan 1941 (1 show)
 Eyes of Youth (Clara Kimball Young, Valentino, Milton Sills)
Thu 30 Jan 1941
 East Lynne (Alan Hale)
Easy Street (Charlie Chaplin)
Mon 03 Feb 1941 (1 show)
 Lucretia Lombard (Norma Shearer)
also Kathlyn Williams thriller
Sat 01 Feb 1941 (7 days)
 Manhandled (Gloria Swanson)
East Lynne (Alan Hale)
Easy Street (Charlie Chaplin)
Thu 06 Feb 1941 (7 days)
 Beau Brummel (John Barrymore)
Will Rogers
Laurel & Hardy
Mon 10 Feb 1941 (1 show)
 Dancing Mothers (Clara Bow)
Shanghaied (Charlie Chaplin)
Thu 13 Feb 1941 (7 days)
 The Phantom of the Opera (Lon Chaney)
Behind the Screen (Charlie Chaplin)
Soldier Man (Harry Langdon)
Mon 17 Feb 1941 (1 show)
 The Bright Shawl (William Powell, Dorothy Gish, Edward G. Robinson, Jetta Goudal, Richard Barthelmess)
Thu 20 Feb 1941 (held over)
 The Phantom of the Opera (Lon Chaney)
Behind the Screen (Charlie Chaplin)
Soldier Man (Harry Langdon)
Mon 24 Feb 1941 (1 show)
 The Cure (Charlie Chaplin)
Jack and the Beanstalk (Virginia Lee Corbin, Francis Carpenter)
Thu 27 Feb 1941 (held over)
 The Phantom of the Opera (Lon Chaney)
Behind the Screen (Charlie Chaplin)
Soldier Man (Harry Langdon)
Mon 03 Mar 1941 (1 show)
 The Safety Curtain (Norma Talmadge, Eugene O’Brien)
Alice Howell comedy
Thu 06 Mar 1941 (7 days)
 Dancing Mothers (Clara Bow)
THE GENERAL (Buster Keaton)
Every Inch a Man (William S. Hart)
Sunday only, added attraction: The Grand Duchess and the Waiter, with an experimental short and Easy Street.
Where on earth did this print come from? It might have been pirated from the MoMA 16mm which had just begun to circulate a year previously, but I really doubt it. Almost certainly it was the 40-minute abridgment that United Artists had created for 16mm film clubs back in 1928 or thereabouts.
This is the piece that Olga emailed to me, the one that boggled my mind. I was compelled to check on Newspapers.com and yes, she was right. This syndicated column was indeed published across the US at about this time. The above gossip tells us nothing about who accompanied Buster into the Movie Parade. Was Eleanor with him? If not, why not? I bet she was there. Unless she was working OT or unless she was ill or out of town tending to a family crisis, she must have been by Buster’s side. One person who probably did show up, though not on this particular night, but sometime during the week, was Marion Mack, who likely attended together with her husband, Louis Lewyn.
Mon 10 Mar 1941 (1 show)
 The Ice Flood (Viola Dana)
Broken Ways (D.W. Griffith, Blanche Sweet, Henry Walthall)
Thu 13 Mar 1941 (7 days)
 The Spanish Dancer (Pola Negri, António Moreno)
The Cure (Charlie Chaplin)
The Collegians
Mon 17 Mar 1941 (1 show)
 Outside the Law (Lon Chaney, Priscilla Dean)
Alice Howell comedy
Thu 20 Mar 1941 (14 days)
 Way down East (D.W. Griffith, Lillian Gish, R. Barthelmess)
Charlie Chaplin comedy
Mon 24 Mar 1941 (1 show)
 The Submarine Pirate (Sydney Chaplin)
The Sensation Seekers (Lois Weber, Billie Dove)
Mon 31 Mar 1941 (1 show)
 The Grim Gunman (aka Wolf Lowry, William S. Hart)
Chaplin comedy
Thu 03 Apr 1941 (7 days)
 The Americano (Douglas Fairbanks)
Chaplin
Will Rogers



The 16mm exhibitors in and around Los Ángeles followed the above recommendations exactly.
Note the film suppliers advertising on this page.
I suppose some of the films shown in and around LÁ
came from those suppliers — or were copies of films from those suppliers.


Mon 07 Apr 1941 (1 show)
 The Busher (Thomas H. Ince, John Gilbert, Colleen Moore, Charles Ray, Mickey Rooney)
Thu 10 Apr 1941 (held over)
 The Americano (Douglas Fairbanks)
Chaplin
Will Rogers
Mon 14 Apr 1941 (1 show)
 The Trap (Lon Chaney)
Larry Semon comedy
Wed 16 Apr 1941 (8 days)
 The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (A. Menjou, F. Vidor)
Tarzan of the Apes (Elmo Lincoln)
Chaplin comedy
Mon 21 Apr 1941 (1 show)
 Stella Maris (Gladys Bockwell, Mary Philbin)
Charlie Chaplin comedy
Thu 24 Apr 1941 (7 days)
 The Cat and the Canary (Laura LaPlante)
The Trap (Lon Chaney)
Haunted Spooks (Harold Lloyd)
Mon 28 Apr 1941 (1 show)
 Double Crossed [sic, The Deputy’s Double Cross] (Laura LaPlante, 1922)
Oh, Baby! (Madge Kennedy, David Butler, 1926)
Jetta Goudal drama
Thu 01 May 1941 (28 days)
 Charlie Chaplin:
The Immigrant
Easy Street
The Vagabond
Shanghaied
Behind the Screen
The Fireman
The Adventurer
(celebs attend)
Mon 05 May 1941 (1 show)
 White Tiger (Priscilla Dean, Wallace Beery)
The Grinning Gringo (Douglas Fairbanks, 2-reel abridgment of The Lamb)
Thu 29 May 1941 (added)
 Charle’s Aunt (Sydney Chaplin)
Charlie Chaplin:
The Immigrant
Easy Street
The Vagabond
Shanghaied
Behind the Screen
The Fireman
The Adventurer

Last day at the old address.
Mon 12 May 1941
 (no show; series has ended)
Thu 05 Jun 1941 (7 days)
 Intolerance (D.W. Griffith)

First day at new address, 1455 Gordon Street, Hollywood.


Did you read the article above? Read the article above. Then read the article below:




The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a tax-exempt nonprofit 501(c)(6) organization. For whatever reason, it decided to coöperate with Eddie Kohn to present a series of films, presumably 35mm nitrates it had newly acquired for its archive. Since the Movie Parade could show only 16mm safety film, it was time to make a temporary change. That is why I assume that AMPAS invited the Movie Parade to its fire-resistant screening room, The Academy Review Theater, a tiny boring squat little edifice two miles away at 1455 Gordon Street:



The Academy Review Theater
Once again, I am stealing this from Bill Counter’s blogspot.
Could the building originally have been so squat?


Shall we investigate? Okay, you talked me into it. What can we learn from the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps? 1919, Volume 9, revised up to November 1950.




Yup. A single story, a mere 12' tall. This was probably a private screening room for use by movie studios. I strongly suspect that the auditorium floor is sunken considerably below ground level.


Zo, the Movie Parade moved to Gordon Street, but why let 1737 North Highland lie fallow? Eddie Kohn, with a mere temporary change of name, kept a good thing going.


THE NICKELODEON
1737 N Highland Ave
THE MOVIE PARADE
1455 Gordon St
Thu 12 Jun 1941 (7 days)
 The Son of the Sheik (Rudolph Valentino)
Thu 19 Jun 1941 (7 days)
 The Three Musketeers (Douglas Fairbanks)
Thu 26 Jun 1941 (7 days)
 The Unholy Three (Lon Chaney)
Thu 03 Jul 1941 (27 days)
 The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Phantom of the Opera (Lon Chaney)
Thu 03 Jul 1941 (7 days)
 The Love Parade (Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald)
Thu 10 Jul 1941 (8 days)
 Greed (Von Stroheim)
Fri 18 Jul 1941 (6 days)
 Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
Thu 24 Jul 1941 (7 days)
 Anna Christie (Greta Garbo, a talkie)
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)

Yes, Bill Counter tells me that there was a cinema inside May’s department store.
He even wrote an article about it.
Wed 30 Jul 1941 (7 days)
 Charley’s Aunt (Sydney Chaplin)
The Lost World (Louis Stone)
Thu 31 Jul 1941 (2 days)
 What Price Glory? (Dolores Del Rio, Edmund Lowe, Victor McLaglen)
Wed 02 Aug 1941 (5 days)
 The Covered Wagon (James Cruze)
The Lost World (Conan Doyle)
Thu 07 Aug 1941 (5 days)
 Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
Hands Up! (Raymond Griffith)
Wed 06 Aug 1941 (8 days)
 The Thief of Bagdad (Douglas Fairbanks)
Tue 12 Aug 1941 (17 days)
 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Thu 14 Aug 1941 (1 day)
 Underworld (Geo. Bancroft)
Fri 15 Aug 1941 (14 days)
 The Thief of Bagdad (Douglas Fairbanks) (last show at 1455 Gordon St)


The AMPAS series was now over, and so Eddie Kohn moved his name back to 1737 North Highland and continued with his 16mm screenings as before.



Back at 1737 N Highland Ave
Thu 28 Aug 1941
(2 days)		 The Forbidden City (Norma Talmadge)
Sat 30 Aug 1941
(5 days)		 The Forbidden City (Norma Talmadge)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Thu 04 Sep 1941
(7 days)		 The Son of the Sheik (Rudolph Valentino)
Thu 11 Sep 1941
(7 days)		 The Bright Shawl (Richard Barthelmess)
My Lady of Whims (Clara Bow)
Thu 18 Sep 1941
(7 days)		 Outside the Law (Lon Chaney)
Miss Bluebeard (Bebe Daniels, Raymond Griffith)
Thu 25 Sep 1941
(7 days)		 The Busher (Charles Ray, John Gilbert, Colleen Moore)
The Headless Horseman (Will Rogers)
Thu 02 Oct 1941
(7 days)		 The Eyes of Youth (Valentino, Clara K. Young)
The Grim Gunman (aka Wolf Lowry, William S. Hart)
Thu 09 Oct 1941
(7 days)		 Romola (Lillian and Dorothy Gish)
Thu 16 Oct 1941
(7 days)		 Dancing Mothers (Clara Bow)
A Pair of Silk Stockings (Constance Talmadge)
Thu 23 Oct 1941
(7 days)		 Tillie’s Punctured Romance (Marie Dressler)
The Virgin of Stamboul (Priscilla Dean)
Thu 30 Oct 1941
(7 days)		 Manhandled (Gloria Swanson)
Mormon Maid (Mae Murray)
Thu 06 Nov 1941
(6 days)		 Twisted Trails (Tom Mix)
Wilderness Man (Douglas Fairbanks) [misprint? maybe this?]
The Pony Express
Wed 19 Nov 1941
(8 days)		 The Phantom of the Opera (Lon Chaney)
The Cat and the Canary (oriental [sic] version)
Thu 27 Nov 1941
(7 days)		 The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1930 version)
Hymn to the Sun (Corinne and Tito Valdéz [was this on the tiny stage?])
Thu 04 Dec 1941
(2 days)		 The Lost World (Wallace Beery)
The Phantom of the Opera (Lon Chaney)
Sat 06 Dec 1941
(5 days)		 The Lost World (Wallace Beery)
Dracula (Béla Lugosi, maybe the silent version?)
Thu 11 Dec 1941
(7 days)		 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Lon Chaney)
Dracula (Béla Lugosi, maybe the silent version?)
Thu 18 Dec 1941
(7 days)		 His Wonderful Chance (Rudolph Valentino)
Merry-Go-Round (Erich Von Stroheim [actually by Rupert Julian, most of Stroheim’s footage was junked])
Thu 25 Dec 1941
(7 days)		 The Americano (Douglas Fairbanks)
Peck’s Bad Boy (Jackie Coogan)


The Movie Parade’s last show was Monday, 29 December 1941. The above article probably explains why. The anonymous author of the article cautions exhibitors to use only “legitimate sources of supply” but makes no effort to explain how one could distinguish legitimate from illegitimate. My guess is that the illegitimate sources of supply regularly advertised in The Billboard, and to call them out would be to jeopardize a revenue source and to cause even good customers to flock away. So, at last, I see that some but by no means all of my guesses were right. He ran 16mm and the films he exhibited were in his personal collection. That was the end of the Movie Parade. I have yet to find the ruling, which I hope is still on file, but, to judge from the newspaper articles, it appears that Festival Films decided to press charges not against the pirates, but against one of the pirates’ hapless customers. After all, filing charges against the distributor would probably lead to a protracted case and there would be a good chance that the distributor would prevail. So it is better to file charges against the hapless customer, who doesn’t stand a chance in a court of law. As for Edward L. “Eddie” Kohn, he evaporated. I can find no further trace of him. We know his brother’s name was Bob. We know where he worked in the late 1930’s. Very hard to trace. If I could just learn his full name, or his birth date, or his death date, or his spouse’s name, or his parents’s names, or his address, or something, or anything, I could begin to unravel this mystery.


The hall at 1737 North Highland reopened in or just before August 1944 as the Comoedia Theatre, a part of René Plaissetty’s Hollywood Academy of Drama, a venue for live performance. By the spring of 1946 management was supplementing its income by presenting adults-only “educational” sex films. In July 1946 it gave up on the stage and it seems there was a transfer, for it then specialized in foreign films doubled with silent films. Those silent films were the same silent films that others were showing at different venues, and so I assume they were rented and purchased from the same catalogues. The Comoedia seems to have shuttered at the end of 1947. Then in 1949 it became (Jack) Walklin’s Highland Playhouse. After that, it was demolished in October or November 1963, and that, I suppose, is probably when the entire stretch of buildings on those few blocks was demolished to make way for monstrous uglitude.



If this does not display, download it.
Posted at LADBS Online Building Records.


In 1942, Lucille Ball and Buster Keaton regularly met in Eddie Sedgwick’s MGM office in Culver City. All three were on payroll even though MGM regarded them as washed up and rarely gave them any duties. We can see that Eddie had lost a lot of weight since 1928.



Pacific Electric Building
610 South Main Street
Los Ángeles
This could only have been the 16mm MoMA print.


Other Revival Houses

The Windsor House. The Tele-View. The Movie Parade a/k/a The Nickelodeon. Then it went quiet. Why? The answer is obvious from the programming. The pickings were slim. Only a few pictures were available. The house pianist at the Windsor House must have accompanied Herb Sterne’s movie collection. We know that Eddie Kohn hired a pianist to accompany. Who? What happened when he (she?) called in sick? Who accompanied at 1737 N. Highland Ave.? Who accompanied at 1455 Gordon St.? What machines were used? How were the auditoriums set up? Who owned these spaces? Will we ever find photographs?


Though these ventures fell flat all too quickly, should we be surprised that there were more? Well, there were more.



I stole this image from Bill Counter’s blog.



I do not know when the tag line was added,
though it was certainly there by September 1943.
I stole this image from Atlas Obscura.



If this does not display, download it.
LADBS Online Building Records.



If this does not display, download it.
LADBS Online Building Records.


On Wednesday, 25 February 1942, came the Movie, 611 North Fairfax Avenue, Los Ángeles, built and owned and operated by John and Dorothy Hampton, who devoted it almost entirely to silent films. John and Dorothy were the only employees. If they were the only employees, then where did the music come from? Or was there music? Were the films run in dead silence? Or did John spin discs? I bet he he spun discs. There was a published claim in 1954 that a pianist accompanied, but apparently that was not true. As I had originally guessed, John spun 78rpm discs, as we shall discover in an article below. And I didn’t even need to guess! The answers were openly published! See a web page on The Birth of a Nation to read the following:


Collector and repertory theater owner John Hampton took an alternative approach to The Birth of a Nation. As the co-owner and programmer of the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles from 1942 to 1979, Hampton played an important part in keeping silent films in the public view before the rise of videotape. Hampton supplied the films, which played for weeklong runs, from his extensive film collection, projected the films himself, and supplied the musical accompaniment from his collection of 78 rpm phonographs. The Silent Movie Theatre housed repertory screenings put on by Cinefamily until its closure in 2017, and Hampton’s collection of rare films, which includes a number of unique prints of otherwise lost silent features, is owned by the Packard Humanities Institute, one of the major backers of film preservation in the United States....


There’s more stuff on the Hamptons on that web page. Worth a read. The quote above leaves us with a question: How did Hampton manage to collect so many 16mm films as early as 1942? Six or seven years later, yes, I would understand. But 1942 seems a bit too early. Does anybody know the answer to this question?


Though OLD TIME MOVIES was prominently painted onto the front of the building, that was not the name of the establishment. That was just the catchline. The full name of the cinema was “Movie.” And that was the entire name. When you entered, you were greeted by a hand-painted poster:



This poster entirely confused me,
because I had no idea that the building had ever been called, simply, Movie.
I wrongly thought that it had always been called The Silent Movie Theatre.


Mr. and Mrs. Hampton eventually began to advertise in the newspapers, they often used the name “Silent Movie.” The Hamptons presented 16mm films, only 16mm. Mr. Hampton collected some 35mm nitrate, but he had no facilities to present it. I suppose that he merely took his 35mm materials to a lab to have 16mm reversals made.


Desperately, manically, maniacally, was I trying to figure out what distributor the Hamptons used. Then when I discovered they had competitors, I began desperately to wonder what distributor the competitors used. I figured it must have been a single distributor, since they all showed the same movies. As I began to go through the newspapers, day by day, laboriously compiling a list of what was shown when and where and by whom, the puzzle sorted itself out. John and Dorothy began by showing mostly rented films, seemingly from catalogues that did not allow their products to be shown commercially. Not long afterwards, John managed to expand his own 16mm collection sufficiently that he presented it to the exclusion of rented items. The cinema was off the grid. Since the Hamptons were running only their personal collection, the Movie could not have been a nonprofit. It was definitely a commercial enterprise, one that did nothing better than breakeven business.


I can find nothing in the newspapers about the momentous opening of the Movie: Old Time Movies. I keep searching the newspapers for any ads or announcements or schedules, but until it turned five years old, only incidentals were published.






The refusal to advertise during its first year and a half makes me wonder if the Hamptons originally ran their little cinema as a private club.






Then everything went quiet for the next three and a half years. The place surely closed down while John languished in his prison cell.



If this does not display, download it.
LADBS Online Building Records.


Amazingly, in 1945, a year in which it seems that the Hamptons kept their tiny cinema dark, a rival opened up his own cinema, WITH A SIMILAR NAME!!!!! and WITH THE SAME PROGRAMMING!!!!! It was Bill Counter who made me aware of that. In disbelief, I dredged the old online newspapers, and I was terribly confused.




I know next to nothing about this Harold W. Kuschner. I find an obituary for a Harold W. Kuschner on Tuesday, 3 April 1962, with no details at all except that he was buried at Forest Lawn in Glendale. The headstone gives his birth year as 1897, and he is buried together with his wife, Marian L. Kuschner, 1909–1976. Harold’s draft card gives his full name as Harold Walter Kuschner, it gives his birthday as 12 April 1897 in Chicago, and it supplies his next of kin as Rachael Kuschner. The 1930 Census puts him in Los Ángeles already, and already married to Marian for three years, with a brand-new baby girl also named Marian. Both his parents were born in Russia, and the Census has Harold working as a salesman for the distinctively named Wholesale Retail Furniture Company. So I assume this was the same guy, but what was his connection with the Hamptons? He had no connection with the Hamptons. He saw what the Hamptons were doing and so he jumped onto the bandwagon, but, unlike the Hamptons, he would advertise. Ten months later he sold his film collection, his equipment, and his business. To whom? I know not.


Let us examine Harold’s programming. He apparently did a little bit of snooping and found out who John Hampton’s supplier was, and so he started buying a bunch of the same movies from the same firm or firms. Harold added the occasional talkie to the mix. To create his cinema, Harold Kuschner simply rented a microscopically small office on a business street.


The Hamptons would have had no claims on Kuschner’s business. The idea was out in the open and anybody with a grand in his wallet could copycat the business model. As for the films that were still under copyright, Harold Kuschner’s tiny business, just as John and Dorothy Hampton’s tiny business, was so far under the radar that probably nobody would ever notice. Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith sometimes bought tickets to watch their old movies. Harold Lloyd was a different story, though. Harold still controlled the bulk of his films, and he absolutely refused to let his movies be shown without proper live musical accompaniment. A gramophone or a piano player was not good enough for Harold. So, when the Hamptons presented unlicensed shows, Harold’s lawyers were in queue to put a stop to the presentation. Harold Lloyd was not happy with the Hamptons.




OLD MOVIES
484 South San Vicente Boulevard
Los Ángeles
Mon 15 Jan 1945
Tillie’s Punctured Romance
Charley Chase comedy
Mon 22 Jan 1945
Big News (Carole Lombard)
Dealing for Daisy (Wm. S. Hart)
Mary Pickford
Mack Sennett comedy
Mon 29 Jan 1945
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
short subjects
(runs for two weeks)
Mon 12 Feb 1945
The Bad Sister (Betty Davis, Humphrey Bogart, a talkie)
Our Gang
2 hours of comedies and cartoons
Mon 19 Feb 1945
The Eagle (Valentino, soundtrack by James C. Bradford)
Fatty and Mabel Adrift
[The CINEMA also experimented with this 16mm programming: The Lonedale Operator (Blanche Sweet), Leading Lizzie Astray (Fatty Arbuckle), Police (Charlie Chaplin). It probably did not do much business.]
Mon 26 Feb 1945
The Covered Wagon
Stop Kidding
cartoon
Mon 05 Mar 1945
Merry-Go-Round
Charley Chase comedy
Mon 12 Mar 1945
Hi Ho Broadway (released by Comedy House, one-reel of excerpts from Hallelujah, I’m a Bum)
Tumbleweeds (Wm. S. Hart)
Mon 19 Mar 1945
Manhandled
a Bob Hope comedy (a talkie)
Mon 26 Mar 1945
The Lost World
Laurel & Hardy

There may be such a moment in some movie,
but it is definitely not in a Charlie Chaplin movie.
Mon 02 Apr 1945 Miss Bluebeard
Our Gang
Zasu Pitts
Mon 09 Apr 1945 Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (Wm. Farnum, talkie)
Edgar Kennedy comedy
Mon 16 Apr 1945 Beau Brummel
Green Snapshots [surely a misprint for Screen Snapshots]
Mon 23 Apr 1945 The Phantom of the Opera
Mon 30 Apr 1945 Romola

OLD-TIME MOVIE THEATRE
484 South San Vicente Boulevard
Los Ángeles
Mon 07 May 1945
Captain of the Guard (musical)
short subject
(As we could see from the classified announcement earlier, this is when Kuschner gave his business the DBA of Old-Time Movie Theatre.)
Mon 14 May 1945
The Phantom of the Opera (Lon Chaney, not Boris Karloff)
Mon 21 May 1945 A Pair of Silk Stockings (Constance Talmadge)
short subjects
Mon 28 May 1945 The Phantom of the Opera (Lon Chaney)
Mon 04 Jun 1945 The Spieler
Mon 11 Jun 1945 The Fighting Eagle (Rod LaRocque, Phyllis Haver)
Mon 18 Jun 1945 Little Orphan Annie (Colleen Moore)
Yesterday Lives Again 1900–1920
Mon 25 Jun 1945 The Cat and the Canary
two-reel comedies
Mon 02 Jul 1945 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Sheldon Lewis)
Mon 09 Jul 1945 Kismet (Otis Skinner)
Mon 16 Jul 1945 The Eyes of Youth (Rudolph Valentino)
Mon 23 Jul 1945 The Wife’s Relations (Ben Turpin, 1928, supposedly a lost film)
Mon 30 Jul 1945 One Thousand and One Nites (probably The Thief of Bagdad)
An Arcadian Maid (Mary Pickford, advertised as Millie the Arcadian Maid)
Mon 06 Aug 1945 Local Girl Makes Good (Laura LaPlante, Zasu Pitts, probably Her Big Night, possibly the only remaining print)
Spooks and Spirits (Mabel Normand, Chester Conklin, fake title)
Mon 13 Aug 1945 The Fighting Blade (Richard Barthelmess)
short subjects
Tue 21 Aug 1945 Shadows
short subjects
Mon 27 Aug 1945 The Forbidden City
short subjects
Mon 03 Sep 1945 Tiger Rose (Lenore Ulrich)
short subjects
Mon 10 Sep 1945 His People (Rudolph Schildkraut)
Mon 17 Sep 1945 Alias the Deacon (Jean Hersholt)
Mon 24 Sep 1945 Lorna Doone (Madge Bellamy)
Mon 01 Oct 1945 The Girl in the Pullman
The Grinning Gringo (Douglas Fairbanks, 2-reel abridgment of The Lamb)
Mon 08 Oct 1945 Big News (talkie, Carole Lombard)
Mon 15 Oct 1945 Shield of Honor (Thelma Todd)
Mon 22 Oct 1945 His Wonderful Chance (Rudolph Valentino)


Ah! At last we learn a little bit! This was probably the model of Victor projector that Harold used:

When YouTube disappears this video, download it.

A Daylight screen.

The splicer would likely have been one of these contraptions.
“Box of recordings” tells us that the music was supplied by Harold himself, who simply spun 78rpm shellacs. As for “mailing list,” from that we learn that he printed schedules that he mailed out to regular customers. No idea what he used the shadow boxes for. His entire film collection was included in this sale.
Who purchased Harold’s collection and business? I wish I knew for sure. My best guess is that purchaser was the unnamed proprietor(s) of the Old-Time Movie Theatre at 5440 Hollywood Boulevard.


TIME OUT!


Just discovered this:






OLD-TIME MOVIE THEATRE
5440 Hollywood Boulevard, near Western Avenue
Hollywood
Fri 29 Mar 1946
Fri–Sun only
Dancing Mothers (Clara Bow)
Nomads of the North (Lon Chaney)
Wed 03 Apr 1946 The Lost World
Ella Cinders
Wed 10 Apr 1946
thru Sun		 Kismet
The Lucky Devil
Wed 17 Apr 1946
thru Sun		 The Spieler
A Pair of Silk Stockings
Wed 24 Apr 1946
thru Sun 28		 The Headless Horseman (Will Rogers)
The Night Cry (Rin Tin Tin)
Wed 01 May 1946
thru Sun 05		 Beau Brummel (John Barrymore)
All Aboard (Harold Lloyd)
Tue 07 May 1946
thru Thu 16		 Romola
Chaplin comedy
Fri 17 May 1946
thru Thu 23		 The Covered Wagon
Will Rogers short
Fri 24 May 1946
thru Thu 30		 Tillie’s Punctured Romance
Twisted Trails (Tom Mix)
Fri 31 May 1946
thru Sun 02		 The Lost World
Ella Cinders
Tue 04 Jun 1946
thru Sun 09		 Dancing Mothers (Clara Bow)
Stand and Deliver (Lupe Velez)
Tue 11 Jun 1946
thru Mon 17		 The Eyes of Youth
Peck’s Bad Boy
Tue 18 Jun 1946
thru Mon 24		 Beyond the Rainbow (Billie Dove, Clara Bow)
Big News (Carole Lombard)
plus 16mm sound preview
Tue 25 Jun 1946
thru Sun 30		 Orchids and Ermine
Are Parents People?
The Great Train Robbery
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Tue 02 Jul 1946
thru Mon 08		 Lorna Doone
The Gold Rush
Nomads of the North
Wed 10 Jul 1946
thru Mon 15
Lucretia Lombard
Smoky Comes Through
Our Gang
serial, comedy
Wed 17 Jul 1946
thru Mon 22		 The Pony Express
The Light House by the Sea
Tue 23 Jul 1946
thru Thu 01
Miss Bluebeard
Soul of the Beast
Our Gang
serial
Fri 02 Aug 1946
thru Sun 04
Poker Faces
The Wife’s Relations (Ben Turpin, 1928, supposedly a lost film)
Tim McCoy serial
Tue 06 Aug 1946
thru Thu 08
My Lady of Whims
The Cat and the Canary


































OLD-TIME MOVIES
Yucca Street & Wilcox Avenue
(I don’t have the exact address. Sorry.)
Hollywood
(I bet it was at 6427 Yucca Street, a small storefront rented for use as a dramatic school from May through September 1946, and then rented by somebody else as a private grammar school beginning in September, but only in the mornings. I suppose that left evenings free for a second renter.)
Tue 26 Nov 1946
thru Wed 27
Just Suppose (Barthelmess)
Eagle at Sea (Florence Vidor)
Sat 30 Nov 1946
thru Sun 01
The Informer (a talkie)
Tue 03 Dec 1946
thru Wed 04
The Cat and the Canary
Why Sailors Go Wrong
Charlie Chaplin comedy
Sat 07 Dec 1946
thru Sun 08
The Last Days of Pompeii (mighty sound epic)
shorts
Tue 10 Dec 1946
thru Wed 11

Soul Fire (Barthelmess)
Romola
Fighting Coward (Beery)
Sat 14 Dec 1946
thru Sun 15
Mae West’s best picture (talkie)
Lena Horne short (talkie)
Tue 17 Dec 1946
thru Wed 18
Skyscraper (Wm. Boyd)
The Night Club (Beery)
Fri 20 Dec 1946
thru Sun 22
As You Like It (talkie)
Bob Hope comedy (talkie)


MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 N. Fairfax Ave
Los Ángeles
OLD MOVIES CLUB
Yucca Street & Wilcox Avenue
Hollywood
    Mon 23 Dec 1946
thru Fri 27
Beau Brummel
Back Door to Heaven (talkie)
Sat 28 Dec 1946
thru Sun 29
Golden Boy (talkie)
Manhandled
Mon 30 Dec 1946
thru Tue 31
King of Kings
Sennett comedy
Houdini serial		 Mon 30 Dec 1946
thru Wed 01
Only Angels Have Wings (talkie)
Lady Windermere’s Fan
Wed 01 Jan 1947
thru Tue 07
See America Thirst (talkie)
Houdini serial
Christie comedy
cartoon		 Thu 02 Jan 1947
thru Thu 30
REOPENING JANUARY 31
Wed 08 Jan 1947
thru Tue 14
closed Sun
Caught in a Cabaret
Stella Maris
Houdini serial
Wed 15 Jan 1947
thru Tue 21
closed Sun
Twisted Trails
Charley Chase - Oliver Hardy comedy
Houdini serial
cartoon
Wed 22 Jan 1947
thru Tue 28
closed Sun
Orchids and Ermine
Our Gang
Houdini serial
Wed 29 Jan 1947
thru Tue 04
closed Sun
The Son of the Sheik		 Fri 31 Jan 1947 DOES NOT REOPEN


Slowly but surely, I shall make my way through all the newspaper listings — even though there’s no longer much reason to. I had been tearing my hair out trying to figure out which distributor was renting these films, and then it finally dawned on me that NO DISTRIBUTOR was renting the films to the Hamptons or to Kuschner or to any of the other copycats. Bob Birchard, interviewed in the wonderful Palace of Silents, revealed that “Most of what John [Hampton] ran were films that had been distributed through the Kodascope Library and the Bell & Howell [Filmo] Library and the Universal Show-at-Home [Movie] Library in the 20’s and 30’s.” As Bob is talking, there is a cutaway to a graphic showing also the Pathégram catalogue, and so I assume that John Hampton utilized that as well. David Pierce wrote an article about the Kodascope Library: “Silent Movies and the Kodascope Libraries,” American Cinematographer, January 1989, pp. 35–40. Collectors such as Sterne and Kohn and the Hamptons and Kuschner and so forth all purchased the same movies because those were the only movies that had ever been on the market. A few extras seem to have come from the black market. Some of the films that the Hamptons and Kuschner and the others showed were in the public domain, but others were most definitely still protected by copyright. The catalogues allowed those films to be shown in homes, not in public places. The exhibitors simply took their chances — and they usually got away with it — except, of course, for poor old Eddie Kohn.


As for the Comoedia, it surely rented the foreign films from various catalogues, but supplemented the screenings with silents borrowed from a collector — or two collectors. Who were the collectors? Probably the guy who ran Old Time Movies, followed by the guy who ran the Old Movies Club. The Comoedia continued its 16mm series through 2 August 1947. Then, not long afterwards, it switched back to live performances, but by the end of the year it was defunct.


There were revival houses, but they seem not to have been successful. I discover that the Franklin, 5500–5502 N. Figueroa St., in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Ángeles, briefly advertised itself as the Franklin Encore Theatre of Proven Hits. I suppose the Franklin simply booked neglected prints languishing at the local exchanges and got them for dirt cheap. That policy began on Tuesday, 18 November 1947, but it lasted only to the end of January. And I suppose the list goes on. And on. And on.


For what it’s worth (nothing), here is the remainder of the programming that I have so far been able to reconstruct. It will take me rather a while to make it all the way through to the end.


MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 North Fairfax Avenue
Los Ángeles
Fri 05 Feb 1947 Haunted Spooks (Harold Lloyd)
The Spieler
Fri 12 Feb 1947 Young April (Bessie Love)
Picking Peaches (Harry Langdon)
Houdini serial
cartoon
Wed 19 Feb 1947 The Americano
Wed 26 Feb 1947 Matchmaking Mamma
Thu 27 Feb 1947 Matchmaking Mamma (Carole Lombard, Sally Eilers)
Family Secret (Baby Peggy)
Houdini serial
cartoon
Thu 06 Mar 1947 Wonderland (Rod Laroque, Lupe Velez)
Thu 13 Mar 1947 The Ropin’ Fool (Will Rogers)
Wed 19 Mar 1947 Every Woman’s Husband (Gloria Swanson)
Wed 26 Mar 1947 Lighthouse by the Sea (Rin Tin Tin)
Laurel & Hardy
Wed 02 Apr 1947 Tillie’s Punctured Romance (Dressler, Chaplin)
Wed 09 Apr 1947 The Last Performance (Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin)
Thu 17 Apr 1947 Noisy Neighbors (Eddie Quillan)
When the Cat’s Away (Mary Pickford)
Houdini serial
comedy
Wed 23 Apr 1947 Draw Egan (Wm. S. Hart)
Wed 30 Apr 1947 Skyscraper (Boyd, Hale, Carol)
Our Gang
Wed 07 May 1947 The Spanish Dancer
Fri 16 May 1947 Nomads of the North
Wed 21 May 1947 The Lucky Devil
Chaplin
Houdini
Thu 29 May 1947 Pearl White
Semon and Hardy
Wed 04 Jun 1947 Clara Bow
Pearl White
Thu 12 Jun 1947 Pearl White
Fred Thomson
Wed 18 Jun 1947 The Safety Curtain (Norma Talmadge)
Pearl White serial
Wed 25 Jun 1947 We’re in the Navy (Beery, Hatton)
Pearl White
Our Gang
Thu 03 Jul 1947 Romolo
Pearl White
Wed 09 Jul 1947 The Cat and the Canary
Pearl White serial
Wed 16 Jul 1947 Kentucky Hills
Chaplin
White
Wed 23 Jul 1947 The Leathernecks
Pearl White serial
Wed 30 Jul 1947 [The Night Club] (Ray Griffith, Vera Reynold, Wallace Beery)
Pearl White serial
Wed 06 Aug 1947 Beau Brummel
Wed 13 Aug 1947 Tarzan of the Apes
Wed 20 Aug 1947 Raggedy Rose
Pearl White serial
Wed 27 Aug 1947 The Fighting Coward
Laurel & Hardy
Pearl White
Thu 04 Sep 1947 The Marriage Cheat (Jay, Marmont, Menjou)
Our Gang



TIME OUT!


CIRCUS TIME, Buster Keaton performs at the Medrano Circus (1947)
posted on 7 April 2022.
Cirque Médrano, Paris, opening night, Friday, 5 September 1947.
Note at 0:24 that Chico Marx is in the audience.
When YouTube disappears this video, download it.


What magazine is this from?
Does anybody know?



MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 North Fairfax Avenue
Los Ángeles
Wed 10 Sep 1947 The Devil Horse
Chaplin comedy
Wed 17 Sep 1947 Barbara Frietchie
Larry Semon
serial
Thu 25 Sep 1947 The Power of the Press
Wed 01 Oct 1947 The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Wed 08 Oct 1947 Lucretia Lombard
Thu 16 Oct 1947 Miss Bluebeard
Turpin
Wed 22 Oct 1947 The Eagle
Wed 29 Oct 1947 West Bound Limited
Chaplin comedy
serial
Wed 05 Nov 1947 His Majesty, Bunker Bean
Laurel & Hardy
Wed 12 Nov 1947 Square Deal Sanderson
Charley Chase
Wed 19 Nov 1947 The Drop Kick
Our Gang
serial
Wed 26 Nov 1947 Lorna Doone
F. Arbuckle - M. Normand
Wed 03 Dec 1947 Pearl White
The Mad Lover
Cohen & McNamara
Wed 10 Dec 1947 The Charlatan (part-talkie)
Wed 17 Dec 1947 School Days
Charlie Chaplin comedy
Wed 24 Dec 1947 King of Kings
Wed 31 Dec 1947 Charley’s Aunt
Wed 07 Jan 1948 The Night Cry (Rin Tin Tin)
Laurel & Hardy
Wed 14 Jan 1948 Lady Windermere’s Fan
Snooky comedy
Tiger’s Shadow serial
Wed 21 Jan 1948 The Pony Express
Charley Chase comedy
serial
Wed 28 Jan 1948 Rubber Tires
Charley Chase comedy
serial
Wed 04 Feb 1948 Scars of Jealousy
Mabel Normand
Oliver Hardy comedy
Wed 11 Feb 1948 Kismet
Mack Sennett comedy
serial
Wed 18 Feb 1948 My Lady of Whims
comedy, cartoon, serial
Wed 25 Feb 1948 The Yankee Clipper
comedy, cartoon, serial
Wed 03 Mar 1948 Skinner’s Dress Suit
Our Gang comedy
serial
Wed 10 Mar 1948 The Coming of Amos
Laurel & Hardy comedy
serial


TIME OUT!


Just discovered this:




MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 North Fairfax Avenue
Los Ángeles
Wed 17 Mar 1948 The Girl in the Pullman
Harry Langdon / Mack Sennett comedy
Wed 24 Mar 1948 Shore Leave
Charlie Chaplin comedy
serial
Wed 31 Mar 1948 Big News
Bobby Vernon comedy
serial
Wed 07 Apr 1948 The Headless Horseman
Wed 14 Apr 1948 Walking Back
Oliver Hardy
Thu 22 Apr 1948 Nju — Eine unverstandene Frau
Wed 28 Apr 1948 Single Shot Parker
Our Gang comedy
Wed 05 May 1948 Horseshoe
Thu 13 May 1948 Eagle of the Sea
Wed 19 May 1948 Manhandled
Wed 26 May 1948 Mabel at the Wheel
Annapolis
Wed 02 Jun 1948 Flesh & Blood (Lon Chaney)
Fri 11 Jun 1948 The Volga Boatman
Wed 16 Jun 1948 Ella Cinders
Stan Laurel comedy
Wed 23 Jun 1948 The Birth of a Nation
Wed 30 Jun 1948 Pitch Hitter
Charley Chase
Wed 07 Jul 1948 Silks and Saddles
Sennett comedy
Wed 14 Jul 1948 The Grand Duchess and the Waiter
Wed 21 Jul 1948 Clash of the Wolves
Wed 28 Jul 1948 The Bells
Thu 05 Aug 1948 Tillie Wakes Up
Thu 12 Aug 1948 Made for Love
Charlie Chaplin comedy
Wed 18 Aug 1948 Square Shoulders
Laurel & Hardy
Wed 25 Aug 1948 Man from Beyond
Wed 01 Sep 1948 Mickey
Wed 08 Sep 1948 Tartuffe
Semon-Hardy
Wed 15 Sep 1948 A Pair of Silk Stockings
Wed 22 Sep 1948 Soul Fire
Wilson campaign
Wed 29 Sep 1948 Going to Congress
Wed 06 Oct 1948 The Son of the Sheik
Wed 13 Oct 1948 The Lost World
Wed 20 Oct 1948 Eve’s Leaves
W. Wilson campaign film
Wed 27 Oct 1948 Brave Heart
C. Chaplin - M. Normand
Wed 03 Nov 1948 Battle of the Sexes (D.W. Griffith)
Wed 10 Nov 1948 The Covered Wagon
Wed 17 Nov 1948 Merry-Go-Round
C. Chase - O. Hardy
Wed 24 Nov 1948 The Fighting Blade
Harold Lloyd
Tarzan of the Apes
Wed 01 Dec 1948 The Grinning Gringo (Douglas Fairbanks, 2-reel abridgment of The Lamb)
See My Lawyer
Wed 08 Dec 1948 The Tempest
Wed 15 Dec 1948 CLOSED FOR VACATION
Wed 29 Dec 1948 King of Kings
Wed 05 Jan 1949 Hands Up!
Tarzan serial
comedy
Wed 12 Jan 1949 The Goose Woman
Sennett comedy
Tarzan of the Apes
Wed 19 Jan 1949 The Knockout
Tarzan of the Apes
Thu 27 Jan 1949 The Forbidden City
Wed 02 Nov 1949 The Last Warning
Tarzan serial
comedy
Wed 09 Feb 1949 The King on Main Street
Laurel & Hardy
Tarzan of the Apes
Wed 16 Feb 1949 Dough and Dynamite
Spangles
Wed 23 Feb 1949 Day-Dreams (Lanchester - Laughton)
Soldier Man (H. Langdon)
Thu 03 May 1949 Brass Cook
Laurel & Hardy
Wed 09 Mar 1949 Friends (Pickford - Barrymore)
Wed 16 Mar 1949 Outside the Law
Wed 23 Mar 1949 Dress Parade
Fatty Arbuckle comedy
Wed 30 Mar 1949 Othello
Sennett comedy, serial


All right. All right. All right. I get the idea. It took me this long, but I get the idea. I shall not make a list of every show, because what we see above is the entire inventory. John Hampton would add more films to his collection, and he would schedule them as he acquired them. I shall run through the rest of the ads but I shan’t compile a calendar. I shall note only John’s new acquisitions.


So, why do I want to continue to sift through all the revival-house listings, even though it’s the same handful of movies over and over and over and over and over and over and over again? Because I’m searching for any screenings of Buster’s movies. Up through the end of 1956 there simply weren’t any such screenings, with the sole exception of The General at the Movie Parade in March 1941. That was almost certainly legit, the official UA abridgment of about 40 minutes. There were other venues that were not cinemas or even pretend cinemas that presented the MoMA print of The General, as we saw: The Railroad Boosters for their meeting at the Pacific Electric Building in June 1942, the Horace Mann School in February 1946, the Pasadena Art Institute in March 1948, and the Westwood Community Clubhouse in April 1949. The revival houses, though, no, it seems that no Buster movies were available to them. In the 1940’s, though, Buster’s movies were pretty much no longer available, not even to Buster himself. That began to change, though, in the autumn of 1950, as we shall see when we eventually get to the saga of the Coronet.


Was there another copycat? Of course there was! Did it do well? Of course it didn’t! That was the The Flicker: Old Time Movies at 10909 Burbank Boulevard in North Hollywood in April and May 1949. This 16mm revival was crammed into an extremely small building, eight miles distant in a different city. I have no clue who was in charge of it. Whoever it was, though, probably just purchased Harold Kuschner’s old collection from the owner of the Old Movies Club. As we have seen, that collection had already gone through several other hands.





If this does not display, download it.
Posted at LADBS Online Building Records.
This is the only permit for this location that I can locate.


By the way, it seems that the building still stands, maybe or maybe not:




For those of you who are not familiar with the local lay of the land, North Hollywood is not Hollywood. Never the twain shall meet. They are separately incorporated. They are as culturally distinct from one another as the Anaguta are from the Manhattanites. They are two entirely different planets.


We can infer that The Flicker did not do well at all, in any way whatsoever. It was in the wrong location. There are a great many movie-mad movie-addicts in Hollywood and Los Ángeles, immature, awkward people, nearly all of them male, between the ages of 30 and 60, nearly all of them extremist right-wing devotees of Alex Jones and Gateway Pundit, jobless, earning only SSI, living in mommy’s basement, spending non-movie hours playing with their scale-model toy monsters, forever suffering withdrawals and insanely dashing about town for their next cinematic fix. If you want to have success with your movie house, that’s the audience you need. There are no movie-mad movie-addicts in North Hollywood. It’s a different planet.


MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 N Fairfax Ave
Los Ángeles
THE FLICKER: OLD TIME MOVIES
10909 Burbank Ave
North Hollywood
Wed 06 Apr 1949 Man on the Box (Syd Chaplin)
Ben Turpin, serial		 Fri 08 Apr 1949 Primrose Path (Clara Bow)
Commemoration biography of F.D.R.
Wed 13 Apr 1949 Civilization
Backstop (Harold Lloyd)		 Fri 15 Apr 1949 Orchids and Ermine (Colleen Moore)
The New York Hat (Mary Pickford)
Will Rogers short
Chapter 1 serial
Wed 20 Apr 1949 Tillie’s Punctured Romance
cartoon, comedy, serial


TIME OUT!


(again)


Just discovered these follow-up items:



(It looks like The Kid was canceled and replaced two weeks later
by The Circus, Caught in a Cabaret, and Easy Street.)





If Buster was there, then Eleanor must have been there too,
barring some sort of crisis that would have kept her away.




I am totally stunned.
Nonetheless, we can figure out that this was, without any doubt,
MoMA’s 16mm print.


This next piece indicates that either Intolerance or The Passion of Joan of Arc was knocked off of the schedule to be replaced by Variety:




MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 N Fairfax Ave
Los Ángeles
THE FLICKER: OLD TIME MOVIES
10909 Burbank Ave
North Hollywood
Wed 27 Apr 1949 The Primrose Path
comedy, cartoons, serial		 Wed 27 Apr 1949 The Eagle
Old Schemer (Wallace Beery)
Sat 30 Apr 1949 The Heart of New York (Al Jolson sings)
Personality Parade
Wed 04 May 1949 Way down East Fri 06 May 1949 The Birth of a Nation
Sat 07 May 1949 Lady Windermere’s Fan
Sun 08 May 1949 Manhandled
Mon 09 May 1949 The Son of the Sheik
Tue 10 May 1949 The Covered Wagon
The Eagle
Wed 11 May 1949 [GUARANTEED SURPRISE NIGHT]
Thu 12 May 1949 Orchids and Ermine
Fri 13 May 1949 Burlesque on Carmen
The Nickel Hopper
Wed 18 May 1949 The Savage Princess (Mary Pickford)
Sporting Youth (Reginald Denny, Laura LaPlante)		 Sat 21 May 1949 CLOSED


When The Flicker flickered out, Movie continued on.


MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
Wed 25 May 1949 The Fighting Eagle
The Busher
Wed 08 Jun 1949 The Godless Girl
Wed 15 Jun 1949 One Week of Love
Chaplin comedy
Wed 22 Jun 1949 Sunnyside Up
Cake Eater
Wed 29 Jun 1949 Conductor 1492
Liberty (Laurel & Hardy)
Wed 06 Jul 1949 Just Suppose (Barthelmess)
The Great Train Robbery
Wed 13 Jul 1949 Wife Tamer
Wed 20 Jul 1949 White Sheep
Saturday Afternoon
Babe Ruth
Wed 27 Jul 1949 Veiled Adventure
Tim McCoy serial
Wed 03 Aug 1949 Captain Swagger
Tim McCoy serial
Wed 10 Aug 1949 The Wanderer
wed 17 Aug 1949 Clinging Vine
Those Love Pangs
Wed 24 Aug 1949 Behind the Front
Wed 31 Aug 1949 Beyond the Rainbow
Charley Chase



The Hollywood Drake Hotel, 6726 Hollywood Boulevard, the site of the new Flicker.
I assume the new Flicker was in a ground-level storefront.
The building still stands but I shall never enter.
Interesting design. I wonder who the architect was. Oh. The architect was Arthur Rolland Kelley. And then the story gets stranger. The hotel was originally called the Hotel Christie, and it was originally owned by Al and Charles Christie, producers of the Christie comedies! Small world.


Of course I’m WRONG!!! You figured that out already, didn’t you? The Flicker was not in a storefront on the ground level of the Drake Hotel. Nope. Bill Counter discovered a vintage photograph in Marc Wanamaker’s Bison Archive.
The entrance was in the building next door, which is long gone. So there. Marc Chevalier then told Bill that this was not a storefront, or not solely a storefront, but that it had stairs down to the hotel’s basement, where was set up an entertainment venue! Was the minicinema in the ground level storefront or in the hotel’s basement? It was in the hotel’s basement, as I can determine from Reed Porter’s article below.


Shall we have some fun?



If this does not display, download it.
Posted at LADBS Online Building Records.


Above is a scan of a very poor carbon copy. To help you along, I added some transcriptions in red. I am unsure of my deciphering work, but I think it says:


Install Partition for candy stand — Install exits — construct projection
booth and false stage in front of easels (for effect only)
construct partition at bottom of stairs. Install Exit signs


We can see from the application above that 6726 is a three-story concrete building, 50' × 84', and that matches the photo we see of the entrance. The application further states that this is a Hotel-Café & Club, which matches the Hotel Drake just to the east. So, I think we have worked this out. The entrance at 6726 led to a stairway down to the restaurant underneath the hotel, and that is where the 16mm minicinema was constructed. The new partition may (or may not) have been an entryway to a newly constructed cinema installed in a small portion of the restaurant. Were you there? Might you remember? Help?


Now who was this Phill Goldstone with a double-L? I strongly suspect he was actually Phil Goldstone with a single L, and when we plug his name into Newspapers.com we land on some tantalizing items.






And it gets interestinger. The Hotel Drake was operated by — hold your breath — Phil Goldstone! In December 1944, Phil leased the hotel for 20 years to a Robert P. Schreiber for a cool million. (See The Los Ángeles Times of 7 December 1944, which Bill Counter just told me about.) Further business relations between Phil and Robert will be difficult to establish.


So now we can conjecture a little bit. It looks like the anonymous fly-by-nighter at 10909 Burbank Avenue in North Hollywood now leased a space from Phil Goldstone who owned not only the Hotel Christie/Drake but the building next door as well. The Flicker flickered back at this much better location, but I am not sure when, since it did not submit its announcements to the newspapers at first. What makes the story even more confusing is the set of dates that we have established beyond any doubt. The permit to remodel the basement restaurant, or at least a portion of it, into a 16mm minicinema, was dated 19 October 1949. That does little to explain why more than a month previous to that, The Flicker was already in operation in that location. Bill Counter has two plausible theories that I think are quite plausible, because they’re plausible. Theory #1: “Maybe whatever work they did was without a permit and they got a visit from the building department and were told ‘Hey, you need to get a permit for this and get it inspected.’” Plausible? I think so. Theory #2: “They decided to do an upgrade after opening with a very minimalist setup.” Plausible? I think so.


MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 N Fairfax Ave
Los Ángeles
THE FLICKER: OLD TIME MOVIES
6726 Hollywood Blvd
Hollywood
Wed 07 Sep 1949 The Birth of a Nation Sat 03 Sep 1949 The Eagle
Wed 14 Sep 1949 Garden of Eden
Murray-Durfee-Arbuckle
Fri 23 Sep 1949 The Nickel Hopper
Jewels of Desire
Wed 28 Sep 1949 Fighting Love
Stan Laurel comedy

The Pico was another revival house that seems to have run some 16mm though it was primarily a 35mm venue.
It showed mostly talkies with the occasional silent tossed in.
Wed 05 Oct 1949 Almost Human
His New Job (Chaplin, Turpin)		 Fri 07 Oct 1949 The Son of the Sheik
short subjects
Wed 12 Oct 1949 First Law (Irene Castle, Tony Moreno)
Harry Langdon - Mack Sennett comedy, serial		 Fri 14 Oct 1949 Ella Cinders
W.C. Fields comedy
The Great Train Robbery
Wed 19 Oct 1949 Gypsy Blood (Pola Negri)
serial, comedy		 Fri 21 Oct 1949 The Covered Wagon
Mack Sennett comedy
Charlie Chaplin
Wed 26 Oct 1949 The Cat and the Canary
serial, comedy		 Fri 28 Oct 1949 Tillie’s Punctured Romance
Laurel & Hardy
Wed 02 Nov 1949 His Wonderful Chance (Valentino)
Mack Sennett comedy, serial		 Fri 04 Nov 1949 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (John Barrymore)
Carole Lombard comedy from Sennett
old-time newsreel
Wed 09 Nov 1949 Beau Brummel Fri 11 Nov 1949 Gypsy Blood
Mabel Normand comedy
Wed 16 Nov 1949 An Arcadian Maid (Mary Pickford)
Madame Behave (Julian Eltinge)		 Fri 18 Nov 1949 Topsy & Eva
2 comedies, Wm. S. Hart short
Wed 23 Nov 1949 The Hunchback of Notre Dame Fri 25 Nov 1949 Burlesque on Carmen
2 comedies
(P.S. This must have been when and where Robert Payne saw the movie in preparation for his book, The Great God Pan, NY: Hermitage House, 1952. Unless, of course, he saw it here in June or August 1950.)
Wed 30 Nov 1949 Eyes of Youth Fri 02 Dec 1949 Last Warning
Harry Houdini serial
comedy
Wed 07 Dec 1949 Soul of Beasts (Bellamy - Beery - Landis)
A Night at the Show (Chaplin)		 Fri 09 Dec 1949 Lucretia Lombard
Wed 14 Dec 1949 CLOSED FOR VACATION Fri 16 Dec 1949 My Lady of Whims (Clara Bow)
Houdini serial
two comedies
Fri 23 Dec 1949 Raggedy Rose (Mabel Normand)
Houdini serial



Buster enjoying life in 1950.
I do not know where this was published.

Ah! I found it! I found it! I found it! Olga Egorova published this on her Russian fan site, and we see it is a candid taken a little before transmission of an episode of the first season of “The Buster Keaton Show”:
KTTV/11 in LÁ proposed the show almost certainly as a response to James Agee’s recent article in Life magazine (5 September 1949), which seems to have brought Buster numerous offers on television and elsewhere. The series was pretty darned lousy, but Buster was so happy to be performing again. Television gave him the opportunity to put on the makeup and get on stage and do his stuff again, often in front of a live audience. He found the experience restorative, regenerative. It is fortunate that KTTV’s proposed title, “Keaton’s Komedy Kollege,” was never used.


Inter-Pathé, The Buster Keaton Show, posted on Apr 17, 2014.
When YouTube disappears this, download it. As far as we know, the entire series was recorded on kinescope, but the kinescopes were not sent to other stations and they were all tossed out except for this single episode of 23 February 1950, which was preserved probably by mistake. No idea what the music was. Interesting that the Inter-Pathé logo is on this. Hold that thought.

Curiously, at the same time that KTTV/11 began producing The Buster Keaton Show (Thursday, 22 December 1949), it also began producing Nickelodeon Flickers (Tuesday, 27 December 1949), a 45-minute travesty of lesser features from 1924–1926, abridged and with “plunky piano accompaniment.” Who played that piano? Dave Nowinson penned the comical narration, spoken by John Rovick who “will kid the film.” Bruce Anson took over the kidding in later episodes, and then Jack McCoy. The director was Frank Woodruff, whose job was probably just pressing buttons. These shows were surely not recorded. There were only 14 or 15 episodes.
Tue 27 Dec 1949, 8:00pm Eyes Right? (Francis X. Bushman) John Rovick
Tue 03 Jan 1950, 8:00pm Dangerous Traffic (Francis X. Bushman) John Rovick
Tue 10 Jan 1950, 8:00pm Shore Leave (Richard Barthelmess) John Rovick
Tue 17 Jan 1950, 7:45pm The Pay-Off (Robert McKim) John Rovick
Tue 24 Jan 1950, 7:45pm Never Too Late (Francis X. Bushman) John Rovick
Tue 31 Jan 1950, 7:45pm Her Own Story (Jack Mower) John Rovick
Tue 07 Feb 1950, 8:00pm Midnight Faces (Francis X. Bushman) Bruce Anson
Tue 14 Feb 1950 7:45pm Coast Patrol (Kenneth McDonald) Bruce Anson
Tue 21 Feb 1950, 7:45pm Coast Patrol (Kenneth McDonald) Bruce Anson
Tue 07 Mar 1950, 7:45pm Melodies (Jack Mower) [not Carmen] Bruce Anson
Tue 28 Mar 1950, 8:00pm After a Million (Kenneth McDonald) Jack McCoy
Tue 04 Apr 1950, 8:00pm Who’s Your Friend? (Francis X. Bushman) Jack McCoy
Tue 11 Apr 1950, 8:00pm He Who Laughs Last (Kenneth McDonald) Jack McCoy
Thu 05 Oct 1950, 6:30pm [NOT LISTED]
Thu 12 Oct 1950, 6:30pm [NOT LISTED]
Then, in July 1951, WBAP/5 in Fort Worth took the “Nickelodeon Flickers” name to broadcast a series of silent films respectfully, with organ accompaniment and without modifications or narration.


It was also in 1950 that Buster and Pepito the Clown contrived to convince CBS to give Lucy and her husband Desi a TV series. You can read that story here.



Lucy in flat shoes, 1944.

Lucy in high heels, Aug. 1955.
Lucy officially claimed to be 5'6½", but that was in high heels, apparently.


MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 N Fairfax Ave
Los Ángeles
THE FLICKER: OLD TIME MOVIES
6726 Hollywood Blvd
Hollywood
Wed 28 Dec 1949 King of Kings
Pearl of the Army (Pearl White serial)		 Fri 30 Dec 1949 Eyes of Youth
Houdini serial
Wed 04 Jan 1950 The Americano
Pearl White serial		 Mon 02 Jan 1950 NO LISTING
Wed 11 Jan 1950 Stand and Deliver
Pearl of the Army (Pearl White serial)		 NO LISTING
Fri 13 Jan 1950 No Man’s Law
Pearl of the Army (Pearl White serial)
Mabel Normand comedy		 NO LISTING
Wed 18 Jan 1950 Stand and Deliver
Pearl of the Army (Pearl White serial)
Pink Pajamas (Mack Sennett)		 NO LISTING
Wed 25 Jan 1950 Head Winds
The Bank (Charlie Chaplin)
Pearl of the Army (Pearl White serial)		 NO LISTING
Wed 01 Feb 1950 Romola
Pearl White serial		 NO LISTING
Wed 08 Feb 1950 Skyscraper (Wm. Boyd, Alan Hale, Sue Carol)
Pearl White serial		 NO LISTING
Wed 15 Feb 1950 Truthful Liar (Will Rogers)
Captain Fly by Night (Johnnie Walker)
Pearl of the Army (Pearl White serial)		 NO LISTING
Wed 22 Feb 1950 Without Mercy
Some Nerve (Charlie Chaplin)
Pearl of the Army (Pearl White serial)		 NO LISTING
Wed 01 Mar 1950 Heart’s Haven
Sailors, Beware! (Laurel & Hardy, Lupe Velez)
Pearl of the Army (Pearl White serial, last chapter)		 NO LISTING
Hell’s Highroad (De Mille)
Charley Chase
cartoon		 NO LISTING
Wed 15 Mar 1950 Manhattan Madness (Douglas Fairbanks)
Sennett comedy, cartoon, serial		 NO LISTING

THE MASQUERS CLUB
1765 N Sycamore Ave
Hollywood
What does the above tell us? Well, think a moment. It appears that the Masquers were seeking 35mm prints, not 16mm. If so, then it further appears that the distributors no longer had any prints of these films. If so, then that settles the matter. United Artists apparently had no further prints of The General, which, actually, is exactly what we would expect. UA had the domestic camera negative, MoMA had a lavender, and MGM had a fine grain. The only 35mm prints in the USA would have been the noncirculating b&w print at MoMA, the b&w preview print that James Mason did not realize was hidden in his house, and the b&w vault print that MGM never got around to returning, or maybe never needed to return and then just forgot about. Oh, yes, and there was that one mystery tinted(?) print that mysteriously turned up a few years later in Iowa. We’ll get to the Iowa mystery in due course.
Wed 22 Mar 1950 California Straight Ahead (Reginald Denny)
Shadow of Doubt (Mary Pickford, Owen Moore)		 NO LISTING
Wed 29 Mar 1950 Bohemian Girl (Novello, Collier-Terry)
Clyde Cook, Oliver Hardy
serial		 Sat 01 Apr 1950 The Son of the Sheik
March of the Movies
Sun only: Judith of Bethulia
Wed 05 Apr 1950 Way down East
War Bond Drive (Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith)
comedy		 Fri 07 Apr 1950 Way down East
2 comedies
serial
Wed 12 Apr 1950 Love Me and the World Is Mine
Our Gang
cartoon
serial		 Sat 15 Apr 1950 NO LISTING
Wed 19 Apr 1950 Let ’Er Go Gallagher
The Champion (Charlie Chaplin)		 Fri 21 Apr 1950 The Lost World
Wed 26 Apr 1950 Terror (Pearl White)
Perils of Paris (Pearl White)
Al St. John comedy
cartoon		 Fri 28 Apr 1950 Terror (Pearl White)
Caught in a Cabaret
Wed 03 May 1950 The Phantom of the North [now considered lost!]
Girl from Everywhere (Carole Lombard)		 Fri 05 May 1950 The Adventurous Miss Ryan (Jean Arthur)
His Trysting Places
Wed 10 May 1950 My Boy (Jackie Coogan)
That’s My Wife (Laurel & Hardy)		 Tue 09 May 1950 Rain (Joan Crawford)
Laughing Gravy (Laurel & Hardy)
Snooky’s Trouble (Mabel Normand)
Mon 15 May: Special Surprise Show
Mon 15 May 1950 Special Surprise Show
Wed 17 May 1950 His First Flame
Robinson Crusoe
serial
cartoon		 Tue 16 May 1950 A Star Is Born
[NOT: The Eagle
Hurry Hurry (excerpt from Never Give
a Sucker an Even Break)]
Sat 20 May 1950 The Eagle
Hurry Hurry (excerpt from Never Give
a Sucker an Even Break)
Wed 24 May 1950 The Children in the House (Norma Talmadge)
Broken China (Bobby Vernon)
Where Tiger? (cartoon)		 Fri 26 May 1950 Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Dough and Dynamite
W.C. Fields comedy
Tue 30 May 1950 Shore Leave (Barthelmess)
Wed 31 May 1950 Code of the Sea (Rod LaRocque)
Anything Once (Mabel Normand)		 Thu 01 Jun 1950 The Son of the Sheik
2 comedies
Wed 07 Jun 1950 The Matriamaniac (Fairbanks)
My Friend from India (Franklin Pangborn)		 Wed 07 Jun 1950 Special Weegee Elastic Lens Movie
Romola (Gish, Colman)
Sat 10 Jun 1950 Burlesque on Carmen
2 more Chaplin comedies
Wed 14 Jun 1950 When Dawn Came (Colleen Moore)
Shanghaied (Charlie Chaplin)		 Wed 14 Jun 1950 The Story of Carmen (Pola Negri)
Charlie Chaplin / Sennett comedy
Mon 19 Jun 1950 The Kiss (Greta Garbo)
Hairbreadth Harry #3: Sawdust Baby
Tue 20 Jun 1950 CLOSED FOR VACATION
Wed 21 Jun 1950 Revenge (Dolores del Río)
Jack Duffy comedy
cartoon
Wed 28 Jun 1950 Every Woman’s Husband (Gloria Swanson)
The Sawmill (Larry Semon)
Jack Hoxie serial
Wed 05 Jul 1950 Flesh and Blood (Chaney)
Sennett comedy		 Fri 07 Jul 1950 The Hunchback of Notre Dame
comedies
shorts
Wed 12 Jul 1950 The New York Hat (Pickford)
Gate Crasher (Patsy Ruth Miller)
Jack Hoxie serial
comedy		 Fri 14 Jul 1950 Daddies (Mae Marsh)
Soldier Man (Harry Langdon)
Wed 19 Jul 1950 Vanity (De Mille)
Jack Hoxie serial
cartoon		 Tue 18 Jul 1950 Lady Windermere’s Fan
Laurel & Hardy comedy
Fri 21 Jul 1950 Lady Windermere’s Fan
2 Mack Sennett comedies
Sat 22 Jul 1950 My Lady of Whims (Clara Bow)
comedies and shorts
Wed 26 Jul 1950 The Son of the Sheik
Jack Hoxie serial
comedy		 Tue 25 Jul 1950 Heart of New York (Al Jolson)
Screen Snapshots
Sat 29 Jul 1950 The Eyes of Youth (Milton Sills)
The Nickelhopper (Mabel Normand)
Wed 02 Aug 1950 Don’t Park Here (Will Rogers)
Shield of Honor (Neil Hamilton)
Jack Hoxie serial		 Tue 01 Aug 1950 The Kiss (Greta Garbo)
Hurry Hurry (excerpt from Never Give
a Sucker an Even Break)
Sat 05 Aug 1950 The Covered Wagon
2 comedies
Wed 09 Aug 1950 Tiger Rose (Lenore Ulric)
A Night Out (Charlie Chaplin)
Jack Hoxie serial
cartoon		 Tue 08 Aug 1950 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Sheldon Lewis)
2 Sennett comedies
Mon 14 Aug 1950 The Adventurer (Charlie Chaplin)
Dough and Dynamite (Charlie Chaplin)
The Knockout (Arbuckle)
Brute Island (Harry Carey)
Wed 16 Aug 1950 Turkish Delight (Schildkraut)
Charley Chase / Oliver Hardy comedy
Jack Hoxie serial		 Tue 15 Aug 1950 Burlesque on Carmen
Jimmy Fidler’s Personality Parade
Scoundrels Toll (Sennett, Normand)
Wed 23 Aug 1950 Dancing Mothers
Jack Hoxie serial
cartoon
Our Gang comedy		 Fri 25 Aug 1950 The Eagle
[NOT The Son of the Sheik]
Tue 29 Aug 1950 The Flying Deuces
The Music Box
County Hospital
Wed 30 Aug 1950 Let’s Go (Richard Talmadge)
Early to Bed [NOT Angora Love] (Laurel & Hardy)
Jack Hoxie serial
cartoon		 Sat 02 Aug 1950 Tillie’s Punctured Romance (Dressler, Chaplin)
March of the Movies
Wed 06 Sep 1950 Ranson’s Folly (Barthelmess)
Carole Lombard, Sally Eilers, Mack Sennett comedy
Jack Hoxie serial		 Wed 06 Sep 1950 Let’s Go (Richard Talmadge)
Caught in a Cabaret (Charlie Chaplin)
Fri 08 Sep 1950 Rain (Joan Crawford)
Hairbreadth Harry #3: Sawdust Baby
Let’s Go (Richard Talmadge)
Wed 13 Sep 1950 The Love of Sunya (Swanson) Mon 11 Sep 1950 NO LISTING
Fri 15 Sep 1950 Topsy & Eva
Fatty and Mabel Adrift
Sat 16 Sep 1950 The Paper Hanger (Charlie Chaplin)
Shanghaied (Charlie Chaplin)
Triple Trouble (Charlie Chaplin)
Wed 20 Sep 1950 The White Hell of Pitz Palu
Jack Hoxie serial
comedy		 Tue 19 Sep 1950 Tonight or Never (Swanson)
Sat 23 Sep 1950 The Bank (Charlie Chaplin)
The Champion (Charlie Chaplin)
Laurel & Hardy comedy
Wed 27 Sep 1950 Law Forbids (Baby Peggy)
Work (Charlie Chaplin)		 Tue 26 Sep 1950 Behind the Front (Wallace Beery)
Sat 30 Sep 1950 A Star Is Born (Janet Gaynor)
Wed 04 Oct 1950 The Spanish Dancer (Pola Negri)
comedy
cartoon
serial		 Mon 02 Oct 1950 NO LISTING
Thu 05 Oct 1950 The Son of the Sheik
Jean Harlow (short)
THEATRE CLOSES SAT. NIGHT
Mon 09 Oct 1950


The Flicker flickered out once and for all in October 1950. In the meantime, the Hamptons continued living their merry life at the Movie.


The Hamptons’ merry life allowed John to neglect paying for necessities in order to spend his money collecting more 16mm movies. We can, with some certainty, keep a tab of each of his new acquisitions. Ready?


MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 N Fairfax Ave
Los Ángeles
A TALLY OF JOHN HAMPTON’S NEW ACQUISITIONS
Oct 1950 Fifth Avenue Models
Nov 1950 Gigolo
Nov 1950 Nju — Eine unverstandene Frau (Emil Jannings)
Nov 1950 The Road to Yesterday
Nov 1950 Whose Baby (Swanson)
Nov 1950 Spirit of the U.S.A. (Johnnie Walker)
Jan 1951 Out of Control (Turpin)
Jan 1951 The Prairie Pirate (Harry Carey)
Feb 1951 The Sea Lion
Mar 1951 Les miserables (Gabriel Gabrio, Henri Fescourt)
Apr 1951 Luck (Johnny Hines)
May 1951 Tartuffe the Hypocrite (Emil Jannings)
May 1951 Michael Strogoff
May 1951 When the Cat’s Away (Mary Pickford)


YIKES!


Just discovered this:


You’ve never heard of Spade Cooley.
Count your blessings.
You don’t want to know anything about Spade Cooley.
He was unspeakably evil.


MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 N Fairfax Ave
Los Ángeles
A TALLY OF JOHN HAMPTON’S NEW ACQUISITIONS
May 1951 Noisy Neighbors (Theodore Roberts)
Jun 1951 Court Martial (Jack Holt)
Jul 1951 Prince of Pilsen
Jul 1951 Run Girl Run
Aug 1951 Corporal Kate
Sep 1951 Tol’able David
Sep 1951 Knight of the Trail (William S. Hart)
Oct 1951 Michigan Kid
Dec 1951 Fortune’s Fool
Jan 1952 Shifting Sands
Feb 1952 The Cowboy Sheik (Will Rogers)
Feb 1952 The Home Makers (King Baggot)
Feb 1952 Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (Edison)
Apr 1952 Piccadilly
Apr 1952 Light in the Dark
May 1952 Manhattan Madness
Jul 1952 Ned McCobb’s Daughter
Aug 1952 Mississippi (talkie, Joan Bennett)
Sep 1952 Butterfly (Clarence Brown, Laura LaPlante)
Sep 1952 Uncensored Movies (Will Rogers)
Oct 1952 The Isle of Love (Valentino)
Oct 1952 Back to God’s Country (Renée Adoree)
Oct 1952 Captain January (Baby Peggy)
Nov 1952 A Society Sensation (Valentino)
Nov 1952 Bachelor Brides (Rod LaRocque)
Nov 1952 The All Star Family in Distress: A Film Cutter’s Nightmare
(Pickford, Fairbanks, Gish, Chaplin, Swanson, Arbuckle)
Dec 1952 The Merry Widow (Clara Bow)
Dec 1952 Horse Shoes (Jean Arthur)
Jan 1953 The Half-Breed (Fairbanks)
Jan 1953 Walking Back (Sue Carol)
Jan 1953 Getting Gertie’s Garter (Marie Prevost)
Feb 1953 Madamoiselle Midnight (Mae Murray)
Mar 1953 Sailor’s Holiday (Sally Eilers)
Mar 1953 Lightnin’ Wins (Gary Cooper)
Mar 1953 The Blue Light (Riefenstahl)
May 1953 Wedding Song (De Mille)
May 1953 Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (John Barrymore)
Oct 1953 The Heart of a Siren
Oct 1953 Flirting with Fate (Fairbanks)
Oct 1953 Under Two Flags (Priscille Dean)
Nov 1953 Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life
Dec 1953 Mud and Sand (Stan Laurel)




Oops. Quick time-out.



Zo, there were similar revivals in San Francisco, too, huh? Makes sense. There is nothing unique about Los Ángeles except for the Egocentric Self-Absorption Manufacturing Company, Ltd., which belches smoke all day long. I guess any and possibly every major city in the US had similar revival cinemas, probably all 16mm all with the same films from the same suppliers.


Now we can return to the narrative.


MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 N Fairfax Ave
Los Ángeles
A TALLY OF JOHN HAMPTON’S NEW ACQUISITIONS
Feb 1954 His Marriage Wow (Harry Langdon)
Mar 1954 Mardi Gras Mystery (Betty Compson)
Apr 1954 The Plastic Age (Clara Bow)
Apr 1954 Tumbleweeds
May 1954 The Narrow Road (Mary Pickford)
Jun 1954 45 Minutes from Hollywood


One moment please while we change reels.


NICKELODEON OLD-TIME MOVIE THEATER
11938 Ventura Boulevard
Studio City


The building owner was a William Mellenthin, a real-estate developer. He must have leased the small theatre portion of the restaurant to a fly-by-night entrepreneur who for now remains nameless.
Mon 12 Jul 1954 Topsy & Eva
Chaplin short
The New York Hat (Pickford)
Little Orphan Annie (Colleen Moore)
Wed 21 Jul 1954 Condemned (Clara Bow)
Tillie’s Dreams (aka Tillie Wakes Up)
Harold Lloyd & Bebe Daniels
Wed 28 Jul 1954 Judith of Bethulia
Our Congressman (Will Rogers)
Houdini serial
Tue 03 Aug 1954 The Lost World
Tumbleweeds
Chaplin comedy
Houdini serial
Tue 10 Aug 1954 The Birth of a Nation
Pearl White comedy
Houdini serial
Tue 17 Aug 1954 Shifting Sands (Gloria Swanson)
Ella Cinders (Colleen Moore)
Houdini serial
Chaplin comedy
Tue 24 Aug 1954 The Son of the Sheik
The Americano
Houdini serial
Tue 31 Aug 1954 Tillie’s Punctured Romance (Marie Dressler)
Twisted Trails (Tom Mix) [CANCELED]
Tarzan of the Apes
Mon 06 Sep 1954 The Lost World
Judith of Bethulia
Tue 07 Sep 1954 In Greenwich Village (Clara Bow)
Jazz Man
Tue 14 Sep 1954 The Great Lover (Valentino)
Mademoiselle Midnight (Mae Murray)
Houdini serial
Douglas Fairbanks
Tue 21 Sep 1954 The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Mad Lover (Pearl White)
Tue 05 Oct 1954 The Busher (John Gilbert, Colleen Moore)
Headin’ Home (Babe Ruth)
Chaplin comedy
Houdini serial
Tue 12 Oct 1954 East Lynne
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
The Great Train Robbery
The Face on the Barroom Floor
Tue 19 Oct 1954 The Female Impersonator (Charlie Chaplin, clip from A Woman)
Stand and Deliver (Lupe Velez, Rod La Rocque)
Tue 26 Oct 1954 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Barrymore version? Lewis version?)
The Cat and the Canary
Sat midnight: This Is Spookarama
Thu 04 Nov 1954 Dancing Mothers
Chaplin comedy
newsreel
Tue 16 Nov 1954 Gypsy Blood (Pola Negri)
Scandal (Gloria Swanson)
Our Gang
Houdini serial
Tue 23 Nov 1954 The Champion (Charlie Chaplin)
Fighting Blood (Geo. O’Hara)
Mon 29 Nov 1954 The Son of the Sheik
Tue 30 Nov 1954 The Lost World
His First Command (Wm. Boyd)
cartoon
Tue 07 Dec 1954 Intolerance
Tue 14 Dec 1954 Flesh and Blood (Lon Chaney)
Chaplin comedy
The Power of the Press (Capra)
Peter, the Hollywood Hermit
Mon 20 Dec 1954 CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Sat 25 Dec 1954 Topsy and Eva
Mary Pickford
Charlie Chaplin
Peter, the Hollywood Hermit
Wed 05 Jan 1955 The Son of the Sheik
Charlie Chaplin
Gay 90’s News
Wed 05 Jan 1955 The Son of the Sheik
Charlie Chaplin
Ben Turpin
Tue 18 Jan 1955 Orchids and Ermine
Elaine Barrie Barrymore
Wed 26 Jan 1955 Chaplin festival (10 of his early hits)
Peter the Hermit (cartoon)
Thu 03 Feb 1955 Dancing Mothers
Tarzan of the Apes
Charlie Chaplin (quaint motley of scenes)
Thu 10 Feb 1955 Judith of Bethulia
Tarzan of the Apes
Charlie Chaplin comedy
Wed 16 Feb 1955 Tom Mix and Tony the Wonder Horse
William S. Hart
Jean Arthur, Lupe Velez, Rod LaRocque, Wally Wales, Warner Oland, Leo Maloney, Mickey Rooney, Fearless the Famed Dog Performer
The Great Train Robbery
Wed 23 Feb 1955 The Son of the Sheik
The Lost World
Thu 03 Mar 1955 20,000 Leagues under the Sea


CORRIGANVILLE NICKELODEON
7001 Smith Road
Simi Valley


We now continue with the next reel.


MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 N Fairfax Ave
Los Ángeles
A TALLY OF JOHN HAMPTON’S NEW ACQUISITIONS
Jul 1954 Bad Boy (Charley Chase)
Jul 1954 Hogan’s Wild Oats
Sep 1954 The Ruse (William S. Hart)
Sep 1954 Picfair Honeymoon
Oct 1954 Fantomas
Nov 1954 The Shock (Lon Chaney)
Dec 1954 Free to Love (Clara Bow)
Dec 1954 The Fast Worker (Laura LaPlante)
Mar 1955 Madame Mystery (Theda Bara)
May 1955 Capital Punishment (Clara Bow)
Jun 1955 Salome (Nazimova)
Jun 1955 His Wooden Wedding (Charley Chase)
Jul 1955 Charge of the Light Brigade (Wallace Reid)
Jul 1955 Shanghai Lady (Mary Nolan)
Jul 1955 The Fall Guy (Larry Semon)
Aug 1955 Egyptian Mummy (Ruth Roland)
Aug 1955 Taxi Spooks (Mack Sennett)
Aug 1955 Seven Days (Mary Roberts Rinehart)
Nov 1955 1918 Armistice
Nov 1955 Love and Bullets (Arbuckle)
Dec 1955 Painting the Town (Larry Semon)
Dec 1955 Are Parents People?
Mar 1956 All Night Long (Harry Langdon)
Mar 1956 Studios and Stars
May 1956 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (John Barrymore)
Jun 1956 The Flirt (Arbuckle, Normand)
Jun 1956 A Woman’s Man (Romaine Fielding)
Jun 1956 Man on the Box (Sydney Chaplin)
Aug 1956 Stolen Moments (Valentino, 1st LA showing since 1922)
Sep 1956 Alias the Lone Wolf (Bert Lytell)
Nov 1956 Othello (Emil Jannings)
Jan 1957 COPS (BUSTER KEATON)



Note how coy John was about revealing the source of his films!
After what happened to Eddie Kohn, why wouldn’t he be coy?
Mar 1957 The Phantom of the Opera (The World’s Only Complete Original 1925 Edition)
Mar 1957 Turn Back the Hours (Loy, Pidgeon)
May 1957 Up in Mabel’s Room (Marie Prevost)
May 1957 The Iron Mask (Fairbanks)
Jun 1957 Lena and the Geese (Mary Pickford)
Jun 1957 BUSTER KEATON COMEDY
Jul 1957 California Straight Ahead (Reginald Denny)
Jul 1957 L’argent
Jul 1957 The Perils of Paris (Pearl Frederick) [HUH?????]
Aug 1957 Never Again (Mary Pickford)
Aug 1957 Hell’s Highroad (De Mille)
Aug 1957 New Perils of Pauline (Pearl White)




Sep 1957 Tillie’s Punctured Romance (Hampton’s 6-reel reconstruction)




Oct 1957 Rescue from an Eagle’s Nest (D.W. Griffith)
Oct 1957 Fires of Youth (Jeanne Eagels)
Nov 1957 The Gaucho (Fairbanks)
Nov 1957 Old Heidelberg (D.W. Griffith)
Nov 1957 Plunder (Pearl White)
Dec 1957 The Lonely Villa (Mary Pickford)
Jan 1958 Love Me and the World Is Mine (Dupont)
Mar 1958 Streets of Sorrow (Garbo)
Mar 1958 Hustling Hank (Will Rogers)




Apr 1958 Flames of ’49 (D.W. Griffith, Fairbanks)




Jun 1958 The Unknown Soldier (Marguerite de la Motte)
Jun 1958 Down to the Sea in Ships (Hampton’s restoration)




Oct 1958 The Black Pirate (Hampton’s restoration)
Oct 1958 Drivin’ Fool (Patsy Ruth Miller)


Then came 1959.


MOVIE: OLD TIME MOVIES
611 N Fairfax Ave
Los Ángeles
A TALLY OF JOHN HAMPTON’S NEW ACQUISITIONS
Jan 1959 Carmen (Pola Negri)
Feb 1959 The Primitive Lover (Constance Talmadge)





Note the passing mention of the Coronet.
Store that in the back of your mind.
Feb 1959 OUR HOSPITALITY








May 1959 The Sheik’s Physique (Valentino)
09 Sep 1959 Charlie Chaplin Laff Show, ARBUCKLE-BUSTER KEATON
Oct 1959 Stars of Yesterday (clips)


Yes, the magical year of 1959. The General was not in release in 1959. Yet it ran for a full week at the Movie: Old Time Movies, from Wednesday, 11 March 1959, through Tuesday, 17 March 1959. If the Movie: Old Time Movies had been a nonprofit, then this would likely have been MoMA’s 16mm edition. But I am CERTAIN that the Movie: Old Time Movies was commercial. John Hampton had just a few days or weeks earlier acquired this print for his personal collection. How? My best guess is that he purchased it from John Griggs, who regularly bootlegged MoMA prints. When Griggs noticed that a film in his collection had fallen into the public domain, he would run off copies for sale in 16mm and 8mm. This was almost certainly how Hampton obtained this print.


As for Cops and Our Hospitality and possibly yet another Buster movie, where did they come from? The most likely probability is that somebody (who? who? who? who? who?) duped them from materials at MoMA. As for the Arbuckle/Keaton flick, I would almost be willing to wager that it was Coney Island, which, I think, was the only Arbuckle/Keaton flick that survived in its original English-language form. Or, much less likely, it was The Butcher Boy, which survived somewhere in an English-language reissue form. All the other Arbuckle/Keaton flicks were then considered lost, as far as I know.



If this does not display, download it.
Who was the writer? What was the serial? What was the NBC show? Ya know, that story reminds me of something. Back in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s, I happened to be in the kitchen as my sisters were watching something on TV in the living room. I could see the screen through the doorway. One fellow, portraying a movie or TV producer, was musing to someone else about a screenwriter, and said something to the effect of, “I don’t know where he gets all his ideas, unless he takes them from the films he sees at the Silent Movie Theatre. That’s what he must be doing. He must be taking them from the silent movies.” I have no idea what that show was. I never knew. I have no idea who the two actors were. I never knew. They were nobody I recognized. If you have any idea about any of this, please write to me. Thanks!


And on and on and on the Hamptons’ little business went through December 1980. Why the Hamptons closed their little business is a mystery to me. John later sold his film collection to David Packard. If that collection still includes The General, I must see if I can get access to examine that print!




Please take note of something that John said. It is one of the most important statements ever uttered. “The movie exchanges in town were willing to sell their old worn-out films for $1 a reel. Or we’d go through their garbage and retrieve the films they’d already thrown away.” Ponder that thought, every night upon going to sleep and every morning upon awaking. That explains so many mysteries, mysteries that we shall encounter by and by.


John and Dorothy did not reopen. Graffiti began to cover the walls. Then out of nowhere came a change.




Larry Austin purchased and reopened the little cinema in January 1991 and renamed it the Silent Movie Theatre. As far as I know, Austin continued the old habit of running 16mm films from personal collections — most likely his own personal collection, exclusively. Just a guess. Then a few years later an employee hired a hitman to murder Larry. Well, hey, ya know, it’s showbiz. What is it I say about showbiz?




Here is an excellent article by Rip Pense in The Los Ángeles Times, 5 July 1993. John died from all the carbon tetrachloride he handled and inhaled as he repaired the films. See? Movies are dangerous. Movies are deadly. Nobody believes me until it’s too late. Then a family feud managed to destroy much of the Hamptons’ collection, some of which was unique. Horrifying.


I vaguely remember watching a tiny little docu/promo for the Silent Movie Theatre on cable TV. It was probably on American Movie Classics, inserted between shows as a filler. What I do remember is something that surprised me circa 1990 or 1995 or whenever it was. It would not surprise me now. There was a brief scene in the booth, just a few seconds long. That momentary scene revealed that the machines were antiquated Bell & Howell 16mm portables, and I don’t think they had even been converted to xenon. They were just incandescent. Something like this, I think. We did not get a full shot of the booth, just a few close-ups, but I was left with the distinct impression that there was not a hint of 35mm anywhere in the place.


Just recently I discovered the movie below and immediately ordered the Blu-ray. I cannot strongly enough encourage all of you to purchase a copy and to watch it asap. It is a marvelous history that, again, changes my understanding of movie history. It shows a few glimpses of Larry’s booth, and the machines were considerably more modern Bell & Howell 16mm portables.



Order this from Flicker Alley.
When YouTube disappears this little video, download it.


With Larry in a grave and with his employee in a jail cell, the cinema went dark for a while, but new owners came along and ran mostly oddball flicks with about one silent night each week. I think Wednesday night was the silent night. When I first attended in, oh, when was it?, maybe 2008?, it ran 35mm as well, but it cropped full-aperture silent prints through the Academy sound aperture. Eventually, the cinema purchased longer lenses and larger apertures, but I never saw them in action. There were no speed controls. The projectionist told me that he had tried running the drive motors through a variac and I groaned before he got to the punch line that his attempt resulted only in burning out the motors. I am not an electrician, and so why is it that I understand some electrical theory better than electricians do? I would have thought that any electrician would know not to run a single-phase AC motor through a variac. Oh well. What do I know? The cinema purchased replacement motors after that little stunt. That is why all silents pounded through the machines at 24fps, no matter what the original intentions were. Drove me nuts. Horrible sightlines. I chose to watch the movies from the back of the auditorium and either I would stand or I would sit on top of a seat without folding it down. That was the only way I could see over people’s heads. Various pianists accompanied, among them Cliff Retallick. I wish I could remember who else I heard there, but oh well. As for the allegations that closed the place down, I don’t know. I read the online accusations as well as Hadrian’s online denial. The accusations are vague and unspecific, and that arouses my suspicions, even though such public accusations would legally need to be vague and unspecific. The denial, well, any denial of any claim, true or false, inevitably sounds unbelievable. So, what am I to make of the situation? I don’t know. I have no idea what really happened or didn’t happen. Absent solid evidence, I refuse to pass judgment. What I can say, in the absence of evidence, is that no legal charges were filed against Hadrian, as far as I know. He was never jailed or fined or sued, as far as I know. If he were guilty, he would probably have spent time in the slammer or faced some other sort of legal consequences, but he didn’t, as far as I know. He was compelled (by whom?) to resign and that was the end of that, and he went on to work elsewhere. So, as of now, I ain’t convinced. More recently, a new outfit has newly outfitted the building but I think silent movies are now history. I have not returned or even passed by.


So there you have it. The tedious, boring, overly detailed story above took me six days to reconstruct, and I’m sure I’m missing a great deal of the context, and I can think of only two other people on this planet who might care a fig for any of this info. With the above story, though, I can say that now, at long last, Marion Mack’s claim makes perfect sense. I bet she bought tickets for several showings of the toy abridgment at the Movie Parade in March 1941, as well as the full MoMA print at the Horace Mann School auditorium in Beverly Hills on 21 February 1946 and maybe even again at the Pasadena Art Institute on 25 March 1948. She almost certainly caught several showings of what I presume was the Griggs-Moviedrome edition at the Movie: Old Time Movies in March 1959, and maybe a few further showings if it ever appeared again at that venue. I bet those were the only times she ever saw revivals prior to hosting them in 1970’s. She definitely did not attend the MoMA print at the Pacific Electric Building on 29 May 1942, and we know that for certain because if she had attended, the Railroad Boosters and Ward Kimball and the other Disney employees would have bowed down on the floor to worship her, and we would have heard about that. She surely did not attend the MoMA print on 26 April 1949 at the Westwood Community Clubhouse. She probably brought different friends and fam with her each time she attended. There were more local revivals of the MoMA print at the Coronet, two in 1950 and at least one in 1954, and probably other times as well, but she remained unaware of them, as we shall discover later.


When I first entered The Silent Movie Theatre, in about 2008 I guess, I had no reason to suspect that it had undergone so many major changes. A brief Google search reveals its evolving façade.



Early 1942, getting ready for the big launch


Bill Counter stole this from the Water & Power Associates Museum page,
which is now defunct.
This image predates the opening.


Zoom in


Early 1947?


January 1948


July 1948


Circa early 1950


About 1960?


10 February 1980


September 1984


Maybe 1990?


Circa 1997?


Circa 1997?


1999? (there was a grand reopening on Sunday, 7 November 1999)


Grand Reopening, Sunday, 7 November 1999
My guess is that this is when they installed 35mm and sound,
but Academy .600"×.825",
direct-drive single-phase AC ¼hp 1763rpm motors, 24fps only.


31 March 2024


Reminiscing: