The Silent Clowns Film Series (5/11/19 and 6/8/19)

Buster Keaton in Spite Marriage (1929); Koko’s Conquest (1929) (5/11/19)
Laurel & Hardy in Wrong Again (1929); Big Business (1929); Double Whopper (1929); Bacon Grabbers (1929) (6/8/19)

If you’re seeing a pattern there, you’re on the right track. The Series has a title this time around: 1929 … the Stop of the Silents. Indeed, Spite Marriage was Keaton’s final silent film and Bacon Grabbers was L&H’s final silent.

Interestingly, on the first afternoon, Koko’s Conquest was eight minutes long and Spite Marriage was eighty minutes long. Both were funny and both had the main stars tossed into the ocean—hey, if you find a funny situation, stick with it. The marriage is between Keaton’s character and the leading lady, who he has been mooning after, of a theater company. The spite comes because she is smitten with her onstage leading man and he passes her right on by for a sweeter, younger actress. So the leading lady asks Keaton to marry her. He is thrilled! She soon realizes that she is not. After many situations, trials and tribulations, she eventually realizes that the spite marriage is actually the right marriage. There were lots of funny bits throughout though I can’t remember any specific ones right now. For this particular afternoon, there was a guest pianist, Makia Matsumura, who played very well. Her style was in general smoother and more fluid than what we normally hear on these silent movie afternoons.

Wrong Again was very funny. The premise is that a millionaire has lost Blue Boy. L&H are working at a stable where they are grooming a horse named Blue Boy. When the boys learn of a $5,000 reward, they take it upon themselves to deliver the horse to the millionaire, who speaks to them from an upstairs window (where he cannot see the horse). He tells them to bring it in and put it on the piano. Stan questions this, but Ollie convinces him that the extremely wealthy see things differently than the rest of us do. The hijinks include taking the horse inside, figuring out how to get him up on the grand piano, how to keep him up on the grand piano (even after the front leg breaks off of it), a chase scene where the horse chases Stan and then, later, Ollie, the return of the painting (oh! that Blue Boy!), the millionaire finally realizing the buffoonery of L&H, and the eventual ruining of the painting. Even when you knew what was coming, it was still very funny.

The other three L&H films were also funny, but they didn’t make as strong an impression on me as Blue Boy did. Ben Model supplied the very good (and indefatigable) accompaniments to all four films. Additionally, the afternoon was bookended by Jonathan M. Smith and Bob Greenberg as “Stan and Ollie” and they were also very funny. And to think, I almost didn’t go on June eighth because it was such a nice weather day. I’m glad I did, though. The house was standing room only.

ConcertMeister