MEET THE MUSIC MAKERS:
SILENT FILM ACCOMPANISTS, THE EIGHTH SERIES
MARY PICKFORD: HER SECOND HUNDRED YEARS IN FILM
Tuesdays at 2:30 pm
April 6, 13, 20, 27, 2010
Bruno Walter Auditorium
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
111 Amsterdam Avenue
between 64th and 65th streets
(212) 870-1700
http://www.nypl.org/ ADMISSION FREE
Mary Pickford the first international star of the cinema, made her film debut in 1909 at the Biograph Studio on 14th Street. The public adored the girl with the golden curls and everyday her popularity grew. For there was honesty to her performances that she understood, which compared to the stage, cinema required her acting to be much smaller for the camera, with subtle reactions and gestures. Rarely playing upper-class women, she soon specialized in depicting children on screen, and she was upfront in meeting everything that that life threw at her. Now as then people are glad to know this spunky creature that never seems to grow older.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 2:30 pm
SPARROWS, Blue Ray DVD, tinted and toned , 110 minutes
Directed by William Beaudine, 1926
Starring: Mary Pickford, Gustav von Seffertitz, Charlotte Mineau, Spec O’Donnell, Mary Louise Miller, Lloyd Whitlock, A.L. Schaffer, Mark Hamilton, Monty O’Grady, Muriel McCormac, Billy Butts, Jack Levine, Camille Johnson, Florence Rogan, Mary McLane, Sylvia Bernard
In the middle of the Louisiana Bayous, Mama Mollie (Mary Pickford) looks after a barn load of orphaned children, protecting them from a sadistic overseer in SPARROWS.
Carolyn Swartz a former student of jazz teacher Charlie Banacos, she played professionally in jazz trios and quartets while pursuing a graduate degree in film studied from M.I.T. While working on a movie in Berlin, Carolyn began to play for silent films. She has accompanied films at the Arsenal Kino, the Collection for Living Cinema, Judson Memorial Church, Goethe House and Scandinavia House in New York, where she now lives.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 2:30 pm
RAMONA, DVD, b&w, 17 minutes
Directed by D.W. Griffith, 1910
Starring: Mary Pickford, H.B. Walthall, Francis J. Grandon, Kate Bruce, W.C. Miller, Charles B. West, Dorothy West, Frank Opperman, Gertrude Claire
HULDA FROM HOLLAND, DVD, b&w, 56 minutes
Directed by John B. O’Brien, 1916
Starring: Mary Pickford, Frank Losee, John Bowers, Russell Bassett, Harold Hollacher, Charles E. Vernon
Based upon Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1884 novel RAMONA, was filmed on location in California, with Mary Pickford wearing a dark wig. The United States premier of HULDA FROM HOLLAND the formerly “lost” Mary Pickford feature-film, was filmed in Bayside, Old Saybrook, and Manhattan was restored by the National Film Archives, Prague, Czech Republic. It is the tale of a family of orphans brought to the United States by a kindly uncle, but due to a traffic accident he is unable to meet them at the Battery. THIS IS THE UNITED STATES PREMIER SCREENING OF THIS RESTORATION.
Ben Model has been a silent film pianist for over a quarter of a century. He grew up watching silent films and learned his scoring technique from master film organist Lee Erwin. He has accompanied films in Europe and the United States at festivals, museums and universities. He has recorded numerous scores for silent film on DVD. With film historian Bruce Lawton, he produces The Silent Clown Film Series. (Thanks Ben for the still from Hulda!)
Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 2:30 pm
THE HOODLUM, Blue Ray DVD, tinted and toned, 84 minutes
Directed by Sidney A. Franklin, 1919
Starring: Mary Pickford, Ralph Lewis, Kenneth Harlan, Max Davidson, Melvin Messinger, Dwight Chittenden, Aggie Herring, Andrew Arbuckle, Paul Mullen, Buddie Messinger
In THE HOODLUM spoiled Amy Burke (Mary Pickford) must choose between staying wither millionaire grandfather and leaving for New York Lower East Side slum in order to remain with her sociologist father.
Bernie Anderson has worked alongside orchestrator Douglas Besterman, and studied with noted silent film accompanist Lee Erwin and Ashley Miller of Radio City Music Hall. He is a recipient of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ Frederick Lowe scholarship. For fifteen years he has been the organist for the Union County Arts Center. In addition he had recorded scores for silent films on DVD.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 2:30 pm
LITTLE ANNIE ROONEY, DVD, 94 minutes
Directed by William Beaudine, 1925
Starring: Mary Pickford, William Haines, Walter James, Gordon Griffith, Carlo Schipa, Spec O’Donnell, Hugh Fay, Vola Vale, Eugene Jackson, Joe Butterworth, Oscar Randolph
LITTLE ANNIE ROONEY divides her time between looking after her policeman father and brother and getting into mischief with the other juvenile gangs.
Andrew Earle Simpson is chair of the Music Composition program at Catholic University of American Washington D.C. He has composed opera, chamber, choral, vocal music, and is the recipient of awards from the American Music Center, the American Composers Forum, and the Loeb Classical Library Foundation. He is a regular performer of silent films at AFI Silver Theater, The National Gallery Art, and Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
The series is programmed by Joseph Yranski.
All programs are subject to last minute change or cancellation.
The series is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts,
a State Agency.
Special thanks to the Mary Pickford Library, and the National Film Archives, Prague, Czech Republic, for making this series possible.
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
