Cinecon Schedule, August 30-September 3, 2012

“Always a Bridesmaid” is one of the featured films at Cinecon 48, held this Labor Day weekend in Hollywood.

As many of you know, I will be attending Cinecon 48, a large festival honoring rare and lesser-seen classic films over Labor Day weekend in Hollywood. The schedule has recently been released, and it includes a number of treasures that I am very excited to see! So if you happen to be in the area, come check it out. It promises to be a marvelous festival!

Here is the schedule, as published on Cinecon’s website:

Thursday August 30
7:00		ARTISTRY IN RHYTHM (Universal 1944) 16 min Stan Kenton and his orchestra. Print courtesy of NBCUniversal
7:30		ALWAYS A BRIDESMAID (Universal, 1943) 62 min The Andrews Sisters give out with the jive, and everything’s reet, neat and petit in this toe-tapping B musical which also features Grace McDonald, Charles Butterworth and Billy Gilbert. Print courtesy of NBCUniversal
8:45		DRUMS OF JEOPARDY (Truart, 1923) 75 min Many are likely to be familiar with the 1931 talkie remake, The Drums of Jeopardy, but here’s the silent original, based on a novel by Harold McGrath, and featuring Elaine Hammerstein, Jack Mulhall and Wallace Beery. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress
10:15		15 MAIDEN LANE (20th Century-Fox, 1936) 64 min Director Allan Dwan brings his usual sense of pacing and good humor to this tale of–well, jewel robbery, domestic intrigue, amateur and professional detectives, and murder starring Lloyd Nolan and past Cinecon guest Claire Trevor and Cesar Romero. Print courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Friday August 31
9:00		TBA 10 min
9:15		DANGEROUS TO KNOW (Paramount, 1938) 70 min Anna May Wong is best-remembered for her roles in The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and In Old San Francisco (1927)–but it was in the late 1930s in a series of oddball “B” movies for Paramount like Daughter of, King of Chinatown, Island of Lost Men, and this kinky underworld tale, that Anna May Wong became a star. Don’t know how this one flew under the radar of the Production Code Authority, but it plays more like a 1933 screen excursion than a post Legion of Decency effort. Print courtesy of NBCUniversal
10:40		DOLLARS AND SENSE (Goldwyn, 1920) 60 min Time and nitrate film have not treated Madge Kennedy well. She starred in nearly thirty silents before returning to the stage, and much fewer than a handful are known to survive today. This screening offers an opportunity the work of a legendary American star. Print courtesy the Library of Congress
11:45		GROOVIE MOVIE (M-G-M, 1944) 10 min A Pete Smith Specialty featuring the jitterbug dance antics of Arthur Walsh and our guest Jean Veloz. Print courtesy of Warner Bros. and the Warner Archive Collection
12:00		Lunch Break
2:00		YOU’RE NEXT (Jester, 1919) 20 min Behind the scenes with forgotten comic Marcel Perez. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress
2:20		WILD BILL HICKCOK (Hart-Paramount, 1923) 60 min One of William S. Hart’s final films, Wild Bill Hickok also marked the only time the Western star portrayed an historical person of the Old West– although, in truth, the cowboy star played fast and loose with historical fact when concocting this biopic. Print courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art
3:45		GENTLE JULIA (20th Century-Fox, 1936) 63 min Marsha Hunt plays Julia in this adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s 1922 novel about a flirtatious Midwestern belle, although truth be told the scenario was tweaked to feature the shenanigans of Julia’s kid niece, Florence, played by Jane Withers. The talented though largely forgotten John G. Blystone directed this modest gem, his reputation hampered by his early death in 1938 at age 45 long before auteurists could notice him. Print courtesy of 20th Century Fox
5:00		SENSATION SEEKERS (Universal, 1927) 80 min Lois Weber was one of the few women to carve out a lengthy and prestigious career behind the megaphone in the silent era. In this, Weber’s penultimate outing and her last silent film as a director, Billie Dove plays a jazz-age mama who finds true love in unexpected places. Print courtesy of NBCUniversal
6:30		Dinner Break
8:00		BILLY AND HIS PAL (G. Melies, 1910) 10 min Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with support from the National Film Preservation Fund.
8:10		DIAMOND JIM (Universal, 1935) 93 min A rarely-seen biopic about the Gilded Age’s most famous citizen, Diamond Jim Brady, featuring Edward Arnold in the role he was born to play, is surrounded by a great supporting cast including Tully Marshall, William Demarest, Henry Kolker, Eric Blore, and Jean Arthur, who plays the two lost loves in Brady’s life. Print courtesy of NBCUniversal
9:50		BLONDE OR BRUNETTE (Paramount, 1927) 65 min Disgusted with Paris flappers, Adolphe Menjou heads to the country to find the girl of his dreams (Greta Nissen), only to have her all under the influence of a fast young lady (Arlette Marchal), who influences the girl to take up smoking, short skirts and the Black Bottom. The change sets Adolphe on edge, but he’s already married the girl, so what’s he to do? Print courtesy of the Library of Congress
11:05		GIRL OVERBOARD (Universal, 1937) 58 min Murder, false accusations, assumed identities not to mention a girl overboard as the title promises, and you have an hour of B-movie excitement with past Cinecon honoree, Gloria Stuart, Walter Pidgeon, and future TV travelogue host Billy Burrud. Print courtesy of NBCUniversal

Saturday September 1
9:00		TBA 10 min
9:10		HOT WATER (Harold Lloyd Corp.-Pathé, 1924) 55 min Harold Lloyd’s shortest feature among the films he produced himself, Hot Water plays like a series of two-reelers, and has several times been truncated (by Lloyd himself and by Time-Life Films) with the final segment jettisoned because it is not easily excerpted–but, in fact, the first two-thirds of the picture are really a prologue and set-up for one of Lloyd’s most sustained and hilarious screen sequences. Print courtesy of Harold Lloyd Entertainment
10:20		WAY OUT WEST (Hal Roach-MGM, 1937) 64 min Although a “warhorse” if there ever was one, this Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy comic masterwork is rarely revived in 35mm in a theatrical setting. Be prepared to laugh and to learn about UCLA’s Laurel & Hardy restoration project. 35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Sonar Entertainment
11:30		Lunch Break
1:30		TBA 20 min
1:50		THE GOOSE WOMAN (Universal, 1925) 85 min Louise Dresser portrays a once-famous opera star who has lost her voice from complications related to the birth of her illegitimate son, played by Jack Pickford. The plot involves murder and false accusations–the standard stuff of melodrama- -but it is so brilliantly handled by director Clarence Brown that The Goose Woman is regarded as one of the true classics of the silent screen. 35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive and NBCUniversal
3:30		WALK, DON’T RUN (Columbia, 1966) 114 min Cinecon guest Samantha Eggar co-stars with Cary Grant in his final screen appearance. Set during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Walk, Don’t Run is a remake and updating of the classic World War II-era screwball comedy The More the Merrier. Print courtesy of Sony Pictures
5:24		Q & A with Samantha Eggar
6:00		Dinner Break
7:30		BERT WHEELER HOME MOVIES 10 min
7:45		HIPS, HIPS, HOORAY! (Radio Pictures, 1934) 68 min Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, with able support from Dorothy Lee, Thelma Todd and Ruth Etting keep on doin’ what they’re doin’ as lipstick salesmen who help to keep romance alive. Print courtesy of Warner Bros.
9:10		UPSTREAM (Fox, 1927) 65 min One of a number of American silents repatriated from New Zealand by the National Film Preservation Foundation, this previously “lost” John Ford film explores life among vaudevillians who reside in a theatrical boardinghouse and what happens when one of their number gets plucked from obscurity to play Hamlet on the London stage because of his family’s respected name in theatrical history. A collaboration of the New Zealand Film Archive/Ng a Kaitiaki O Ng a Taonga Whiti a hua, the American archival community, and the National Film Preservation Foundation. Preserved through a collaboration of Twentieth Century Fox and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
10:30		THE SPIDER (20th Century-Fox, 1945) 62 min Charles Fulton Oursler and Lowell Brentano’s 1927 the play, The Spider, got the expressionist treatment from Fox and William Cameron Menzies in 1931 (screened at Cinecon 30 in 1994), and in this re-make the play gets a film noir makeover from director Richard Webb. Richard Conte and Faye Marlowe star in this dark tale of a man accused of a murder he did not commit. Print courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Sunday September 2
9:00		TBA 10 min
9:10		THE BEDROOM WINDOW (Paramount, 1924) 75 min May McAvoy, Malcolm MacGregor and Ricardo Cortez in a tale of murder, false accusation and amateur sleuthing made under the guidance of Cecil’s older brother, William C. deMille. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress
10:35		SO YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT JOE McDOAKES? includes Q & A with Richard L. Bare and Phyllis Coates Cinecon honorees Phyllis Coates and writer-director Richard L. Bare reunite to recall their long series of Joe McDoakes comedies and their associations with such classic TV series as The Adventures of Superman and Green Acres. Courtesy Warner Bros.
11:45		Lunch Break
1:45		THE CIRCUS MAN (Lasky, 1914) 50 min This story of a falsely accused murderer hiding out as a circus clown is based on the novel The Rose in the Ring by George Barr McCutcheon, with a scenario by Cecil B. DeMille–anticipating the Jimmy Stewart sub-plot in The Greatest Show on Earth. With Theodore Roberts, Mabel Van Buren and Jody Mullally. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress
2:45		FEARLESS FAGAN (M-G-M, 1952) 80 min Cinecon honoree Carleton Carpenter joins us for the story of a lion, and the young man who loved him. Stanley Donen (fresh from co-directing Singin’ in the Rain) wielded the megaphone on this supposedly true story about a circus clown who takes his pet lion to boot camp when he’s forced to enlist. Past Cinecon honoree Janet Leigh co-stars. Courtesy Warner Bros.
4:05		Q & A with Carleton Carpenter
5:00		THE BLUFF (American-Mutual, 1915) 60 min While attempting to turn base metals into gold, crazy experimenters Clarence Kolb and Max Dill (the west coast equivalents of Weber and Fields) strike it rich when they accidentally invent a puncture-proof tire. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress
7:00		*COCKTAIL RECEPTION*
8:00		*BANQUET*

Monday September 3
9:00		TBA 10 min
9:10		HELLO, EVERYBODY! (Paramount, 1933) 75 min A musical drama designed to exploit the appeal of radio sensation Kate Smith. Randolph Scott plays the guy Kate loves from afar, but he’s got a yen for Kate’s sister, played by Sally Blane. Shakespeare it ain’t, but the film does offer a very real sense of the sensation that the “songbird of the air waves” created in the early 1930s after first gaining modest attention on Broadway and records. Print courtesy of NBCUniversal
10:35		LADIES’ NIGHT IN A TURKISH BATH (First National, 1928) 71 min To avoid being pinched in a police raid on a speakeasy, “Speed” Dawson (Jack Mulhall) and Pa Slocum (James Finlayson) duck into a Turkish bath only to discover that its ladies’ night and their wives (Dorothy Mackaill and Sylvia Ashton) are there, too! 35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Warner Bros.
11:45		Lunch Break
1:30		MACK SENNETT CENTENNIAL TRIBUTE 75 min Film historian and preservationist Paul Gierucki offers an advance peak at his soon-to-be-released Mack Sennett Centennial Collection.
3:00		SHE WANTED A MILLIONAIRE (Fox, 1932) 74 min A Pre-Code drama in which beauty contest winner Joan Bennett forsakes newspaperman Spencer Tracy for millionaire James Kirkwood but the millionaire winds up dead after attempting to murder his wife by feeding her to a pack of dogs! 35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive and 20th Century Fox
4:30		STRAWBERRY ROAN (Universal, 1933) 62 min Wild Western action as rough-ridin’ Ken Maynard attempts to tame a wild horse while rounding up rustlers along the way. Print courtesy of NBCUniversal
5:45		LOVE UNDER FIRE (20th Century-Fox, 1937) 75 min Jewel robbery, foreign intrigue, undercover operatives, and Borrah Minevitch and his Gang of harmonica rascals come together in this screwball-romance-thriller set against the Spanish Civil War. Loretta Young and Don Ameche star, directed by the often under-rated George Marshall. Print courtesy of 20th Century Fox
We do our best to stick to the schedule, but changes and delays are inevitable.
SPECIAL PROGRAMS Mt. Olympus Room 3rd floor Loews Hollywood HotelThursday August 30 5:00 PM The Jew and his Music II. – Presented by Murray Glass. (90 mins.) Friday August 31 9:00 AM Looking for Mabel Normand with Documentary Director Anthony Mercaldi. (50 mins.) Saturday September 1 3:30 PM Palace of Silents with Documentary Director Iain Kennedy. (80 mins.) Sunday, September 2 1:30 PM Peter Ford: A Little Prince with Documentary Director Alex Roman. Plus: Special Guest Peter Ford (45 Mins.)