LAME BRAINS AND LUNATICS

Silent Film Comedy was a fortuitous combination of art and technology where the physical comedy skills and artistry passed down from the Commedia dellArte English music hall and American vaudeville were captured for posterity by the newly created motion picture camera While the Chaplins Keatons and Laurel Hardys are still remembered and celebrated this book profiles unsung practitioners such as Billie Ritchie Marcel Perez Lige Conley and George Rowe with special focus on the neglected comediennes Alice Howell Gale Henry Fay Tincher and Josie Sadler Popular icons on the order of Mack Sennett Marie Dressler Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle and WC Fields are reexamined plus detailed histories of silent comedy teams and kids comedies are offered The book also includes selected filmographies and is lavishly illustrated with more than 225 rarelyseen photographs and advertising images Steve Massa is a leading enthusiast of silent comedy who has devoted 45 years to researching the genre A librarian in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center he has organized comedy film programs for the Museum of Modern Art the Library of Congress the Smithsonian Institution and the Pordenone Silent Film Festival In addition to consulting with the Eye Film Institute Netherlands and other archives and writing for film journals such as Griffithiana he is a founding member of Silent Cinema Presentations which produces NYCs Silent Clown Film Series Steve has also contributed articles and commentary tracks to many comedy DVD collections such as The Forgotten Films of Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle Becoming Charley Chase and Kino Videos Buster Keaton The Short Films Collection