Tweet Gallery of Mastheads

Great choice, Mike. You can never tell where Max will show up

True. Here's a clip of Max and frequent son Jess Devorska with Victor McLaglen in 1931's "Women of All Nations" (sorry for the terible quality):

[Mike Gebert]

Wait, that's actually Danny Bonaduce!

Great, you've spoiled him forever for me now.

Wait, that's actually Danny Bonaduce!

oh-oh, I fear a bio-pic brewing somewhere.

Great choice, Mike. You can never tell where Max will show up

True. Here's a clip of Max and frequent son Jess Devorska with Victor McLaglen in 1931's "Women of All Nations" (sorry for the terible quality):

Very cool!- but even I can tell that Max's german accent is a lot different than Jess' eastern european one.

This is from Call of the Cuckoo, and Editions Filmmuseum tells me that they're still planning on putting out their set of Max comedies this month. Thanks to Louie D. for the image.

Lovely! Can't wait for that set... Although I'm curious if the lone talkie is going to have a German soundtrack with English subtitles. The info at the bottom of the filmmuseum page indicates both English and German subtitles, but I suspect those are for the silents.

Wonder how much it will cost?

Jim,
who just realized his own beard and blond hair makes him look more like Max than like Harpo...

I got the female comedy teams set and all the talkie Thelma Todd shorts were in English. It was reasonably priced, and the shipping was very quick.

Actually the more I look at Max the more he looks like Robin Williams....

Actually the more I look at Max the more he looks like Robin Williams....

Really?? Then you have to drink more.

Max Davidson DVD set...I'm curious if the lone talkie is going to have a German soundtrack with English subtitles.

Actually there are two talkies included:
HURDY GURDY (1929) - Hal Roach All-Star short and THE ITCHING HOUR (1931), an RKO Larry Darmour two-reeler starring Louise Fazenda, set in a "haunted" hotel. It features Max Davidson and Spec O'Donnell as father and son in major supporting roles.

Great choice, Mike. You can never tell where Max will show up

True. Here's a clip of Max and frequent son Jess Devorska with Victor McLaglen in 1931's "Women of All Nations" (sorry for the terible quality):

Very cool!- but even I can tell that Max's german accent is a lot different than Jess' eastern european one.

It koms sru even in ze innertidles!

Max Davidson is listed in the credits for The Great Dictator but I never spotted him....

Yeek! Max Davidson's face gave me a start when I saw him on the masthead for the first time today. As long as we're talking about resemblances, at first sight I thought he looked like Mel Brooks . . .

And I really liked him as one of the feuding neighbors in THE HOODLUM.

[Mike Gebert]

I don't know that I had even heard of Lonesome much over a decade ago, but it has certainly become one of the most admired silents in recent years, at least among those lucky enough to see it on a big screen. It's a small masterpiece in the best sense of that term— a simple and intimate story of no great ambitions, but turned out just about perfectly (that is if you don't count the inserted talkie scenes, which are pretty bad and wreck the mood from time to time). Anyway, here's Glenn Tryon and Barbara Kent* at Coney Island in it, and if you haven't seen it, you can catch it in a few weeks at Cinefest.

* Making her, at 105, the 4th person still living to appear on a NitrateVille masthead, after Baby Peggy, Mickey Rooney and Kevin Brownlow.

Anyone who saw Barbara Kent in `Flesh and the Devil' could not help but have a soft spot for her!

Awww ... I'm going to miss Max. That was one of the best mastheads.


Jim

[Mike Gebert]

He lives forever in this thread.

Tryon and Kent are truly wonderful in Lonesome.... sometimes less is indeed more.

Just a small technical question - why doesn't my masthead change automatically each month? I have to click on refresh in order to get the new one each time. Not a big deal but I just wondered, is this the same for everyone?

[Mike Gebert]

Browsers cache images that they think are the same every time, to speed up the process of loading the page. When the image changes, it may take it a time or two to realize there's a new one to load.

Great. Thanks

As a sort of tribute to the March masthead, here is one of my glass slides with Glenn Tryon from a 1928 feature. The condition of the slide presented some issues so first here's the slide as "restored" in my low tech manner:


And here's the original:


Question: why does Glenn Tryon look like John Garfield?

[Mike Gebert]

One of the issues often raised with the various classic film festivals such as Cinecon is whether the cut-off date for films to be shown should be moved up to accommodate younger attendees whose definition of the "classic era" may be more recent than the founders of the fests initially anticipated.

Likewise, in an attempt to help keep NitrateVille relevant to younger participants, we have decided to officially move the general dates of discussion here from ending around 1960, to include the period up to 1980. Of course, no one is compelled to discuss classics such as Star Wars, The Godfather, or The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox. But by opening discussion up to that era, we hope to attract a wider range of participants with many interesting things to say about the movies and stars of that era, and I know that several NitrateVillains are already at work on terrific posts such as:

• The Undiscovered Auteur: Rod Amateau
• Dreyer's Comic Influence on Altman's Popeye
• Ben Model's comparison of undercranking speeds in Disney comedies of the 70s (he showed me a preview of his work on Unidentified Flying Oddball and it is revelatory)

We hope this broadening of the site's purview beyond what are, it must be admitted, boring and kind of square older movies will be immensely satisfying to the bulk of the site's visitors, or at least the younger ones advertisers are more interested in. If you want to discuss this modest adjustment to our mission, please don't post in this thread, but instead go here to continue discussion.

THAT IS JUST AWESOME!!!

We have a mission statement. But there's nothing about being web-enabled (perhaps to be hep we need to be cloud-enabled). And shouldn't we be empowering? It's always good to be empowering.

Bob

Apparently I'm the first to catch on to the date of Mike's posting!


Jim
(P.S. It was the reference to Dreyer's "comic influence" that gave it away!)

(P.S. It was the reference to Dreyer's "comic influence" that gave it away!)

You're so right - that subject has been rehashed to the point that the reference couldnt be ANYTHING but a joke!

[silentfilm]

I hope that that photo was from the original Smoky and the Bandit, because Smoky and the Bandit II was really awful.

[Mike Gebert]

Bruce, please take comments about the film to the dedicated Hal Needham thread. Thanks.

I agree, it sure is awful - I mean awesome. So Mike, you are taking this down at the end of today, right? (If not before)

I hope that that photo was from the original Smoky and the Bandit, because Smoky and the Bandit II was really awful.

Smoky and the Bandit II came out in 1980. Please stick to older movies like the first Smoky and the Bandit movie from 1977. On this board we only discuss really old movies from the seventies (sometimes even older).

I agree, it sure is awful - I mean awesome. So Mike, you are taking this down at the end of today, right? (If not before)

Please. (Sob.) Please.