Anything But Silent Live theatre organ accompaniment by BEN MODEL
A FLORIDA ENCHANTMENT (1914)
with
JANE'S BASHFUL HERO (1916)
Guest Speaker: Film Historian Steve Massa, author of “Slapstick Divas: The Women of Silent Comedy”
Wednesday, May 16 at 7:30 pm | Members $11 | Public $16
A Florida Enchantment is considered one of Edith Storey’s best films, as well as one of the most wonderfully odd silent films ever made! This delightful comedy stars Storey as a strong-willed young woman named Lillian who is irritated with her much-older fiancee, Dr Cassandene (Sidney Drew). She finds some magic seeds that cause the person who eats them to switch gender, and she eats one. Enjoying her sudden freedom as a man, she kisses other women, dances with them, smokes cigarettes, applies for a man's job, and dresses in men's clothing. When she starts secretly feeding the magic seeds to those around her, including her unsuspecting fiancee, pandemonium ensues! Notable for its bold subversion of sexual stereotypes, the humor is marked by director and co-star Sidney Drew's clever sophistication and understated style. Proceeded by Jane’s Bashful Hero, a 1916 short starring Edith Storey. (USA,1914, 63 min., NR, English intertitles | Dir. Sidney Drew)
Edith Storey once said, “I want to be a bit different from the girl across the aisle.” Born in 1892, she began her movie career in 1908, and was soon starring in a wide range of movies including a number of westerns (one of her director’s commented that she could “ride anything with hair and four legs, throw a rope and shoot with the best of the cowpunchers”). She was also an ambulance driver during World War I. She retired from films at the age of 29 and settled into a house on Asharoken Beach. She became the Village Clerk of Asharoken in the spring of 1932, a position she held until 1960. In the 1930s when there was no village hall, elections were held at her house and during World War II, her front yard served as the drop spot for scrap metal. Children later recalled how she regaled them with stories of her movie career. Edith Storey passed away in Northport in 1967. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Ben Model is one of America’s leading silent film accompanists, and has been playing piano and organ for silent films at the New York MoMA since 1984, and the CAC since 2006.
