WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH
ANYTHING BUT SILENT
Live Theatre Organ Accompaniment by Ben Model
ALICE HOWELL COMEDIES
Tuesday, March 19 at 7:30 pm | Members $11 | Public $16
Alice Howell was a popular star of slapstick comedies in the silent film era — almost completely forgotten and overlooked, her films are now back on screen and on a new DVD after 100 years for fans to enjoy and rediscover! Copies of “The Alice Howell Collection” 2-disc set from Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions will be available at the show.
Rediscover one of the leading ladies of silent film comedy – Alice Howell! After breaking in with Keystone Studios, Alice Howell starred in her own popular series of comedy shorts from 1915-1925 for L-KO Komedies, Century Comedies, Reelcraft and Universal. Billed as the "Scream of the Screen" and "the Female Chaplin", Howell’s screen persona was a frizzy-haired forerunner of Lucille Ball, a charming working-class “scrub-woman” who excelled at knockabout physical comedy. Howell’s films have been unseen for nearly 100 years and is poised for rediscovery this month when Undercrank Productions releases a new 2-disc DVD set of her slapstick shorts.
This program includes three of the newly restored comedies from The Alice Howell Collection – In Dutch (1918), Distilled Love (1920) and A Convict’s Happy Bride (1920) – sourced from rare prints preserved by the the Library of Congress and EYE Filmmuseum (Netherlands). The program will be introduced by film historian Steve Massa, author of Slapstick Divas: The Women of Silent Comedy.
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.
