Come celebrate the silliest day of the year with films featuring silent comedy’s “Big Four”: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon. In A Film Johnnie, Charlie plays a film fan hopeful of meeting his favorite Keystone star on set, but ruining just about every take he’s in. Keep an eye out for cameos by Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, and Ford Sterling playing themselves. Then, Buster is an inept blacksmith apprentice who “fixes” everything, from horses to Rolls-Royces. In Haunted Spooks, Harold is a heart-broken boy who falls into an arrangement with a woman who needs to get married and live in a haunted house for a year before getting her inheritance. Finally, Harry plays a sleeping cinema patron who runs into an old army buddy and exchanges reminiscences — including their rivalry over a young French woman during the war.
Live piano accompaniment by Dr. Philip Carli.
A Film Johnnie
(George Nichols, US 1914, 15 min., 35mm)
The Blacksmith
(Buster Keaton, Malcolm St. Clair, US 1922, 21 min., 35mm)
Haunted Spooks
(Alfred J. Goulding, Hal Roach, US 1920, 25 min., 35mm)
All Night Long
(Harry Edwards, US 1924, 19 min., 16mm)
