So They Tell Me, circa 1919, skewers the top headlines of its day, the World War I era. Crude animation attempts to punctuate the sardonic and off-color humor supplied by political raconteur Warren W. Brown. Though the jokes are somewhat arcane by today’s standards, the tone tries to balance between being bombastic and nativist. Targets include labor […]
MORE ...An authentic 1940’s Burlesque Girlie Film. A lady dressed in a tiger outfit freeform dances to a lone piano. Check the costume change 1/3 the way through.
MORE ...A bevy of flappers prances around the beach, having such a good time they can’t help but strip to their skivvies. A ragamuffin, who watches them from behind a rock, swipes their clothes as they play carelessly in the waves. What to do this time? Guess they’ll be walkin’ home again.
MORE ...A promotional film for the Lincoln Highway from 1913, this short reel shows a groundbreaking ceremony for Carl G. Fisher’s dream project, the first coast-to-coast automobile highway. Conceived by headlight entrepreneur Fisher, also said to be the first car dealer in US history, the man, like many an American, seems to have become a visionary […]
MORE ...HEAVENLY BODIES Gravitation. The Moon. Constellations. One great riddle of the world was solved when Sir Isaac Newton discovered what holds the worlds in their places. When an apple fell at his feet, he began to wonder why everything “falls to the Earth” and never in another direction. And then it came to him: “What […]
MORE ...A newsreel marking the protest over the Griffith Park fire disaster of 1933, where 29 workers were killed while widening roads in Los Angeles. The fire was one of the worst in the city’s history at that time.
MORE ...A preview of Cecil B. DeMille’s upcoming film, The King of Kings … “the picture that will live forever.” DeMille hypes his 1927 spectacle, “magnificently portrayed by an inspiring cast of 5000 players,” by stressing the epic proportion of these biblical episodes rather than the story itself. Both producer and director of King of Kings, […]
MORE ...Hypnosis. Subconscious Suggestion. Somnambulism. In this film Professor LF Beck of University of Oregon conducts a live experiment in hypnosis on an obviously pliant participant. Upon watching it, one viewer recently called the film sadistic, like some sort of proto-Ludovico Treatment slouching towards Clockwork Orange. To modern eyes, he could be seen as a latter […]
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