Aeolian Vocalion

There are some precursors to the Milton Brown era (my first thought when it comes to western swing) where a few regional hotel bands have a hint of western swing in them, if one listens very closely, like Phil Baxter's "Down Where the Blue Bonnets Grow" and "I Ain't Got No Gal Now," both recorded for Victor in Dallas in 1929. Maybe even with Lloyd Finley and his Orch, who recorded "Fiddlin' Blues" in Houston in 1925 from another Victor field recording. I have an original copy of both records, and give them a spin every now and then.

TNT's first airing of "The Lost Flight" (1931) was in September 1989. I watched it and taped it then. The network showed all those WB Richard Barthelmess films, most of which I liked, except for the dreary, commie "Heroes for Sale" (1933).

The TNT network started the 1st week of October 1988, and my vcr went into overdrive. I watched/taped at least 50 movies that first month. It was an avalanche of old films (early RKO, WB, MGM) that I'd never encountered before. Films that had indeed been in tv-syndication fairly widely in the mid-1950s to early-1960s, but had greatly disappeared after that. Until TNT and then TCM brought them back.

No, I don't really mind the narrative from a child's perspective, nor the somewhat stylized approach to reality. Those can and often do resonate with me. Maybe it's partially because of the meshing of these elements with the heavy subject-matter that I found the results a little unappetizing. I don't know. Usually I also expect a child's perspective to be a bit more expressive of joyful wonderment, but the film's approach was more dark and moody and typical of post-war psychology, despite its earlier-era setting. A certain brand of unctuous artificiality that was common the dramas of that period, which I've never really cottoned to.

Probably also didn't help that my first introduction to the film was divided into two parts over two days, when it was screened on 16mm for us school students, during a teacher-workday period. Not saying that I have an active, total dislike for the film. It's tolerable enough. But I wish I could warm up to it more, especially since I had a nice chat one time with Mary Badham, about thirty years ago, and found her most pleasant.

I was in Los Angeles that very morning. But I was just packed up and leaving, starting the long drive back to Texas. For two days I was on the road, and really had no idea what a big event that was turning into. Just heard a little bit about some rioting going on in Los Angeles on the radio as I was driving. Phoned some friends when I got back, and they sounded genuinely shocked and aghast at what happened all around them.

Any tiny benefit has been massively overwhelmed by the descent it has brought, from transforming the nation into a low-trust society, and a trash-pit culture.

That "Dracula" piece looks like a herald (some folks want to refer to them as handbills), one of the more overlooked formats of movie memorabilia. They're always folded, but come in slightly different shapes and sizes. I bought a batch of about three-dozen of them in the late-1980s, all from films between about 1925 and 1934. Nothing probably all that collectible, the most prominent one being from the first version of "Show Boat" (1929). All came from a single movie-goer who kept them as mementos, with the theater's info usually stamped on back.

I think these colorful-type heralds gradually disappeared as the 1930s wore on, replaced by those duller, monotone handbills, which advertised not so much individual films but the local theater's weekly line-up. I do have one older example of a herald, which I found at a paper show many years back. It's for the 3rd episode of the "Perils of Pauline" (1914) serial. It's b&w, and shows several inset photos of the production. On the front, it touts "The Great $25,000 Eclectic Photoplay by Chas. Goddard" and "Played by the Great Pathe Players Under Special Lease." Might very likely be the oldest piece of movie memorabilia I own. Cost me all of two dollars.

Several obvious contenders, and it's hard to argue against LBJ for one.

But damn. Biden facilitating a massive foreign invasion full of millions of third-world cretins, savages and illiterates onto our land is still about the most vile, traitorous thing any American leader has ever done to the country. He should never even have the honor of burial in American soil, his fetid remains more deservedly served up to scavenging rodents on some distant continent.

It really is hard to have any respect for a country that can so willingly serve up their own female citizenry, their own wives and daughters, to foreign savages. But the globalist mindset is akin to the commie revolutionaries of yore, and anything and everything can be sacrificed for the 'cause.'

Never saw bums lying around parking lots, or freakazoids under underpasses when I was young, here in America, either. The vast majority of towns and cities just didn't put up with that kind of culturally decrepit activity.

Oddly enough, I've run across a number of examples of sheet-music tied to silent films from the late-1910s into the 1920s, often sporting pictures of the various stars of the films.

I'd already listed some favorite silents, but I'll list a few more, starting with some fairly heralded 'classics' that I'm particularly fond of:

1. "Docks of New York" (1928) George Bancroft, Betty Compson
2. "Lucky Star" (1929) Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell
3. "The Toll Gate" (1920) William S. Hart, Anna Q. Nilsson
4. "Wild Oranges" (1924) Frank Mayo, Virginia Valli
5. "Underground" (1928-British) Brian Aherne, Elissa Landi
6. "Stella Maris" (1918) Mary Pickford, Conway Tearle
7. "Redskin" (1929) Richard Dix, Gladys Belmont
8. "A Kiss for Cinderella" (1925) Betty Bronson, Tom Moore
9. "Asphalt" (1929-German) Betty Amann, Gustav Frolich
10. "Robin Hood" (1923) Douglas Fairbanks, Enid Bennett

But, there's a ton of 'little' films from the silent era that I often enjoy just as much, if not more, than a lot of the classics. Some that have clicked nicely with me, and had a good re-watchability factor include:

1. "The Matinee Idol" (1928) Bessie Love, Johnny Walker
2. "Lorraine of the Lions" (1925) Patsy Ruth Miller
3. "Padlocked" (1926) Lois Moran, Louise Dresser
4. "13 Washington Square" (1928) Jean Hersholt, Alice Joyce
5. "The False Road" (1920) Enid Bennett, Lloyd Hughes
6. "What Happened to Jones" (1926) Reginald Denny
7. "The Apple Tree Girl" (1917) Shirley Mason
8. "Wild Horse Mesa" (1925) Jack Holt, Billie Dove
9. "The Thirteenth Hour" (1927) Conrad Nagel, Leila Hyams
10. "Go and Get It" (1920) Pat O'Malley, Agnes Ayres

One thing I would like to see from some dvd company would be a really nice collection of all those Helen Holmes 'railroad' films, from the 1910s "Hazards of Helen" episodes to the 1920s features produced by her husband, J.P. McGowan, all looking nicely restored. Most of the public-domain prints circulating around are in such ratty shape. I love them, but they're all such eyesores.