Lame Brains and Lunatics

Silent Film Comedy was a fortuitous combination of art and technology wherethe physical comedy skills and artistry passed down from the Commediadell'Arte English music hall and American vaudeville were captured forposterity by the newly created motion picture camera. While the ChaplinsKeatons and Laurel & Hardys are still remembered and celebrated this bookprofiles unsung practitioners such as Billie Ritchie Marcel Perez LigeConley and George Rowe with special focus on the neglected comediennesAlice Howell Gale Henry Fay Tincher and Josie Sadler. Popular icons onthe order of Mack Sennett Marie Dressler Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle and W.C.Fields are re-examined plus detailed histories of silent comedy teams andkid's comedies are offered. The book also includes selected filmographiesand is lavishly illustrated with more than 225 rarely-seen photographs andadvertising images.Steve Massa is a leading enthusiast of silent comedy who has devoted 45years to researching the genre. A librarian in the Billy Rose TheatreCollection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at LincolnCenter he has organized comedy film programs for the Museum of Modern Artthe Library of Congress the Smithsonian Institution and the PordenoneSilent Film Festival. In addition to consulting with the Eye Film InstituteNetherlands and other archives and writing for film journals such asGriffithiana he is a founding member of Silent Cinema Presentations whichproduces NYC's Silent Clown Film Series. Steve has also contributed articlesand commentary tracks to many comedy DVD collections such as The ForgottenFilms of Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle Becoming Charley Chase and Kino Video'sBuster Keaton: The Short Films Collection.