June 2015
The Docks of New York – Directed by Josef von Sternberg
The Docks of New York (1928) is a silent drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring George Bancroft, Betty Compson, and Olga Baclanova. The movie was adapted by Jules Furthman from the John Monk Saunders storyThe Dock Walloper. In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Find out more »All Wet! Performing at Jazzare
All Wet! Will be performing a few musical numbers in the Jazzare Viva La Diva Cabaret Review. We will be debuting a new original tune by Cliff Retallick called Murder In Babylon so don't miss it! JAZZARE is a Monthly Musical Comedy Burlesque Revue that takes place every second Saturday of the month at Echoes Under Sunset in Echo Park, Ca. Full of shimmies, shakes and gorgeous costumes, the literally in-your-face show is interactive, stimulating and hilarious. It is a…
Find out more »Roaring 20’s Party at the Egyptian Theatre
Don't miss this jam packed evening presented by Retro Format and the American Cinematheque! Retro Format will be showing clips and shorts featuring your favorite silent stars like Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Felix the Cat, Will Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and more! Plus Live entertainment from the Poverty Row Revue featuring All Wet and Flannery Lunsford. If you haven't seen All Wet! perform original numbers written by Cliff Retallick you really are All Wet!
Find out more »July 2015
SYNTHETIC SIN – Starring Coleen Moore at the Silent Treatment
LOS ANGELES PREMIERE!!! Recently rediscovered in Bologna, Italy, this is the first presentation of SYNTHETIC SIN in Los Angeles in more than 82 years! A partial VITAPHONE soundtrack survives for the last few minutes of the film. Cliff Retallick will provide a live score up to that point and then let the original Vitaphone splendor take over. The plot: Famed playwright Donald Anthony returns home to Magnolia Gap, Virginia, and proposes to Betty Fairfax (Coleen). She accepts and he offers…
Find out more »LAZYBONES / SECRETS Double Feature
UCLA Film and Television Archive Presents "7th Heaven: The Films of Frank Borzage" Don't miss this double feature with live accompaniment by Cliff Retallick. Lazybones (1925) A shiftless young farmer (Charles Buck Jones) takes a fatherless infant girl under his wing after he rescues her and her mother from the river, until, years later, his experience of war transforms his feelings for his now adult ward. Abounding with Biblical allusions and echoes of D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920), Lazybones finds director Frank Borzage…
Find out more »Lucky Star / The River Double Feature
The UCLA Film and Television Archives Presents: "7th Heaven: The Films of Frank Borzage" Lucky Star (1929) A pastoral melodrama that director Frank Borzage whips into soaring romantic rapture, Lucky Star reteams Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell as a simple farm girl and wounded WWI vet whose love for each other overcomes all odds. Borzage’s bathes the film’s deeply evocative stage sets with his trademark chiaroscuro lighting and soft-focus to surpass even 7th Heaven’s sense of otherworldly grace. Production: Fox…
Find out more »August 2015
Sadie Thompson – Staring Gloria Swanson
A young, beautiful prostitute named Sadie Thompson (Gloria Swanson) arrives on the South Pacific island of Pago Pago looking for honest work, and falls for Timothy O'Hara (Raoul Walsh), an American sailor who is unfazed by her unsavory past. However, Mr. Davidson (Lionel Barrymore), a missionary who arrived on the island at the same time, aims to "save" Sadie from her sinful life and petitions to have her separated from her beau and deported back to San Francisco. STARRING GLORIA…
Find out more »Retro Format: Silent Stars in Drag
See some of your favorite silent stars like Gloria Swanson, Fatty Arbuckle and Charlie Chapin dressed in drag (some more convincingly than others) and all the comedy and confusion that follows!
Find out more »The Red Kimona
In-person: Allison Anders. Live musical accompaniment will be provided by Cliff Retallick. The Red Kimona (1925) Director Dorothy Arzner's screenplay adaptation of Adela Rogers St. John's sensational story emphasizes women's extreme and often impossible dilemmas. Young Gabrielle Darley has been lured into prostitution by a man who trifled with her emotions…and whom she ultimately murders. Becoming the ward of a self-aggrandizing socialite, Gabrielle sees another dead end and only wishes to better herself, but she faces many trials in transcending her…
Find out more »September 2015
THE SILENT TREATMENT: Don Q Son of Zorro
For this month’s SILENT TREATMENT, Cinefamily presents the RARELY SEEN sequel to The Mark of Zorro: Don Q, Son of Zorro! Loosely based on a 1909 novel (Don Q.’s Love Story, a mother and son collaboration), this 1925 film begins with a careless mistake that unleashes a glut of drama of aristocratic proportions, complete with runaway bulls, duels, grand society balls, and lots of tumultuous romance. Douglas Fairbanks, aka “The King of Hollywood,” dominates the film, producing and starring in…
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