
I'd never played for 'The Beloved Rogue' before and was pleased to find out it's a true crowd-pleaser, with a lot of fun scenes that still hold up well today. Leading man John Barrymore, already by then known as "The Great Profile," was confident enough to indulge in mocking his own image, making his first appearance disfigured by an over-sized icicle hanging from his nose.
Shortly after, he topped that by allowing himself to be transformed into a full-on clown. My colleague Dave Stevenson, on hand for this one, felt that Barrymore's clown make-up was a dead ringer for that used by W.C. Fields, so he's wondering if Fields was on the set when that sequence was shot. Interesting.
Well, for the score, I had very little time to prepare anything elaborate, and I'd only watched the film once before, about a year ago, in deciding to program it. The day before the screening, I breezed through it again, mostly at fast forward speed, to remind myself of the overall shape of the picture. But that was it for prep.

Next up: two screenings of '7th Heaven' for Valentine's weekend and then a very crowded rest of February, with gigs in Kennebunk, Maine; Boston, Mass.; two in Manchester, and then it's out to the Kansas Silent Film Festival. Looking forward to it all!
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