Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with silent comedy on 3/17 at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth, N.H.

An original promotional card for 'Conductor 1492' starring Johnny Hines.

Since last posting anything, I've gone through a busy period that included a half-dozen screenings at the Harvard Film Archive, the Kansas Silent Film Festival, and many other events crowding the schedule.

I'm still in recovery mode, and will round up accounts of those adventures very soon.

But as I'm one-quarter Irish, I can't let St. Patrick's Day go by without blowing off me big dord (an ancient bronze horn native to Ireland) about a program that's sure'n to be coming up tomorrow night.

It's a silent film St. Patrick's Day celebration at the Flying Monkey Moviehouse House and Performance Center, doon't ye know? (All right, enough of the Lucky Charms accent.)

As part of our monthly series at the Monkey, we're running 'Conductor 1492' (1924), a breezy Irish-themed comedy starring Johnny Hines. Showtime is Thursday, March 17 at 6:30 p.m. Details in the press release pasted in below.

Hines may be totally forgotten, but the film really holds up well as an ethnic comedy of its time, poking gentle fun at the Irish experience in America.

As a warm-up, we're also screening one of Buster Keaton's short comedies. So it'll be a fun-filled evening of silent film with live music, and I hope you'll be joining us, arrh to be sure. (All right, enough!)

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MONDAY, MARCH 14, 2016 / FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Jeff Rapsis • (603) 236-9237 • jeffrapsis@gmail.com

Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with uproarious silent comedy about Irish immigrant

Johnny Hines in 'Conductor 1492' to be screened with live music at Flying Monkey on Thursday, March 17

PLYMOUTH, N.H.—Celebrate St. Patrick's day with a vintage silent film comedy about an Irish immigrant's misadventures in America.

'Conductor 1492,' a 1924 movie starring Johnny Hines, will by shown with live music at the Flying Monkey Moviehouse and Performance Center on Thursday, March 17 at 6:30 p.m.

Live music will be provided by Jeff Rapsis, a New Hampshire-based silent film musician who frequently accompanies programs at the Flying Monkey.

The program will also include Buster Keaton's short comedy 'My Wife's Relations' (1922), in which Keaton accidentally marries into an Irish family.

Admission to the program, which is part of the Flying Monkey's monthly silent film series, is $10 per person.

'Conductor 1492' follows the exploits of Terry O'Toole (Johnny Hines), a young man who leaves Ireland to make his fortune in 1920s America.

After arriving, he gets a job as a conductor on a streetcar and fights off an attempt by crooks to take over the company, all the while pursuing the boss' beautiful daughter.

The film, released in 1924 by Warner Brothers, takes a light-hearted look at the immigrant experience in America at the time, as seen through Irish eyes.

Born in 1895, Johnny Hines was a popular movie comedian during the silent era, starring in such pictures as 'Burn 'em Up Barnes' (1921) and 'The Live Wire' (1925).

In his films, Hines often portrayed energetic young men eager to get ahead in business and find success—a popular theme in the booming years of the 1920s.

Although his movies were well-received, Hines never rivaled comic mega-stars of the era such as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.

Described by one historian as the "Jack Lemmon of the silents," Hines had a likeably extroverted screen personality, starring in about 50 motion pictures, most of which are lost and unavailable today.

'Conductor 1492' is considered one of Hines' better surviving titles. Directed by his brother Charles Hines, the picture contains several highly comic sequences and is frequently run at revival events.

The film is classified as an "ethnic comedy" that satirizes the Irish experience in America.

Irish immigrants had been a significant presence in the United States beginning in the 1840s. By the 1920s, the Irish had become well-established enough to be the focus of good-hearted satire, of which 'Conductor 1492' abounds.

Another surviving Hines feature, 'The Crackerjack' (1925), will be screened to round out the Flying Monkey program.

With the advent of sound in the motion picture industry, Hines' career went into decline. During the 1930s, he would appear in only six films, all in smaller, supporting roles.

In 1938 he would have his last significant role, that of Parsons in 'Too Hot to Handle,' which starred Clark Gable and Myrna Loy.

Hines died in 1970 at age 75.

Upcoming programs in the Flying Monkey's silent film series include:

• Thursday, April 14, 2016, 6:30 p.m.: "The Thief of Bagdad" (1924). Eye-popping spectacle starring swashbuckling star Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in top form as Arabian adventurer who must complete a series of epic tasks to save his beloved.

• Thursday, May 12, 2016, 6:30 p.m.: "Paths to Paradise" (1925) and "Hands Up!" (1926). A double feature of films starring Raymond Griffith, a talented comic who at one time rivaled Chaplin and Keaton in the silent comedy pantheon.

All movies in Flying Monkey's silent film series are rarely screened in a way that allows them to be seen at their best. To revive them, organizers aim to show the films as they were intended—in top quality restored prints, on a large screen, with live music, and with an audience.

‘Conductor 1492’ (1924) will be shown with live music on Thursday, March 17, at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey Moviehouse and Performance Center, 39 South Main St., Plymouth, N.H. Admission is $10 per person.

For more info, call the box office at 603-536-2551 or visit www.flyingmonkeynh.com. For more info on the music, visit www.jeffrapsis.com.

The 'Perception Gap' shows up during a screening of 'Yankee Clipper' in Wilton, N.H.

Long before he played Hopalong Cassidy, actor William Boyd (far right) played leading roles such as Captain Hal Winslow in 'The Yankee Clipper.'

Good turnout last Sunday (June 30th) for the first in our series of nautical silent film adventures at the Wilton (N.H.) Town Hall Theatre this summer. About 80 people were on deck to take in 'The Yankee Clipper' (1927), a fun high seas adventure with two local connections.

Local Connection No. 1: The film centered on a race between two 1840s clipper sailing ships from China to Boston, which is our big city here in New England. (Modest local nickname: 'The Hub of the Universe.')

Local Connection no. 2: Playing 'Portugese Joe' was none other than character actor Walter Long, who is a native of Milford, N.H., the town right next to Wilton.

I actually forgot to say anything about the Walter Long connection before the movie, so it was only afterwards that I mentioned he was a local boy. It was enough to earn Walter Long a healthy round of applause!

And afterwards, I was approached by two women who wanted to talk more about Long. One of them was a member of the Fitch family, which has run a dairy farm at "Fitch's Corner" in Milford since probably about the mid 18th century.

The gals thought they might have known Long's family. But I had the sad task of informing them that Dave Stevenson, noted film archivist in Manchester, N.H., had already probed the town records following the year of Walter's birth (1879), and apparently the family was only in town a short while before moving on to who-knows-where.

And that was that, although I'd love to hear from people who might have some knowledge of the family. In the years I've been doing silent film in this part of the world, among the people who've turned up at screenings were director William Wellman's daughter (a New Hampshire resident), a guy who appeared on stage with Gloria Swanson in the 1970s, the niece of pop-eyed Hal Roach comic Jimmy Finlayson, and a woman who claimed to be the daughter of Jackie Coogan's stunt double in 'The Kid' (1921).

There was no way to prove or disprove this last claim, but she earned a round of applause, too.

So if you know about Walter Long's New Hampshire origins, please be in touch. Right now, the Long story is pretty short.

And geez, just now I went and looked at Wikipedia, and it has Walter Long being born in Nashua, N.H., a mill city a bit further east.

As for the music: I had trouble settling into 'Yankee Clipper' in part due to external factors. On the drive to the theater, I got a phone call with news that a long-time friend's mother had just passed away. And while mowing the lawn the day before, I had jammed my right thumb onto a twig, embedding a painful splinter deep under the skin. Ouch! Also, I had hoped to preview the film at least one more time in order to arrange for some exotic settings for some of the sequences in China, but it didn't happen.

So I was a little distracted going in, and showing Buster Keaton's excellent comedy short 'The Boat' (1921) didn't help. I don't know what it is about that Keaton short, but it never gets the laughs I think it should. And that always throws me a bit, further destabilizing my frame of mind going into the main feature.

For 'Yankee Clipper,' I had what a thought was a sturdy 6/8 "nautical" tune that could really anchor (har!) the score. But every time I launched the theme, it never seem to go anywhere and didn't seem to fit the picture very well, either. I did finally produce some effective music during the shipboard scenes: nice rolling arpeggios underneath sustained notes that cycled through patterns that worked well with the on-screen intrigue.

But things got really loose and sloppy during the big storm scene that followed, and the score never seemed to jell after that. I did the best I could to create some excitement during several action sequences that followed. But as the film headed for the conclusion, I was far from satisfied.

What I thought was an uneven performance met with a nice round of applause, but then the house lights failed to come up. It was just one of those afternoons, I guess.

So I wasn't prepared when several people, including some first-timers, to come up afterwards and rave about the score and how it brought the movie to life. Really? I was gratified to hear this, of course, and thanked them for their kind comments. I've learned to refrain from bringing up what I happen to think, as it often doesn't correspond to the impression that an audience takes away.

This happens often enough for me to have a name for it: I call it the "perception gap." Maybe I'm too close to the music, or perhaps too aware of what I'd hoped to do instead of what I just did. But it's often the case that people say they've really enjoyed something that I thought was clearly sub-par.

Well, it goes back to cardinal rule of showbiz: Never apologize. And so far, no one has thrown anything, so I take that as a good sign.

Next up: a screening of a rare Johnny Hines comedy, 'Burn 'Em Up Barnes' (1921) at the Manchester City Library, 405 Pine St., Manchester, N.H. on Tuesday, July 9 at 6:30 p.m. Admission free. Hope to see you there!