Classic Film Lovers convene in Los Angeles for the 49th Cinecon Film Festival
The annual Labor Day weekend festivities, which celebrate silent and early soundie films, draw film buffs, collectors, historians and memorabilia collectors from around the world. Stellar silent film accompanists are one of the weekend’s treats.
Cinecon is highly regarded among film fans for screening the rare and unusual films of the silent and early sound era—films that seldom get seen on a big screen. Cinecon combs the major film archives and Hollywood studio vaults to select often forgotten gems that deserve a fresh look and reappraisal. At Cinecon there is something for everyone—comedy, drama, musicals, Westerns. We show the latest restorations—and some one-of-a-kind rarities. Over the years, Cinecon has honored many of Cinema’s silent and soundie greats. This year’s honoree is Shirley Jones.
All films will be shown at Grauman’s Egyptian Theater at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard, most in 35mm. Silent films feature live musical accompaniment. Admission is by day pass or full festival pass, which can be purchased in advance or at the door during the show, please see our Registration page for more information. Show times are approximate and this schedule is subject to change without notice. Some films are listed here pending final clearance. Film running times are approximate. Guest appearances are confirmed subject to unforeseen circumstances.
Cinecon 49 films
Thursday August 29
2:00 IT’S A FRAME UP (2013) 30 min
2:30 THE DOME DOCTOR (1925) 25 min Larry Semon
Silent with musical accompaniment.
Laurence “Larry” Semon worked behind the scenes at Vitagraph as a scriptwriter, director, and film producer for actor Hughie Mack’s films, occasionally casting himself in bit parts in the films he worked on. When Mack left Vitagraph, Semon started playing lead roles, his signature white-faced doofus causing destructive chaos wherever he appeared. His two-reel comedies, filled with extravagant chases culminating in flour, oil and any substance that could make a mess showering over the characters, often cost more than average five-reel features. Semon appeared with Both Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy before they were teamed up, and left films fro Vaudeville in 1928.
3:00 PUDDIN’ HEAD
Director Joseph Santley (“The Cocoanuts”) cranks up the fun. Harold l. Montgomery (Raymond Walburn) the scatterbrained vice-president of the United Broadcasing System, discovers that one-foot of his station’s imposing new National headquarters in has been built on a New York lot belonging to Uncle Lem (Slim Summerville) and hillbilly Judy Goober (Judy Canova) who could sue them for millions. Afraid of his domineering sister, Matilda (Alma Kruger) the president of the company, Montgomery says nothing to her and takes his hapless son, Junior (Eddie Foy Jr.) to the Ozarks to talk them into selling the property before Matilda learns the truth. Telephone operator Judy has a ‘party-line’ local radio show, broadcast from the family general store.
Judy sell the Manhattanites the General Store before she discovers they have their eye on the ramshackle mansion she inherited in the Big Apple. Judy and Lem move to New York, where she resists the blandishments of gigolo Russian Prince Karl (Francis Lederer.) Judy has some great, raucous numbers, including a poolside caper with Eddie Foy Jr.
4:35 DOWN ARGENTINE WAY (1940) 89 min Betty Grable & Don Ameche
Don Ameche, Carmen Miranda and Betty Grable (in arguably her best musical) sparkle. J. Carroll Naish, Charlotte Greenwood, Henry Stephenson, Leonid Kinskey and the Nicholas Brothers add to the high-energy fun. Miranda’s stand alone “Souse Amereecahn” numbers, her Hollywood debut, are kitsch and a blast in “Glorious Technicolor.”
7:40 RED PEPPER (1925) 20 min Al St. John
Silent with musical accompaniment.
Comic actor Al St. John appeared in over 350 films between 1913 and 1952. He worked his way up to leads at Keystone near the end of Sennett’s Keystone obligations and made around 70 2-reel comedies for Fox Film Corporation and Educational Pictures, where this one was made.
7:57 IT’S GREAT TO BE ALIVE (1933) 3 min Trailer
Alfred Werker directed this proto-feminist musical, enlivened by Edna May Oliver. A great set-up to:
8:00 THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1924) 78 min Earle Foxe & Grace Cunard
Silent with musical accompaniment.
Comedy | Fantasy | Sci-Fi -1924 (USA)
An epidemic has killed off all of the fertile men on earth, except for Elmer Smith, a hillbilly who lives out in a cabin in the Ozarks. When he is discovered, every woman on the planet begins fighting over him. This futurist satire was filmed two years after women got the right to vote. Director: John G. Blystone
9:30 WAY OUT WEST (1920) 25 min Hank Mann & Vernon Dent
Silent with musical accompaniment.
10:00 SILK HOSE HIGH PRESSURE (1915) 40 min Billie Ritchie & Alice Howell
Silent with musical accompaniment.
Director Henry Lehrman schnorred D.W. Griffith into hiring him, worked for Sennett then formed L-KO (Lehrman Knock-Out) Pictures, which made two-reel comedies for release by Universal. (This was one.)Star Billie Ritchie graduated from Karno’s British music hall troupe like Chaplin and was considered a Chaplin type comic. Drunken womanizer Ritchie causes havoc at a fancy hotel.
10:50 TERROR ABOARD (1933) 69 min Charles Ruggles & Shirley Grey
Paul Sloane helmed this gripping serial murder film set on a ghost yacht. John Halliday plays the murderous magnate Max, determined to kill off all his guest and crew, and escape to a desert island one step ahead of the “Bankruptcy Police.”
Friday August 30
9:00 JUST A GOOD GUY (1924) 20 min Arthur Stone & Fay Wray
Written and produced by Hal Roach. Directed by Hampton Del Ruth.
Silent with musical accompaniment.
9:20 DR. JACK (1922) 60 min Harold Lloyd
Silent with musical accompaniment.
Harold Lloyd teams with his future wife Mildred Davis as the country doctor Jack Jackson. Called in to treat spoiled heiress “The Sick-Little-Well-Girl ” (Davis). Eric Mayne plays the quack sanitarium owner Dr. Ludwig von Saulsbourg who’s been making hay on the rich family’s gullibility. Jackson cures her with “positive thinking.” Playing without his signature glasses, Lloyd. The good doctor leaps out of his running car to show cows off the road and impersonates an asylum runaway and the guy chasing him. An antic look at the iconic Lloyd character in the making.
Watch for “Our Gang” Mickey Daniels as one of Jackson’s malingering patients.
10:30 HOLLYWOOD’S SILENT ECHOES with JOHN BENGTSON 45 min
Go to http://silentlocations.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/silent-era-hollywood-tour-cinecon-49-author-presentation// to read film location “detective” Bengston’s self guided tour of silent film locations and studios prepared in connection with the “Hollywood’s Silent Echoes” presentation
11:25 PAUL KILLIAM PROMO 6 min
11:35 A TOUGH WINTER (1930) 20 min [English language version] Our Gang
This Hal Roach comedy was withdrawn from Television in the 70’s because of Stepin Fetchit’s possibly offensive character. Fetchit’s ironic, slow moving character who outfoxes everyone, is a later day variant of the Servant-Master farces, well known from Commedia del arte Opera, and Burlesque. Little Wheezer, Mary Ann and Farina all have turns.
11:55 A TOUGH WINTER (1930) 10 min [French version] Our Gang
12:05 DON’T GET NERVOUS 10 min Billy Gilbert & Fay McKenzie
Silent with musical accompaniment.
2:00 FLUTTERING HEARTS (1927) 20 min Charley Chase & Martha Sleeper
Charlie Chase has a few wonderful gags in this two-reeler. Evil blackmailer Big Bill plans to bring down Millionaire (William Burress), father to a spoiled heiress (Martha Sleeper). Out-of-towner self made man Charlie baits Big Bill with a pretty store mannequin, animating her so she flirts with the drunken crook. Oliver Hardy, still a single, plays the blackmailer. Peppy Martha Sleeper is a great comic foil. A White Sale fracas in a department store, featuring Eugene Pallette as a policeman is hilarious.
2:30 To Be Determined 112 min
4:30 KICK ME AGAIN (1925) 12 min Charles Puffy
Silent with musical accompaniment.
This comedy short was one of the 75 silents discovered at the New Zealand Film Archive in 2009 and recently restored.
Hungarian-born Jewish actor Charles Puffy (Károly Huszár) began his career as the slapstick star of countless Hungarian and German silents, moved to Hollywood in 1924, began work at Universal Pictures Corporation in 1926, where he made this comedy. He returned to Germany to make sound films (most notably in Lang’s ‘Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler”, Sternberg’s “Der blaue Engel” (1930), where he played the club owner, and Paul Leni’s “The Man Who Laughs” (1928). His final film was shot in 1938. He died during World War ll, either in Tokyo, Japan or captured (with his wife) by the Red Army and imprisoned in a Gulag in Karaganda, Kazahstan.
4:55 RAMROD (1948) 95 min Joel McCrea & Veronica Lake
Based on a Luke Short novel, this lesser known western stars Veronica Lake (soon to marry director André de Toth) as Connie Dickason, the spunky daughter of weak-willed ranch owner Ben Dickason (Charlie Ruggles), whose fallen under the control of evil cattleman Frank Ivey (Preston Foster). Ivey, with her father’s compliance tries to run Connie’s sheep ranch out of business. She hires a gang of toughs, but honorable ranch hand Dave Nash (Joel McCrea), after attempting to handle things in a civilized manner, takes matters into his own hands and kills Ivey. Stunning black and white photography by Russell Harlan (“To Kill a Mockingbird”) and it’s hard hitting story give it a Noirish quality. Against type casting of Ruggles as the weak father and “best-friend” mainstay Donald DeFore, as the promiscuous killer Bill Schell, is a revelation. Happily his role is a meaty one.
8:00 THE SCHOOL TEACHER AND THE WAIF (1912) 15 min Mary Pickford
Silent with musical accompaniment.
Mary plays the unschooled girl raised by an alcoholic (Charles Hill Mailes). Embarrassed at school, she runs away and is on the verge of being taken by a city slicker when Kindly teacher (Edwin August) intervenes.
8:15 THE PRIDE OF THE CLAN (1917) 80 min Mary Pickford
Silent with musical accompaniment.
The 1917 Mary Pickford classic directed by Maurice Tourneur. Upon the film’s release, Exhibitors Trade Review enthused: “The versatility [Pickford] exhibits throughout the production will cause it to be listed by critics as the best film in which she has appeared,” and film scholar Richard Koszarski notes The Pride of the Clan was “ten years ahead of its time.” One of Pickford’s earliest full-length features, director Tourneur uses his locations (shot on Marblehead Neck, Massachusetts, whose stormy, rocky seaside geographic areas stand in for a Scottish Island) to good effect. John van den Broek and Lucien N. Andriot shared camera duties. Mary plays a young girl who becomes clan chieftain after her father dies. The island villagers live the simple lives of “fisher folk.”
9:50 LET’S GO NATIVE (1930) 75 min Jeanette MacDonald & Jack Oakie
Leo McCarey’s silly musical, that ranges from Broadway to an ocean liner bound for Argentina to a desert island marooning, stars the unlikely all-singing trio of Jeanette MacDonald, Jack Oakie and Kay Francis, all newly signed to Paramount. There’s a wonderful hat-tossing gag worthy of the best escalating silent comedies (like Oliver and Hardy’s “You’re Darn Tootin”). ‘Skeets’ Gallagher plays Jerry the KIng of the Island, Eugene Pallette plays Deputy Sheriff ‘Careful’ Cuthbert and. Watch for showgirls Virginia Bruce and Iris Adrian.
11:15 ONE MILE FROM HEAVEN (1937) 60 min Claire Trevor & Sally Blaine
Claire Trevor bids a not-so-fond farewell to reporter buddies Douglas Fowley, Ray Walker and Russell Hopton as she heads for Waco, TX, to become society reporter for The Cattleman’s Daily Bugle in this drama, directed by Allan Dwan.
With its three tap numbers, Allan Dwan turns out a blend of a Newspaper farce and a darker-Shirley Temple type vehicle, substituting Joan Carroll (“Meet Me In St Louis”) in her second child role. The controversial script, about a Caucasian orphan raised by a doting Black mother, takes on race relations of the day. Fredi Washington, Bill Robinson and Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson are marvelous.
Saturday August 31
12:00 A FRESH START (1920) 15 min Jimmie Adams
Silent with musical accompaniment.
Jack White directed this gag fest starring Jimmie Adams and Lige Conley. During their release from Jail, he pair can’t resist stealing the guard blind. There’s a clever tunneling sequence, a stop motion chase, an interlude at a restaurant and a wacky seduction scene. Zany for all of it’s brief 15 minutes.
12:15 THE HOLY TERROR (1937) 67 min Jane Withers
A highpoint of the last few Cinecons are the Jane Withers features. Eleven-year-old Jane Withers channels her inner brat to battle shipyard spies in this lively musical. Tony Martin, El Brendel, Joe E. Lewis and the always-marvelous Joan Davis come along for the ride! John Eldredge plays Corky’s service man father Lt. Comdr. Wallace
Model airplane fan Corky Wallace (Withers) contributes her talents to a show put on by the sailors at a local hash house, and discovers a nest of spies.
1:30 A BLONDE’S REVENGE (1926) 20 min Ben Turpin & Vernon Dent
Silent with musical accompaniment.
1:50 THE GOOD BAD MAN (1916) 65 min Douglas Fairbanks & Bessie Love
Silent with musical accompaniment.
The great Douglas Fairbanks stars in this silent western about an outlaw (‘Passin Through”) who changes his evil ways long enough to help some children.
3:00 TRANSIENT LADY (1935) 72 min Frances Drake & Gene Raymond. Francis Drake plays Dale Cameron, who tries to launch a rural skating rink but face resistance from the two trouble making brothers of local senator Hamp Baxter (Henry Hull). Douglas Fowley is strong as Matt Baxter; Ren Baxter is played by the young John Carradine, When Fred Baxter (Phillip Trent as Clifford Jones) is killed, Dale’s innocent partner Chris Blake (Clark Williams) must stand trial. Watch for Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson. Gene Raymond plays Carey Marshall. Directed by Edward Buzzell
4:25 MARE NOSTRUM (1926) 102 min Alice Terry
Silent with musical accompaniment.
Espionage, romance and submarine warfare come together in Maré Nostrum, loosely based on the life of World War I spy Mata Hari, from the author of “”The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Filmed by director Rex Ingram at his studio in Nice, France, and on Mediterranean locations, the luminous photography of John Seitz is shown to full effect in this tinted print from Photoplay Productions courtesy of Warner Bros. Seitz directed the Spanish sequences.
Long thought lost, this love letter to his wife, actress Alice Terry was shot went Ingram left Hollywood, furious with Louis B. Meyer for the destructive cuts the studio made on Erich von Stroheim’s “Greed” (1924), a masterpiece that Ingram tried to salvage. Terry, in a dream role as German Spy Freya Talberg, who sacrifices herself for her country, considered the film the only one in her career that mattered.
MIchael Powell, who was mentored by Ingram, worked as an un-credited grip. He credited Ingram as one of his major influences. Orson Welles copied Ingram’s love scene shot in front of an octopus tank, in “The Lady From Shanghai “. French strongman Apollon (Louis Uni), played The Triton. Ingram fired set designer Ben Carré (“The Last of the Mohicans” (1920) ) and designed the realistic sets himself.
8:00 THEIR FIRST EXECUTION (1913) 14 min Ford Sterling
Silent with musical accompaniment.
The prison officials can’t wait to try out their new Electric Chair. The criminal escapes. The First Deputy (Ford Sterling) tracks him down and dons his discarded duds, hoping to pass as another criminal. Before he can meet the crook, he is captured and the Prison guards decide to execute him to please the waiting crowds. But they can’t, He’s so tough the volts won’t kill him. He resists their attempts in time for the actual crook to be brought to justice. Directed by Mack Sennett, who also plays the Tall Guard.
8:15 SUDDENLY IT’S SPRING (1947) 87 min- Fred MacMurray & Paulette Goddard
Mitchell Leisen’s four handed post-war sex comedy is a charmer. Paulette Goddard plays Mary Morely, a returning WAC assigned to counsel couples separated by military service. Meanwhile, her own marriage to Peter Morley (Fred MacMurray) is on the rocks, a victim of her long-term War assignment. Peter’s been romancing stay at home Gloria Fay (Arleen Whelan) and serves her with divorce papers as his Welcome Home gift. Family friend Jack Lindsay (Macdonald Carey) pursues Mary. Frank Faylen is hilarious as Harold Michaels. The script is typical of the late 40’s “professional woman” eating crow, but a sprightly cast, Victor Young’s score and lovely black-and-white cinematography by Daniel L. Fapp’s (“The Big Clock”, “Golden Earrings”, “West Side Story”) add up to the bullet proof Leisen touch.
9:55 HOLD ‘EM YALE (1928) 78 min Rod La Rocque
Silent with musical accompaniment.
11:15 To Be Determined
Sunday September 1
9:00 TURKISH HOWLS (1927) 20 min Al Cooke & Kit Guard
Silent with musical accompaniment.
9:20 EVE’S LEAVES (1926) 75 min Leatrice Joy & William Boyd
Silent with musical accompaniment.
Leatrice Joy gives Chinese pirates the cold shoulder in this light-hearted adventure.
Raised as a boy, Eve Corbin (Leatrice Joy) falls in love in China and discovers the birds and bees. Delightful comedienne Leatrice Joy (Zeidler), a Cecil B. DeMille discovery, often played opposite Billy West and Oliver Hardy, before graduating to the sophisticated socialite and career women roles she was known for. She supposedly started the bobbed -hair craze and retired from pictures shortly after sound came in, but returned for various roles in the late thirties and forties and performed in Live Television. Joy had a daughter with her first husband, John Gilbert.
10:50 SUTTER’S GOLD (1936) 95 min Edward Arnold & Lee Tracy
Based on Blaise Cendrar’s book “Sutter’s Gold”, James Cruze’s 1936 film, makes up for script flaws with a sterling performance by Edward Arnold as Johann Sutter, an itinerant flute player in Switzerland, who heads to America to avoid being wrongfully arrested for a death in a bar where he performed. Once in New York, he takes the wrong job, driving a Trolley car for a union breaker, and winds up in the hospital. Sutter meets Pete Perkin (Lee Tracy) and they take off for California, where they mix it up with Russians (including Countess Elizabeth Bartoffski (Binnie Barnes) and some Sandwich island slaves. Gold is discovered on Sutter’s claim. Bigmouth Pete broadcasts the news and in the ensuing Gold Rush, Sutter’s strike is stolen. The story whitewashes Sutter’s life, but entertaining performances all around make for an engaging watch.
2:00 A THRILLING ROMANCE (1926) 20 min Wanda Wiley & Earl McCarthy, Joe Bonner
Silent with musical accompaniment.
An aspiring writer chases after a pair of crooks when her handbag is taken.
2:20 OH, MARY, BE CAREFUL (1921) 70 min Madge Kennedy
Silent with musical accompaniment.
‘Winsome” Madge Kennedy was one of the first contact players at Sam Goldwyn’s Goldwyn Pictures, where she filmed 21 light comedies. Kennedy acted in several films produced by husband Harold Bolster, and returned to film for George Cukor, playing the small role of Judge Carroll in ‘”Marrying Kind” (1952). She appeared in “Lust for Life” (1956), “The Catered Affair” (1956), “North by Northwest” (1959) and “The Day of the Locust” (1975). Kennedy played the part of Aunt Martha on “Leave It to Beaver (1957)”.
3:45 APRIL LOVE (1957) 99 min (In person, honoree Shirley Jones- Q&A after)
Most people know this light-hearted musical from a dreadful pan and scan version that’s played on TV. Teen Nick Conover (Pat Boone) is sent to live in the country with his Aunt Henrietta (Jeanette Nolan) and Uncle Jed (Arthur O’Connell) out in the country after being put on probation for stealing a car. Uncle Jed’s in a deep depression after losing his own son, Jed Jr., whose wild Sulky trotter won’t let anyone near him .
Nick falls for neighbor Fran (Dolores Michaels) and Liz Templeton ((Shirley Jones)) another neighbor falls for Nick. Everyone is likeable in this good-natured film. Wilfred M. Cline’s beautiful cinematography captures Kentucky’s glories, and music by Sammy Fain and Alfred Newman are charming, especially the title song.
7:30 BOTTOMS UP (1934) 85 min Spencer Tracy & Thelma Todd
BOTTOMS UP (1934) 85 min Spencer Tracy & Thelma Todd
Promoter Smoothe King (Tracy) helps a pair of phonies con their way into a movie company. As Wanda (Thelma Todd) heads toward stardom, she turns more and more from King toward the matinée idol, Hal Ried (John Boles). King must decide between his plans and her happiness. Director: David Butler, watch for Lucille Ball seated with Boles in the party sequence. Tracy in a musical! He doesn’t sing, but there are fetching numbers like the 1890’s “Waitin’ at the Gate for Katie.” Sid Silvers delivers as always.
9:00 THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE (1956) 104 min Ernest Borgnine
A show business story about the song-writing team of Buddy DeSylva
(Gordon MacRae), Lew Brown (Ernest Borgnine) and Ray Henderson (Dan Dailey).
DeSylva, Brown & Henderson (1926 to 1930) wrote Broadway shows (including the 1927 hit “Good News”, “”Follow Through”. and early sound musicals, including Al Jolson’s “The Singing Fool” and Jolson’s third film, “Say It With Songs.”
Michael Curtiz’s journeyman direction, and the studio’s decision to amp up typically Twenties Hits into 50’s glitzy numbers perhaps do a disservice to these standards, but once you’ve accepted that you will enjoy the infectious tunes.
Great numbers include the title song, “Meet the Missus”, “Button Up Your Overcoat”, Jacques d’Amboise and Sheree North sizzle in “Birth Of the Blues” and “Black Bottom.’ Tommy Noonan, Larry Kerr and Larry Keating and a young, un-credited Barrie Chase, add to the fun.
10:50 IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU (1939) 72 min Stuart Erwin & Gloria Stuart
A mystery-comedy in which a milquetoast ad man finds himself accused of murder when a corpse is found in the trunk of his car. He lands in the hoosegow while his wife tries to prove his innocence. “One of the best stories the Saturday Evening Post ever ran!…better still on the screen!” Stu Irwin!
Monday September 2
9:00 WET AND WARMER (1920) 25 min Billie Ritchey
Silent with musical accompaniment.
Director and gagman Henry Lehrman directed many of the Keystone Kops comedies. Known for designing dangerous stunts, he was dubbed “Suicide Lehrman” by stuntman Harvey Parry.
Born in Scotland in 1874, Billie Ritchie joined the world-renowned Karno Fun Factory and Comedy Troupe traveling the world with Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, among others. In 1914 Ritchie left Karno and began making silent films for director Henry “Pathe” Lehrman’s L-Ko Comedy studios and then his Fox/Sunshine Studios.
Ritchie always claimed that Charlie Chaplin imitated his on-stage character of a rag-bedecked “little tramp”. In fact, many actors at Karno played the same roles. Ritchie was injured while making a Lehrman comedy when several ostriches used in filming attacked the unfortunate actor. He was severely injured, and was confined to his bed for two years with internal injuries. He eventually succumbed to his injuries on July 6, 1921, dying in bed at his Hollywood home at 1200 North McCadden Place. He was only 42.
9:25 CASTLES FOR TWO (1917) 60 min Marie Doro
Silent with musical accompaniment.
10:45 THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1929) 71 min Clive Brook
British idol Clive Brook (‘Shanghai Express”) played Sherlock Holmes three times: “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” and “Sherlock Holmes” (in that order), and as part of an anthology film, “Paramount on Parade” (1930). Director Basil Dean
1:15 HI, GOOD LOOKIN’ (1944) 60 min Ozzie Nelson & Harriet Hilliard
2:25 CHINA (1943) 78 min Loretta Young & Alan Ladd
American war profiteer Mr. Jones (Alan Ladd), making a tidy profit selling Gasoline to the Japanese tries to flee the brutal Japanese invasion of China. He meets American schoolteacher Carolyn Brent (Loretta Young) and witnesses an atrocity committed by the Japs upon one of her girl students. The self-involved businessman turns hero, raids the Japanese camp and dynamites a Japanese division in the mountains. William Bendix turns in an amusing turn as sidekick Johnny Sparrow. Alan Ladd’s last picture for Paramount before he got drafted. Director John Farrow’s opening tracking shot shows a Japanese bombing attack on a Chinese village and establishes Bendix’s story arc. The cast is strong, including Korean-American actor Philip Ahn and Hawaiian Richard Loo (both of whom often played evil Japanese) and a Who’s Who of Chinese American actors: Victor Sen Yun (“Across The Pacific”), Iris Wong (of Charlie Chan fame), Ching Wah Lee (‘The Good Earth”, “Flower Drum Song”), Marianne Quon, Irene Tso, Soo Yong, Barbara Jean Wong and Jessie Tai Sing as the violated student.
3:55 FIFTY ROADS TO TOWN (1937) 91 min Don Ameche & Ann Sothern
Don Ameche and Ann Sothern star in this screwball comedy about divorce, eloping, gangsters and mistaken identity in the Canadian woods, directed by Norman Taurog.
5:30 DOWN ARGENTINE WAY (1940) 89 min Betty Grable & Don Ameche
Don Ameche, Carmen Miranda and Betty Grable (in arguably her best musical) sparkle. J. Carroll Naish, Charlotte Greenwood, Henry Stephenson, Leonid Kinskey and the Nicholas Brothers add to the high-energy fun. Miranda’s stand alone “Souse Amereecahn” numbers, her Hollywood debut, are kitsch and a blast in “Glorious Technicolor.”
We do our best to stick to the schedule, but changes and delays are inevitable.
As a result of previously scheduled events in the Loews Hollywood hotel, this year only the schedule for Cinecon 49 will differ from the well-established blueprint of recent years.
Cinecon’s famed Memorabilia show, Film Book Fair and celebrity Career Achievement Awards Banquet take place a few blocks down the street at the Loews Hollywood Hotel (formerly the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel) at 1755 North Highland Avenue. Cinecon attendees receive a special discount when booking their accommodations at the Loews.
The Memorabilia show and Film Book Fair will be located in the 3rd floor meeting area of the hotel and the banquet will be in the Hollywood Ballroom on the mezzanine level (second floor). The opening of our dealers rooms will be shifted to Saturday, August 31, with a three-hour screening-free window to allow attendees unfettered time in the movie memorabilia rooms.
Distribution of pre-registration packets will begin on Thursday August 29th at 12 noon with walk up registrations starting at 1:00 PM only at the Egyptian Theater. There will be no registration tables at the hotel on either Thursday or Friday.
Screenings will begin at 2:00 PM on Thursday, August 29th, five hours earlier than usual. You’ll want to come early so you don’t miss any of the great films on the schedule. In another break with tradition, we will also be screening films on Sunday evening September 1.