Sony Pictures Choice Collection Silent Films (1 Viewer)

[JFFJ]

Excuse me if this has been discussed elsewhere.

Today, I re-visited Columbia's THE BELLE OF BROADWAY, a 1926 silent starring Betty Compson, an enjoyable dramedy with a very appropriate music score by Christopher Caliendo.

Question: Have any additional Columbia silent films been given a MOD treatment?

BTW: TCM's soundtrack composer contest for silent film scores revealed quite a number of gifted, young people with an affinity towards scoring silent films; Mr. Caliendo being one of them. Would be nice to see the distributors of restored silents begin to consider appropriating this wealth of talent for the soundtracks of their future releases.

 

[Bert Greene]

"Belle of Broadway" (1926) is the only silent I know of to be released through the Sony archive series. I was hoping a few more would follow, as I always wanted a little better grasp on Columbia's generic 1920s-era product (and it was admittedly a B-grade studio back then). A big question, of course, is how many of those features even survive. Another Betty Compson item from Columbia that always sounded intriguing was "Court-Martial" (1928), in which she played the head of a group of Civil War guerilla fighters, pursued by Union officer Jack Holt. Plus, from that same year, I always had a hankering to see the comedy "Golf Widows" (1928), with Sally Rand, but I suspect both these films are long-gone.

With the whole Sony archive line so moribund these days, however, such pipe-dreams are more depressingly moot than ever.

 

[JFFJ]

Bert, thanks for the response. I was never able to follow the release schedule of the Sony archive series, so I figured posting was my best option. And unfortunately, it appears that my first guess that BELLE OF BROADWAY was their only silent release was true.

 

[cadavra]

GOLF WIDOWS does indeed exist and was screened at Cinecon several years ago; it's very funny. As for COURT-MARTIAL, I seem to recall it survives in a print with foreign intertitles and minus the color scenes, but I'm not 100% on that.

Sony did release at least one other silent, Capra's THE MATINEE IDOL.

Mike S.

 

[Bert Greene]

GOLF WIDOWS does indeed exist and was screened at Cinecon several years ago; it's very funny. As for COURT-MARTIAL, I seem to recall it survives in a print with foreign intertitles and minus the color scenes, but I'm not 100% on that.

Sony did release at least one other silent, Capra's THE MATINEE IDOL.

Mike S.

Appreciate the info. You know, I thought I had a vague recollection of "Golf Widows" being advertised on the lineup of some Cinecon/Cinefest/Cinevent festival, some years back. Probably the reason the title always lingers in my mind, in addition to the strange curio value of a film that pairs up Sally Rand and Vernon Dent.

Still, I'd be curious to see more examples of Columbia's silent era, and wished its archive line went beyond just "Belle.". The only other Columbia silents I've seen are the usual Capra titles "So This is Love," "Submarine," and "That Certain Thing," all from 1928. Along with a couple of those earlier William Fairbanks actioners, but I've never been sure if those were technically Columbia product, or some independent stuff that the studio might have picked up and distributed in its earliest days. Wispy fare that would hardly be reflective of a studio house-style, regardless. But there's just not a lot out there, to get a good sense of identity when it comes to Columbia's first decade of existence.