IT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM SHELF!

Fans of silent slapstick have reason to rejoice, because Undercrank Productions has announced that their 2-DVD set, The Alice Howell Collection, will be released on March 5th.  This set will contain twelve extremely rare short comedies starring the forgotten queen of silent slapstick, Alice Howell.

I previously posted about this project when film historian and composer, Ben Model, announced a Kickstarter to restore and release six Alice Howell comedies.  The Kickstarter was so successful that Model was able to double the size of the set and include twelve shorts (which I believe is most of what remains of the 100+ films that Alice Howell made during the silent era).  I was one of the Kickstarter backers, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the discs!

Now that the project is complete, non-backers of the Kickstarter can also purchase the set, which is sure to be one of the most important video releases of the year.  It is currently available for pre-order for U.S. shoppers through Amazon, Shop TCM, DeepDiscount, and Movies Unlimited.  For silent film enthusiasts in Canada, Australia, Denmark, Germany, France, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden, the discs can be ordered through WowHD.

Here is the Amazon purchasing link: The Alice Howell Collection (2-DVD Set)

And below is the official press release:

ALICE HOWELL, FORGOTTEN FUNNY LADY OF THE SILENT SCREEN, FEATURED IN NEW TWO-DISC DVD SET OF REDISCOVERED AND NEWLY RESTORED COMEDY SHORTS  

Undercrank Productions Teams with Library of Congress To Bring Star Comedienne and Films Back From Obscurity To The Public for Women’s History Month

NEW YORK, N.Y. (WEDNESDAY February 13, 2019) – Undercrank Productions (www.undercrankproductions.com) announced today that THE ALICE HOWELL COLLECTION will be released on DVD March 5, 2019. The twelve slapstick shorts in this 2-disc collection star the largely forgotten silent-era comedy star Alice Howell, are newly restored, and have not been seen by or available to the public in nearly 100 years.

Alice Howell starred in her own very popular series of comedy shorts from 1915-1925 for studios like L-KO Komedies, Century Comedies, Reelcraft and Universal. Billed as the “Scream of the Screen” and “the Female Chaplin”, Howell’s screen persona was a working-class “scrub-woman” who expertly combined charm and personality with knockabout physical comedy, and was sort of a frizzy-haired silent movie forerunner of Lucille Ball. Although she starred in over a hundred films, her comedy shorts and career are largely unknown as a majority of the one- and two-reelers she made are lost. Fortunately, a dozen of them have been rounded up for this two-disc DVD set; most have been preserved by the Library of Congress, and a number of titles have been sourced from film archives in England, France, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Howell is also part of a Hollywood legacy. Her son-in-law was George Stevens, the Academy-Award-winning director of Giant, Shane, Gunga Din and Swing Time – he met Howell’s daughter Yvonne at a dinner at Oliver Hardy’s house. Alice’s grandson is George Stevens, Jr., Founding Director of the American Film Institute and creator of the Kennedy Center Honors, and himself an Oscar recipient for Lifetime Achievement.

“Alice Howell was the first slapstick queen – slapstick with a pretty face,” says Steve Massa, author of Slapstick Divas: The Women of Silent Comedy. “More than even Mabel Normand, Howell gave her all and risked life and limb in the pursuit of screen laughter. Unafraid to take the bumps and bruises that the boys did, she could match tumbles and falls with Al St. John or Billie Ritchie – but at the same time had comic timing and movements that were as clean and precise as Keaton and Chaplin’s.”

The films on the The Alice Howell Collection were digitally remastered in 2K from original film materials preserved by the Library of Congress, the BFI National Archive for the British Film Institute, the EYE Filmmuseum (Netherlands), the Danish Film Institute, Lobster Films (Paris) and the Blackhawk Films Collection. Each of the films feature new musical scores on piano and theatre organ by renowned silent film accompanist Ben Model.

THE ALICE HOWELL COLLECTION

THE FILMS: Disc One — Shot in the Excitement (1914), Father Was a Loafer (1915), Under New Management (1915), How Stars Are Made (1916), Neptune’s Naughty Daughter (1917), In Dutch (1918); Disc Two – Distilled Love (1920), His Wooden Leg-acy (1920), Her Lucky Day (1920), Cinderella Cinders (1920), A Convict’s Happy Bride (1920), Under A Spell (1925)

Directors: Dick Smith, John G. Blystone

Starring Alice Howell, with Dick Smith, Oliver Hardy, Robert McKenzie, Fatty Voss, James Finlayson, Neal Burns, Hughie Mack, Raymond Griffith, Billie Ritchie, Phil Dunham, Jackie Condon, Neely Edwards, Bert Roach

Genre: Comedy
DVD Street Date: March 5, 2019
DVD SRP: $24.98
217 mins – B&W – stereo – NTSC – not rated – region-free – 4:3 aspect ratio
new musical scores composed and performed by Ben Model
DVD curated by Steve Massa and Ben Model
produced for video by Ben Model
released by Undercrank Productions

ABOUT BEN MODEL
Ben Model is one of the nation’s leading silent film accompanists and has been a resident film pianist at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) since 1984 and for the Library of Congress since 2008.  He accompanies silent films on piano and theatre organ regularly at MoMA, the Library of Congress, the Silent Clowns Film Series (NYC), and at many theatres and schools around the US and internationally. His composed silent film scores are performed regularly by orchestras and concert bands around the U.S. and Canada.  His recorded scores can be heard on numerous releases from Kino Lorber, Milestone Films and on Turner Classic Movies (TCM).  Model is a Visiting Professor of Film at Wesleyan University, where he teaches silent film history. He is also the archivist for the Ernie Kovacs/Edie Adams collection and has programmed three DVD box sets of Kovacs’ TV shows for Shout Factory, as well as MVD’s “Here’s Edie: The Edie Adams Television Shows”. He is based in New York City. Website: silentfilmmusic.com, Twitter and Instagram @silentfilmmusic.

ABOUT UNDERCRANK PRODUCTIONS
Undercrank Productions is a distributor and producer of quality DVD/BluRay releases of the undiscovered classics of the silent screen. Undercrank Prods. works with both archives and private collectors to bring undeservedly overlooked gems of silent cinema from film cans to film fans. The label has a co-branding agreement with the Library of Congress that has enabled it to release several DVDs of rare and important silent comedies preserved by the Library: The Mishaps of Musty Suffer vols 1 and 2, The Family Secret starring Baby Peggy, two volumes of The Marcel Perez Collection, the first of which was awarded “Special Mention” at the Cinema Ritrovato’s annual DVD competition in 2016. Additionally Undercrank has released three long-unseen 1922 Marion Davies films preserved by the Library of Congress – When Knighthood Was in Flower, The Bride’s Play and Beauty’s Worth, as well as a DVD of early “Kinetophone” sound films made in 1913 by the Thomas Edison Company and restored by the Library of Congress.
undercrankproductions.com