Added Mel Brooks, Vitaphone shorts
From left: Mel Brooks, Diane Lane, Morgan Freeman and Nancy Myers
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Attendees of the 15th annual TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood next month will have a chance to interact with Mel Brooks and Vitaphone, both born in 1926. One is extinct and the other is still going strong.
While Brooks, 97, will be on hand for the closing night screening of his 1987 comedy Space balls, six Vitaphone vaudeville shorts from the 1920s will be shown in 35mm format, with the audio playing from their original 16-inch discs on a turntable designed and engineered by Warner Bros. Post-production engineering department.
As announced on Thursday:
• Steven Spielberg will participate in a Q&A with Howard Soper – the UCLA faculty member who is the focus of the recent six-part TCM documentary The power of film – Before the director cut Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977);
• Nancy Meyers and Alexander Payne, respectively, will present the world premiere restorations of Alfred Hitchcock’s film North northwest (1959) and John Ford Researchers (1956), both completed by Warner Bros. The Film Foundation;
• David Fincher will present the world premiere of the IMAX restoration of his 1995 thriller Seven;
• Diane Lane will speak with Ben Mankiewicz ahead of the big screen debut of her film, directed by George Roy Hill. A little romance (1979), and Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins will be present at the Frank Darabont concert The Shawshank Redemption (1994);
• Danger! Host Ken Jennings will prepare the U.S. premiere of the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger restoration Small back room (1949), restored by the Film Foundation and with permission of Rialto Pictures.
• And Gillian Armstrong’s cast reunites little Women (1994) will feature Trini Alvarado, Samantha Mathis, and Eric Stoltz.
The “funny and often bizarre” vaudeville shorts will be screened under the umbrella of “That’s Vitaphone!: The Return of Sound-on-Disc” using a replica of a Vitaphone machine, said to be the only one in existence. TCM notes that this will be the first time modern audiences will be able to experience these films as moviegoers did in the 1920s.
A woman examines Vitaphone records at the company’s Chicago headquarters in 1928. “Since the machines were installed in the various theatres, it has become very difficult for Vitaphone to meet the supply and demand for records,” one report noted.
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In 1926, Warners, using technology developed by Western Electric, introduced the Vitaphone, a system for adding high-fidelity synchronized sound to movies using discs mechanically coupled to projectors. Vitaphone would usher in the talking picture era with Al Jolson Jazz singer On October 6, 1927.
However, by the early 1930s, on-disc sound had been replaced industry-wide by less complex sound on film.
In Vitaphone’s presentation to provide context will be Rialto Pictures founder and co-president Bruce Goldstein, post-production engineers at Warner Bros. Steve Levy, Bob Weitz and Vitaphone expert Shane Fleming.
As previously announced, the festival will open from April 18-21 with a 35mm screening of Quentin Tarantino’s film. Pulp Fiction (1994) at the TCL Chinese Theater, and John Travolta will be there.
Over the weekend, Billy Dee Williams and Lewis Burwell To be honored, writer Janine Basinger will receive the Robert Osborne Award, and Jodie Foster will participate in the Hand and Imprint ceremony. For more information about the festival, click here.
