Post by The Mighty FavogPost by William HooperPost by Bruce CalvertJames Niebar, who used to be a frequent poster on alt.movies.silent and
alt.comedy.laurel-hardy passed away this morning. He also just published an
excellent book on Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. For more information,
see
http://www.silentcomedians.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=478&highlight=
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Bruce Calvert
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Visit the Silent Film Still Archivehttp://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
This is terrible news. He was such a fixture of alt.movies.silent .
It doesn't seem real, as if I could still hear him posting.
Hark! I think I hear him too!
I could never tell this story while he was still alive, because he
never stopped being horribly embarassed about it, but it shows how
generous he was:
In about 1973, Gaylord Carter was touring around with his Flicker
Fingers shows & I met James at the Louisville Loew's where Gaylord was
playing "Sparrows". James was one of those people who liked popcorn,
a LOT of popcorn, & liked a lot of butter with it. He gave these
complex directions to the guy at the concession stand, having him fill
up the bottom of this huge popcorn tub with butter, then put some
popcorn in, then another pint of butter, some more popcorn, etc., it
took forever.
Then we went up to the balcony (theatre organs sound best there
generally), James sits in an aisle seat, & parks this huge tub of
popcorn in the aisle next to his seat. About 20 minutes into the
movie, this little kid comes galloping down the balcony aisle, sure
enough, trips over the popcorn, & he & the popcorn latch together &
tumble down about 6 more rows.
Instead of doing the normal thing, i.e. just acting like you had
nothing to do with it, James jumps up, & runs down to the kid who is
bawling now & solidly covered from head to foot in a thick coating of
popcorn butter slime. So James is trying to quiet this kid down, is
asking around to find a parent, of course there's no parent anywhere
there, the people in the balcony are getting ticked off.
He says he ought to at least clean the kid up, but doesn't want to
take him to the restroom where the kid may be embarassed. I tell him
I remembered seeing a janitorial sink down front, at the foot of the
stairs in the dressing room tower, & they shove off. I saw them going
down the side aisle on the floor, past the curtains, into the door for
the dressing room tower at the side of the screen. Sure enough, about
2 minutes later mom comes around looking for the kid, & I tell her
where they went.
It was later learned that what happened after that & before the
screaming started was the kid climbed into the janitorial sink, turned
on the water, took off all his clothes in the sink, washed off all the
popcorn butter by himself. Then James realized there was nothing
there to dry him off, or dry the kid's clothes off (which were now
soaking in the bottom of the janitorial sink).
So he looks around, sees on the other side of the staircase the air
handler room through a half-open steel grid door. It's got this huge
fan with a guard made of chicken-wire like stuff in front of it, &
James thinks, hmm, I'll just blowdry the kid in front of this fan.
They go in there & James holds the kid up in front of the fan. Mom
comes down the stairs, turns, & sees in this scary mechanical room
through the grid door some strange man holding her child up like he's
about to throw him into this giant meat chopper. She starts screaming
her head off, runs to the door, pushes instead of pulls, & it locks.
Up in the house, blood-curdling screams start echoing through the
theater & just don't stop. Gaylord Carter stops playing, turns
around, the movie stops, the house lights come up, & I'm already
running down the aisle on the floor towards the dressing room tower.
The fire marshall who had been on stage during this is right in front
of me, we get down there & mom & the kid are both screaming, have
their fingers through the grid door trying to dig through to each
other, & James is standing there on the other side of a locked door
with this dripping wet naked child in front of a mammoth scary chopper
thing trying to explain what's going on. The staircase starts to
pile up with people running down, nobody can get through the crowd to
get somebody with a key. It's bedlam for about 25 minutes.
After the door got unlocked & we went to a dressing room with the
cops, fire marshall, manager, mom, the kid, & some other folks, we got
it all explained. They got the picture underway again at some point,
but we didn't get out until about 90 minutes after it was *over*.
Gaylord Carter. It was probably a good show.
We'll miss you, James.