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The Silent Clowns Film Series is New York City’s longest-running regularly-scheduled showcase for classic silent film comedy. Our screenings are presented at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the NYPL Library for the Performing Arts in Manhattan’s Upper West Side and at the Cobble Hill Cinemas in Brooklyn, NY.

The Silent Clowns Film Series is a production of Silent Cinema Productions, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to presenting silent movies with live musical accompaniment to audiences of all ages, in order to preserve the experience of silent cinema. We produce silent film shows at a variety of venues, and we restore silent films for use at our shows.

Laurel & Hardy Year One

Saturday January 20, 2024
2:30pm
NYPL Library for the Performing Arts

FREE

Laurel and Hardy came together in 1927—the characters, relationships, and the cinematic style that they began to develop during that seminal year would stay with them for years to come.  In 2023, Lobster Films and Flicker Alley completed a major restoration project of the 1927 silent films to commemorate the beginning of their collaboration. Scouring the film archives and collectors from around the world, they created the most complete and best-looking versions of these early entries. On tap for this show are the restorations of Duck SoupPutting Pants on Philip, and The Second Hundred Years

New digital restorations presented courtesy of Flicker Alley

Marcel Perez, The International Mirth-Maker

Saturday February 10, 2024
2:30pm
NYPL Library for the Performing Arts

FREE

Marcel Perez is one of the best, lesser known comedians of the silent film era. Part of the first generation of screen clowns, his career began in 1900 and flourished until 1928. After helping create the ground rules for film comedy in Europe, he moved to the U.S. and continued to refine the genre. Starring, writing and directing over 200 short comedies, he was, along with Max Linder, one of the few direct links between European and American silent comedy. Our tribute to Perez begins in Italy in 1907 with The Short-Sighted Cyclist, and continues through Robinet Too Much Loved By His Wife (1912), Some Hero (1916), Oh! What A Day (1918) to end up in Yonkers in 1920 for Sweet Daddy.

Constance Talmadge, The Duchess of Buffalo (1926)

Saturday, March 9, 2024
2:30pm
NYPL Library for the Performing Arts
FREE

After starting her career as a teenager at Brooklyn’s Vitagraph Studio, Constance Talmadge became one of the most popular comediennes of her day in starring features such as Dulcy (1923), Her Sister from Paris(1925), and this program’s deftly-played farce The Duchess of Buffalo(1926). Since many of her films have been lost or unavailable, her talents have been neglected, so this program is the perfect opportunity to highlight her many talents. Our extra added attraction is the equally overlooked Wanda Wiley in her two-reeler A Thrilling Romance(1926).

What Happened to Jones? (1926) with Reginald Denny

Saturday, April 13, 2024
2:30pm
NYPL Library for the Performing Arts
FREE

Reginald Denny was the most popular of the “light comedians” of the silent screen. In a series of expertly-made farces for Universal Pictures, the British-born Denny starred as an All-American everyman always embroiled in a myriad of problems and complications. Funny features such as California Straight Ahead (1925), Skinner’s Dress Suit (1926), and this program’s What Happened to Jones? (1926), made Denny one of Universal’s biggest moneymakers of the 1920s. Edward Everett Horton warms up the house for Mr. Denny with his 1927 two-reeler No Publicity.