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Carole Lombard provides proper decoration to promote Mack Sennett's four-reel comic extravaganza, "The Girl From Everywhere," one of Lombard's first films at Sennett. (Note how her face is angled, as part of the hat helps disguise the scar on her left cheek from that 1926 auto accident that ended her budding career as a Fox starlet.) We're showing the silent version of Carole to remind people of something we're doing about seven weeks from now, something we announced some six weeks ago (http://carole-and-co.livejournal.com/622015.html) -- a blogathon called "The Great Silent Recasting," set for Nov. 1 to 4.
In case you missed or forgot it, here's how it works: Choose a movie made from the mid-'60s onward, then re-imagine it as a silent film, made in silent times with silent-era actors and a director, as well as a studio and year of release (1929 at the latest). More ground rules: If an actor or actress appeared in a silent, even in bit parts, he or she is eligible as long as the fictional fllm is made at a time when he or she was actually working. (So you can't cast Rudolph Valentino in a movie made after 1926, since he died that year.) We'll also assume studios can loan out personnel at will (e.g., you can ship Colleen Moore to MGM or Buster Keaton to Warners).
The fine site http://moviessilently.com/ (which originally was going to co-host, but now only will participate) has created "posters" for several recast silent movies, and here are a few to help you understand what the blogathon is about. (And no, you are under no requirement to make a poster to take part in "The Great Silent Recasting"; simply describing the film with the above parameters will suffice.) For example, imagine the 2007 Disney film "Enchanted" as a vehicle for the young Marion Davies in 1918, with William Randolph Hearst's money (and ensuing sumptuous production values) to back it up:
"True Grit" has been made twice in the past 45 years, first as a John Wayne vehicle, then a 2010 remake more faithful to the novel it derived from. Here, it's shipped back to 1917 starring the king of realistic westerns, William S. Hart:
You can even create a live-version silent of an animated film...such as this, a 1922 version of "Despicable Me" with Erich von Stroheim and Mary Pickford (in real life, they deemed each other despicable, but here, they both loved the idea):
In our August entry, we created a few promotional posters, so how about a few more?
Interested? Leave a message below showing interest, and if you already have an idea, great; if not, surprise us. Hope to see you there.
