Silent Sunday Nights

 I love Silent Sunday Nights on TCM (Turner Classic Movies)!

As part of my fun with being retired, I'm watching the earliest movies I can find on TCM and gradually working my way up in time.

Generally speaking, the oldest movie each week is featured on Silent Saturday Nights.

So far, to date, I have seen 48 silent films at a pace of about one per week. The earliest I have seen is from 1906 -

The Birth, The Life and the Death of Christ. It had set scenes that were more like tableaus - the camera is fixed, and the scene changes in front of it.

I have seen several from 1929, the most recent being The Big Diamond Robbery starring the early Western superstar Tom Mix.

He was film's first King of the Cowboys. He made almost 300 films, of which only about 10% still survive. Many of them were lost in the 1937 Fox vault fire. Like many films of another era, it has questionable racial attitudes, portraying Chinese workers in a very stereotypical manner.

I usually watch in segments, anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes daily.

Currently, I am watching Don Juan (1926) featuring John Barrymore, one of the longest-running theatre families in the United States (presently represented by Drew Barrymore).

It was known for its first use of Vitaphone for the film's musical score but not for dialogue. Vitaphone was used a year later for the first "talkie" - The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson. Don Juan is also known for holding a kissing record, with almost 200 kisses in the film.

I especially like comedies featuring talents like Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd.

But that's the good news.

The bad news is that TCM is in trouble. The evil (sorry, it's the way I feel) people that bought Warner Brothers/HBO/CNN/DC) people are proceeding to dismantle TCM, firing many of their top executives, and some hosts may be next.

I'll save my dire disgust for the Discovery people for another post.

If you, like me, are concerned about saving this valuable Americana, please use the hashtag #SaveTCM on your social media posts.

Thanks for hearing me out.

I mean, for silently reading.