Notes & Quotes
News from the AV Library
by Kate Pourshariati, AV Cataloger/Reference Librarian PT
Montgomery County Community College has benefitted for many years by its association with recently retired History Professor, Joseph Eckhardt. Professor Eckhardt is an expert on the filmmaking pioneer, Siegmund Lubin, who established early silent film studios in the Philadelphia region. Since the late 1980s, the AV Library has owned videotape copies of many of the 16mm prints gathered by Professor Eckhardt. We are in the process of full and detailed cataloging of these copies for easier access by the community. In most cases, our College is the only library in the United States that has circulating copies of these rare films, with perhaps only a few viewing copies at the Library of Congress.
The history of Lubin and his studios is known to us through the extensive research of Professor Eckhardt, who published an authoritative book on the subject called “The King of the Movies: Film Pioneer Siegmund Lubin” (Farleigh Dickinson Press 1997) which we have in the Library collection.
Lubin was an eastern European Jewish immigrant who settled in the Philadelphia area, and after pursuing several other careers, including as an optician, he took an interest in lantern slides and then developing motion picture technologies in the late 1890’s. A contemporary and rival of Thomas Edison, he had similar talents in invention and business, eventually drawing together a stable of actors to create genre films (Cowboy, Comedy, Outlaw and others) to be screened in theaters that he also owned. At one point, he had an enormous studio lot, Betzwood Studios, in West Norriton, that had glass-roofed studios (to take advantage of natural light for slow film stocks), train tracks and working trains for his back-lot, and entire street sets of wild west style towns. He employed hundreds of people locally.
One interesting theme that Lubin touched on in his work was Jewish culture. In particular, he was concerned with creating images that contradicted the racist or anti-Semitic stereotypes that were, unfortunately, very common in his day, also propagated in reaction to the influx of European immigrants that was then at its peak.
You also may be familiar with the College’s wonderful Betzwood Film Festival, which annually, since 1989, presents restored silent films produced by Lubin and selected by Professor Eckhardt, as part of the College’s Lively Arts series. The festival takes place in May, and features the pleasures of live musical accompaniment and sound effects to simulate the silent film experience of the original audiences.
This is Professor Eckhardt’s introduction to the 2008 Betzwood Silent Film Festival:
"The nineteenth annual Betzwood Silent Film Festival will be held on Saturday, May 3rd, at 8:00 pm in the Science Center Theater on the Blue Bell Campus. This year’s event celebrates the life and work of one of Betzwood’s most beloved stars, Wilna Hervey, who played Powerful Katrinka, in the Toonerville Trolley films. In real life, the Amazonian Wilna Hervey (six foot three, three hundred pounds) was a noted American artist who lived most of her eighty-five years in the Maverick Art Colony at Woodstock, NY. This year’s Betzwood event will showcase her work as an artist along with her film work. In addition to her Toonerville films, we will be screening a rare surviving copy of one of the comedies she made in California after Betzwood closed. An article on Wilna’s remarkable and unconventional life, with a gallery of her paintings and enamels, can be found on the Betzwood website at: http://faculty.mc3.edu/jeckhard/biggestgirlarticle/thebiggestgirl.html"A number of years ago, with the help of the former College Media Services department, Professor Eckhardt made a documentary about the Betzwood Studios, “Before Hollywood” (our Video Tape #731). Currently, he is producing a second one on Lubin, which we very much look forward to seeing. For a look at an entertaining trailer for the new documentary, please go to: http://www.kingofthemovies.com.
For a fascinating adventure into the early days of cinema, come to the Audiovisual Library and borrow one of the circulating videotape copies of the Lubin films, which are listed below.
| The Courier of the Czar. (Michael Strogoff) (This was not precisely a Lubin production, but was filmed at Betzwood by an outside company) |
Video Tape 1199 |
| The Feud. | Video Tape 1199 |
| A Misfit Earl. | Video Tape 1155 |
| On the Threshold. | Video Tape 167 |
| Partner to Providence. | Video Tape 163 |
| The Preacher and the Gossips. | Video Tape 165 |
| Sandy Burke of the U-Bar-U. | Video Tape 733 |
| The Spoiled Child. | Video Tape 734 |
| Through Lubin’s Lens: a Silent Film Sampler. | Video Tape 732 |
| Tillie’s Tomato Surprise. | Video Tape 1198 |
| Toonerville Trolley: The Skipper’s Narrow Escape & Boozem’s Friends. | Video Tape 700 |
| Twixt Love and Ambition. | Video Tape 168 |
| Where the Road Divided. | Video Tape 164 |
