Silent Movie Magic

I don't suppose anyone out there knows how the Clara Bow flick Get Your Man ends?

The local theater celebrated 80 years since its opening performance tonight by putting on a fairly reasonable facsimile of the first show. In keeping with the theater's use as a catch-all for stage plays, movies, symphony and orchestral performances, vaudeville, stand-up comedy and, yes, even the Superbowl, the show was a combination of an organ recital on the resident Wurlitzer, barbershop quartet performance, stand-up comedy, a vaudeville routine (if you've never seen a man juggle bowling pins while balancing a bowling ball atop a 6-foot toilet plunger perched on his forehead, all while cuing a 6-year-old holding a cymbal, you're missing out--and that wasn't even the act's finale...that was playing Dream the Impossible Dream on a red balloon), and the movie shown on that first night, Get Your Man, shown with live musical accompaniment on the Wurlitzer. That's really the only way to see silent movies.

According to the theater manager, there is one existing print of that movie on the planet. It is currently located in Germany. IMDB seems to be under the impression that there is also a print filed with the Library of Congress, but that print is missing reels 2 and 3 of the 6-reel flick. Since we saw reels 2 and 3, I think I can safely say we did not see the Library of Congress print. Notwithstanding a couple of moments where it looked like Clara Bow was getting zapped by the Jawas, we saw everything right up to the point that Buddy Rogers, who has had the hots for Clara for the last five reels (who hasn't?), stomped out of the room after finding out that Clara Bow had seduced and agreed to get engaged to the very much older Marquis, so that the Marquis would break the engagement between his daughter and Buddy Rogers, leaving the daughter free to go after her love, Henri, and Buddy Rogers free to go after Clara Bow...who has just engaged herself to the old guy. OK, so there is a slight flaw in the plan. The movie underwent the digital equivalent of a film meltdown before we got to see how she extracts herself from that to find happiness with Buddy Rogers.