The Brookfield Film Society will be presenting, on March 29, for all who enjoy good, hearty laughs, the misadventures of that famous comedy duo of the silver screen, Stanley Laurel, and Oliver J. Hardy.
Stan and Ollie will be appearing on screen beginning around 7:15 p.m., in The Cottage at Brookfield’s Irish Times Pub, 8869 Burlington Ave. Admission is $1, with an additional charge for the DVD raffle.
The Brookfield Film Society is a new venture, inaugurated in January by Frank Slabinak and Marty Blank, who hold the respective offices of society president, and vice president.
Though the “meetings” are informal, with no attempts at going by Robert’s Rules of Order, there is already a mission statement. Slabinak stated that the society exists “to show classic movies that you do not see very often, with a little commentary before and after.”
The 1940 film Till We Meet Again, starring Merle Oberon, was shown on Jan. 25, with nine members in attendance. This was no mere DVD on a TV screen, but a sharp 16mm print projected in the manner of the best films of yesteryear – on a 6-foot square movie screen.
February’s offering was Born to Kill, in the classic film noir style, starring Lawrence Tierney, Claire Trevor and Walter Slezak.
“Frank showed this film and people said they had never seen it,” laughed Blank. “It was an obscure film, impossible to get. But he found it.”
In keeping with the theme of that day, the short subject, Bugs Bunny’s Racketeer Rabbit, was shown before the main film. Attendance would have been greater, if not for the snowstorm that night.
A cheering note to spring, on March 29, will be the Laurel and Hardy “shorts,” two of which are the hilariously suspenseful Music Box and the uproariously delightful Going Bye Bye.
Future presentations are already in the works.
“I’ve been asked if we could do a vintage cartoon festival; cartoons most people don’t know about,” said Slabinak, “Like Private S.N.A.F.U. and a few World War II cartoons.”
“A silent movie festival might work out, if we could find a good keyboard player,” said Blank, who is a great fan of Buster Keaton’s silent masterpiece, Sherlock, Jr.
“Or a lost film festival’,” added Slabinak, “of short films that were considered lost, and were recently found.”
Besides being a movie buff, Slabinak is an independent film maker for Hand Built Films. His latest work is Tale of the Tattoo, telling why people get tattoos.
Marty Blank is both a circulation assistant at the Brookfield Public Library, and a jazz aficionado and speaker at the Brookfield Jazz Society meetings, also held at the Irish Times.
“We hope we will be lucky enough to have the kind of success that the Brookfield Jazz Society does,” said Blank.
Those wishing to join the Brookfield Film Society may sign up at the Brookfield Library, or at the movie nights.
Slabinak and Blank alternate monthly to present their films. Blank plans to present London After Midnight on the last Monday of next month, April 26.
But for now, Laurel and Hardy beckon their legion of fans to head for the Irish Times Pub, going through the bar, out though the back, past the old-fashioned cigarette machine, across the patio and into The Cottage, which, once a month, brings “theater” back to Brookfield.