For Silent Movie Day: A Sampler of the “Chain of Fools” 10th Anniversary Audio Book!

Happy Silent Movie Day!

Of course, just about every day is Silent Movie Day here at Travalanche, what with nearly 1,400 posts related to silent movies, about a third of which concern slapstick comedy. Did they choose September 29 because it is Billy Bevan’s birthday? I choose to believe so.

In honor of the day TCM is showing several silent films that turn 100 years old this year, including Charlie Chaplin’s The Pilgrim (noon EST), and A Woman of Paris (1pm EST), Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last (3pm EST) and Why Worry? (4:15pm EST) and Cecil B. De Mille’s original version of The Ten Commandments (5:30pm EST).

Also, our friends at the Niles Film Museum are having the Broncho Billy and Friends Silent Movie Festival.

But what I REALLY want to plug is my upcoming 10th anniversary audio-book of my book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, produced by the incredible Gary Hardcastle! I had to wait a very, very long time to find a collaborator so very RIGHT for me (follow this link and find out why I think he’s the Bee’s Knees. If I could have grown the perfect collaborator in a petri dish, the result would have been Gary, but visually more like Sophia Loren.

Anyway, Santa’s Helpers are assisting to help us get the full magilla out in time for the holiday season; for those who can’t wait and still haven’t gotten the original paperback version, published by Bear Manor Media you can always get that here. Meantime, we’ve made this sampler! Please give a listen! It’s only three minutes long — about as long as the very first silent films, now you mention it!