The Parade's Gone By ..

New York: Alfred A. Knopf [A Borozi Book], 1968. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Fair. Format is approximately. 7.25 inches by 10.25 inches. [12], 577, [3], xiii. [3] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Illustrations. Index. Decorative DJ. DJ is price clipped, worn, torn soiled and chipped. Gift inscription, NOT from author, on fep. This is a large and heavy book and if sent outside of the United States would require additional shipping charges. A vivid, nostalgia, immediate portrait of an art in the making. Kevin Brownlow (born Robert Kevin Brownlow; 2 June 1938) is a British film historian, television documentary-maker, filmmaker, author, and film editor. He is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era, having become interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent documenting and restoring film. Brownlow has rescued many silent films and their history. His initiative in interviewing many largely forgotten, elderly film pioneers in the 1960s and 1970s preserved a legacy of early mass-entertainment cinema. He received an Academy Honorary Award at the 2nd Annual Governors Awards given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on 13 November 2010. This was the first occasion on which an Academy Honorary Award was given to a film preservationist. Among the items coverer are Vitagraph, Hollywood, D. W. Griffith, Allan Dwan, Henry King, Mary Pickford, Edward Sloman, William Wellman, Cecil B. De Mille, von Sternberg, Charles Rosher, Douglas Fairbanks, Stunt Men, Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, David O. Selznick, Reginald Denny, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Abel Gance, Betty Blythe, and Gloria Swanson. Brownlow's first book on silent film, The Parade's Gone By..., was published in 1968. The book features many interviews with the leading actors and directors of the silent era, and began his career as a film historian. He spent many years gaining support for the restoration of Abel Gance's French epic, Napoléon (1927), a then-mutilated film that used many novel cinematic techniques. Brownlow's championing of the film succeeded, and the restored version, with a new score by Carl Davis, was shown in London in 1980, and again in London in 2013 with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Gance lived to see the acclaim for his restored film. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival presented the complete 2000 restoration of the film, with Davis conducting his score, at the Paramount Theatre Oakland in March 2012. Derived from a Kirkus review: Passing in review here is the silent film era and Mr. Brownlow has done a splendid job of vitalizing the past through interviews and personal research. Most of this material has never seen print before and the filmophile will go wild over reminiscences such as Joseph Henabery's (who assisted Griffith on Intolerance). And the snaps: Garbo who loved watching talking pictures in reverse but refused to view them the right way. . . Fairbanks intimidated by the Robin Hood castle -- "You expect me to jump across that?" . . .Buster Keaton who broke his neck doing his own stunts and didn't realize it until ten years later. . . the chaos that was the original Ben Hur -- "we'll paint muscles on you!" . . . Irving Thalberg arguing with Von Stroheim over a foot fetishist scene --"You are a footage fetishist" . . . Producers, directors, writers, actors, stuntmen, the last of the pioneers, each with his own marvelous recollections. A fine splice of a fantastic life and with the 261 photographs.