“Amazing Tales from the Archives” This Week!
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Jimmy Aubrey will do anything to get out of the house and into mischief in A Musical Mixup (1928).
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Thursday, May 7 sees the return of “Amazing Tales from the Archives” at the San Francisco Silent Festival. This free annual program, begun in 2006, brings together archivists from around the world to present reports on recent preservation projects. This year audiences will enjoy four presentations (with musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne) from leading archivists and scholars.
Among them is Kyle Westphal, co-founder of the Chicago Film Society, who will present A Musical Mixup (1928) and the saga of its preservation. This two-reel comedy shows what happens when two friends (Jimmy Aubrey and Bud Duncan) connive to attend the Motorman’s Ball and win a raffled-off piano, which they attempt to push homeward through the streets of Los Angeles.
A Musical Mixup was produced by the Weiss Brothers, who ran a modest studio specializing in short comedies. Star Jimmy Aubrey had been Oliver Hardy’s screen partner at Vitagraph from 1919 to 1921, and for A Musical Mixup he might have "borrowed" gags borrowed from Laurel and Hardy’s lost Hats Off (1928, remade in 1932 as Oscar-winning The Music Box). The Chicago Film Society preserved A Musical Mixup through a 2024 NFPF grant; source materials were a 35mm nitrate print (found in an attic) and a fine grain master lent by UCLA Film & Television Archive. We’ll let Kyle tell the rest of the story on Thursday, so make sure to arrive at 11AM sharp!