How to go
What: Paragon Ragtime Orchestra accompanies silent films starring Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 8, rain or shine
Where: Veterans Park, 250 Cliff Park Road, as part of the Summer Arts Festival
Admission: Free
SPRINGFIELD — Let’s look ahead — 93 years ahead.
A handful of film buffs have gathered in a historic, 10-screen movie theater — historic, because a 10-screen movie theater in 2102 just seems so quaint — for a festival of old films.
The highlight is the screening of a little-seen classic called “Star Wars” — little-seen, because when California crumbled into the ocean in 2027, all prints of the film were believed lost until one resurfaced in the same Hungarian collection that also fielded an obscure title called “Tron.”
But the print is without its music track, so festival organizers have to improvise what they feel is an appropriate representation of period music.
In Rick Benjamin’s experience, they usually get it wrong.
“It’d be like seeing ‘Star Wars,’” he said, “and some hokey piano music is playing. It takes the air out of it.”
Benjamin wants to keep the film classics of a previous era well-inflated.
He’s the founder and conductor of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, which will accompany three silent slapstick classics on Wednesday, July 8, at the Summer Arts Festival.
How they’ll accompany the films of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd is uniquely accurate — it’s the only time you’ll be able to hear the music that was originally intended to go with these films — and totally surprising.
Who knew silent films, particularly these shorter comedies, even had their own scores?
While many silents have been restored visually, if it wasn’t for Paragon, we still wouldn’t know what the music sounded like on opening night, 1916.
More often than not, it wasn’t just generic ragtime piano.
“The folks that put out early film on DVD, they’re not budgetarily equipped to do these things with the correct score,” Benjamin said. “Very few of these things have been recorded.”
The three films that Paragon will accompany in Veterans Park — Chaplin’s “Behind the Screen,” Keaton’s “Cops” and Lloyd’s “Get Out and Get Under” — are available on DVD, but with alternate music.
“You have to come to the show and see it and hear it,” Benjamin said, “which is better anyway.”
Slapstick films like these, he said, were built for maximum audience reaction.
The music played its own important role.
“It was understood early on,” Benjamin explained, “that the music is critical.”
By 1916, he said, there were more than 20,000 movie theaters in the country, and more than half had their own orchestras.
“Exhibitors knew if the music was crappy, people were going to go to the theater down the street,” he said.
Unfortunately, though, silent-era composers like Mayhew Lake, who wrote the score to Chaplin’s “Behind the Screen” in 1916, typically didn’t receive screen credit.
“They weren’t thinking of posterity,” Benjamin said. “Then again, Bach wasn’t either. It was just church music.”
On an emotional level, movie-music is remarkably unchanged from the silent era.
A chase scene in 2009 is rhythmically the same as a chase scene in 1919.
“The chord progressions will be different,” he said, “but the emotional impact will be the same.”
Not everything translates, though.
Imagine a movie today that uses, say, a Barry White song to convey romance in an over-the-top, almost ironic way.
In the 1921 Lloyd film “Never Weaken,” there’s a scene in which he sits on a hot rivet and springs to his feet, pants smoking.
The score samples part of a 1920 foxtrot, “Fidgety Feet.”
“That would’ve been a side-splitter in the 1920s,” Benjamin said. “Culturally, it’s been lost.”
A lot from that era would be lost if not for Benjamin and his orchestra.
Acting on a tip as a 19-year-old Juilliard student in 1985, his life was changed after recovering 4,000 pieces of original orchestra sheet music as it was being shoveled into a Dumpster outside of a New Jersey warehouse about to be torn down.
Dating from 1880 to the 1920s, the music had been stored for the Victor Talking Machine Co. with the idea of recording it to phonograph.
“I stepped up to the Dumpster,” he said, “and it was full of music.”
He reached in and pulled out “The Peacherine Two-Step” by Scott Joplin — the only known copy.
There also was music by Irving Berlin and the father of the blues, W.C. Handy.
Benjamin took the music back to Juilliard and recruited some friends to play it.
“Within about 20 minutes of our very first rehearsal, we started looking at each other and it got very quiet,” he said. “This wasn’t just ephemera and junky stuff. This was quality music.”
Thomas Frost, the Grammy-winning classical producer, agreed.
Merely by Dumpster diving, Benjamin found a record producer and a career.
If you’ve been to Disneyland, Disney World or even Disneyland Paris, Paragon plays the ragtime music that’s piped outside Main Street, U.S.A.
The orchestra now has an extraordinary library of lost American dance songs, theater music and silent film scores — 10,000 titles in all.
“I’ve tried to get insurance for this stuff and the appraisers just walk away shaking their head,” Benjamin said. “There are no comparables.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.
About the Author