Film Details

New Hampshire-based pianist Jeff Rapsis is one of the busiest silent film musicians in New England (and beyond)! Tonight he makes his Cleveland debut by scoring and accompanying two silent comedy classics in a special holiday program. Three’s a Crowd was the directorial debut of Harry Langdon, the baby-faced comedian who is considered the fourth great clown (after Chaplin, Keaton, and Harold Lloyd) of the American silent screen. Langdon also stars in the picture, a little-known, under-rated, Chaplinesque mix of comedy and pathos. It tells of a lovelorn man who, one cold and snowy night, takes in a pregnant woman who has walked out on her hard-drinking husband. He cares for this outcast and her child as if they were his own family. “Worthy of Beckett, rivals the best of Chaplin…THE unjustly maligned, hopelessly misunderstood, dark horse masterpiece of silent cinema. –Alfred Eaker. 35mm. 63 min. Preceded at 7:30 by Laurel and Hardy’s celebrated 19-min. short “Big Business” (USA, 1929, dir. J. Wesley Horne, Leo McCarey), in which Stan and Ollie play door-to-door Christmas tree salesmen who deal badly with an unsatisfied customer (James Finlayson).