CASPER, Wyo. — Could the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy have possibly imagined that a bit involving a street fight culminating with dozens of ripped trousers in their short film “You’re Darn Tootin’” would make kids laugh nearly a century after it premiered?
It happened last Saturday as three silent short films from the 1920s –– two by Laurel and Hardy and one by deadpan genius Buster Keaton –– flickered on a digital screen at Glenrock’s outdoor Town Square. While the images were displayed courtesy of state-of-the-art modern tech, the music accompaniment came courtesy of two aging upright pianos played by Casper- and Glenrock-area piano students.
A screenshot shows part of the ending fight scene in the 1928 Laurel and Hardy slapstick short “You’re Darn Tootin’” (via YouTube)
The event is the brainchild of piano instructor and Glenrock resident Paula Flynn, who tested the concept with a silent film summer camp with Heather Smith, a friend in Utah.
“We watched the films, evaluated them and chose the music to go with them,” she said, “and that’s how it all started.”
Smith has built the website Silent Film Celebration, which compiles public domain silent films joined with sheet music and exact timings for accompaniment. Payments to the site all go toward helping music students in Central America buy instruments, Flynn said.
Using the musical guidance at the Silent Film Celebration, Flynn decided to kick off a small festival of her own about four years ago using Glenrock’s open public plaza and piano students taught by teachers in the Casper Music Teachers Association. Students from about six of the 15 teachers in the group participated on Saturday, she said.
Piano instructor Paula Flynn leads students in a rehearsal at Casper College days before the Silent Film Festival. Students were cycled on to two different pianos, while a volunteer with a stopwatch cued each student on when to start and finish. (Dan Cepeda, Oil City News)
The little pianos were picked up for free on Facebook Marketplace, she said. They were painted with black chalkboard paint so students can decorate them for each festival, and tacks were placed into the felt hammers to give them an old-time clanging sound. A local piano tech gets them relatively in tune before the event. The clattery sound matches what people imagine small movie houses might have sounded like during the silent film era, when hundreds of films were rushed around the country for entertainment-starved audiences.
Money raised from donations made at the event will go to help buy a very different kind of piano than what’s used at the festival: a second Steinway Model O grand piano for the Nicolaysen Art Museum, which often hosts the association’s piano recitals.
Cindy Rogers, president of the Casper Music Teachers Association, said an extra piano will give students more options and open up new lines of repertoire.
“We would like to have two pianos at the NIC so that the kids can have the experience of doing one-piano four hands, or two-piano eight hands,” she said. “There’s a whole bunch of literature that they don’t get to touch because we only have access to one piano anywhere in town.”
“It’s much more fun to play with somebody,” she added. “We enjoy doing solos, but it’s so much more fun when we have somebody else to collaborate with.”
The Silent Film Festival is planned for next year, but will be held in Casper during a music teacher’s convention. It will return to the Glenrock plaza the following year, they said.
The CMTA is planning more fundraisers in the near future, they said. More information and updates can be found at their Facebook page.
