Cinevent 49

Cinevent 49 took place over the Memorial Day weekend in downtown Columbus.  One of the last remaining movie conventions, it is one of my most anticipated events of the year.  Not only to I get to see many great obscure movies, there is also a large dealers room full of a variety of movie memorabilia.  Usually, I can find a few Evans items, but this year was above average and included a few surprises.

Arcade cards are the most common item I tend to find, but this year I only came away with 3 new ones.

 It's always nice to find another early photo of Colleen Moore and Earle Williams looks quite dapper.  The May Allison card shows some odd retouching, but I do have an 8x10 of this same photo.  I also got another photo of Ms. Allison at the convention.

And it turns out that I had purchased another portrait of her by Evans without initially realizing it.  I found a copy of the December 1919 issue of Motion Picture Classic magazine.  Inside were 2 articles illustrated with Evans photos, one about Alice Lake, another Betty Compton (for which he has a byline).  There are also a few advertisements that use his photos.  However, it wasn't until after I purchased it that I read in the table of contents a note about the cover art.  The cover is a painting of May Allison, based on a photograph by Evans.  And by the look of it, one that was taking during the same photo session as the card above.

 Among a group of 5x7 fan photos that I found was this one of John Bowers.  Bowers is probably best known for his 1936 suicide, which was supposedly an inspiration for the film 'A Star is Born'.

Surprisingly, I only found 1 bathing beauty item that I did not already have, this nice double-weight photo of Vera Reynolds.

Finally, I came across this photo of Betty Blythe, a promotion for the California Theatre, which was in downtown Los Angeles.  The theatre often used Evans photos in their promotions, although this is only the second one that I've purchased.

Along with these Evans items, I also bought a number of DVDs and Blurays.  None of them were of silents, so I didn't expect anything Evans related on them.  But I was wrong.  Arguably the least likely to have any Evans references was a set of the British television series 'The Mind of J.G. Reeder.'  Based upon stories written by Edgar Wallace, which are great reads, I had been wanting to see the series for some time and was delighted to be able to finally get my hands on it.  Shortly after getting back home from the convention, I popped the first disc of the set into the dvd player.  Set in the 20s, the series has that cliched 'feathers-and-art-deco' look that in the late 60s/early 70s passed for the era in question.  However, one set representing the lodgings of a couple of ex-cons, the usual flashiness wouldn't have been appropriate, so the timeframe was defined by covering the walls with photos of various actresses, presumably cut from fan magazines.  There were a few bathing beauty type photos, although it was difficult to tell if any were by Evans.  But there was one large and very prominent photo of Gloria Swanson that was definitely taken by Evans.  Very unexpected! 

Apparently popular among fictional British criminals.