Chancy Game That Was Collecting

Our Hospitality (1923) When It Was Ill-Got Gain

We're ninety-four years past release of Our Hospitality. Ninety-four years! That's as far as Buster Keaton was removed from the period he recreated for this, his second feature, and first acknowledged masterpiece. Which raises a question, how many of such masterpieces did Keaton create? --- I mean to fall in that undisputed category. Besides Our Hospitality, do we add Sherlock, Jr., Seven Chances, The General, and Steamboat Bill, Jr.? Any others? In event the list closes on these, that's half of his independent features, and all done in first half of a long career. I remark on the 94 years because Our Hospitality stays so undated. It will please as well today as for audiences when new, maybe better. They were bound to have taken great comedy more for granted then. But wait, I said comedy, when fact is, I look at Our Hospitality in period adventure terms as much as mirth, a stance even more applied to Keaton's ultimate venture into past that was The General. A best comedy is one we'll watch and admire long after laughs have been had and surprises spent.

For Good Boys and Girls, There was The General from Blackhawk. For Others ...

I won't gab over merit of Our Hospitality because others, lots of others, have done so more eloquently before, and will again. Instead there's collecting tale I'll dredge from early 70's when Our Hospitality could not be legitimately had, even seen, outside Raymond Rohauer-guarded cocoon, him the ogre who'd deny seekers after 8 and 16mm ownership. At that time, 1972 specifically, there were only three Keaton features sold above-board for home watching. They were The General, Steamboat Bill Jr., and College, the trio released in the late 20's by United Artists, and all Public Domain. Blackhawk and/or Griggs Moviedrome offered them, so we could rely both on quality and promptness of delivery. Other seven of key Keaton ten were outliers, not to be legally had, which of course, wouldn't stop those who dealt off bottom of collector decks. One of such was a freebooter who offered still-protected silent classics under disguised titles, ordering from him a coded affair where actual titles would not be mentioned in any correspondence or face of checks sent. An 8mm print of Our Hospitality, for instance, was listed as "The Feud," a tip as to identity of the film, but obscure enough to evade detection by law-dogs on the alert.

Only those of us in the know, knew, and if tagged by cops, could disavow knowledge of Our Hospitality being trafficked. It was "The Feud" we ordered for $60 (to think --- I could have a glorious Blu-Ray nearly three times for that money today). So Our Hospitality came stealth to my address in early 1972, a "hot" movie an incautious collector could acquire provided he was willing to deal with devils, a route I'd take and keep taking. This was what the game was about in those days. The best of what we bought was pilfered, bootlegged, or snatched out of labs and TV stations. Had I been older and with more sense, or better instinct for self-preservation, I'd not have taken risks like those routinely engaged when collecting was such perilous pursuit. So what, then, of Our Hospitality, or rather, The Feud? Well, my print proved somewhat a dud. You could watch it, make some of action out, but for most part, this was like clouds through bottom of a Coke bottle, a mess to any but hardest-core rarity seekers. My peace was bought by fact this was forbidden fruit ripe in my hands, a trophy others could not, dare not, acquire. Issues of quality or clarity were secondary to joy of just having Our Hospitality for my own.