General News
THE KING BAGGOT TRIBUTE Returns to St. Louis – The Missouri History Museum Sept. 28th
The King Baggot Tribute will take place Wednesday September 28th at 7pm at Lee Auditorium inside the Missouri History Museum (Lindell and DeBaliviere in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri). The 1913 silent film IVANHOE will be accompanied by The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra and there will be a 40-minute illustrated lecture on the life and career of King Baggot by Tom Stockman of We Are Movie Geeks.com. This event is FREE!
The most popular film actor in the world 100 years ago was a St. Louis native. Literally the first “movie star”, King Baggot was the first actor to have his name above the title and his stardom marked the first time that audiences went to see a movie because a certain actor was in that film. Born in St. Louis in 1879 and raised in a house on Union Boulevard, King Baggot attended CBC High School and at one time worked for the St. Louis Browns in ticket sales. Baggot was tall and handsome, a blue-eyed Irish boy with a distinctive white streak through his dark hair and the subject of much adoring fan mail. It’s hard to overestimate just how popular King Baggot was in his prime. He was heralded as “King of the Movies,” “The Most Photographed Man in the World” and “The Man Whose Face Is As Familiar As The Man In The Moon.” After his acting career faded, King Baggot became a successful director for Universal Studios. Most of his films are long lost and despite his one-time fame, he is now somewhat forgotten, even here in his home town.
The Missouri History Museum will shine a spotlight on the star with The King Baggot Tribute, a celebration of his career. The event will be held on Wednesday, September 28th beginning at 7pm at Lee Auditorium inside the Missouri History Museum (Lindell and DeBaliviere in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri). This is a FREE event!
The program will consist a rare screening of the 1913 epic IVANHOE, which runs 49 minutes. We screened IVANHOE at the King Baggot Tribute that was part of The St. Louis International Film Festival in November of 2014. That time, we rented a 35mm print of the film from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It had Dutch intertitles, so I had to translate them, from the podium, while the rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra accompanied the film. This time, we have transferred the film to digital format and have burned English intertitles over the Dutch ones.
Based Sir Walter Scott’s 1820 novel of romance and medievalism. IVANHOE was filmed at Chepstow Castle in Wales, on top of cliffs overlooking the River Wye and was the first example of an American studio sending a cast and crew to Europe to film at a remote location. St. Louis native King Baggot plays Ivanhoe, the Saxon Knight who returns from the Holy Lands to England. There he teams up with Robin Hood to rescue his father Sir Cedric, who has been captured by the evil Prince John. Leah Baird plays Rebecca, the Jewish maiden who loves Ivanhoe and the film’s director Herbert Brenon co-stars as Isaac of York. The rest of the large cast was made up of local Welsh actors. The lively and ambitious IVANHOE, filled with pageantry, lavish sets, costumed horses, epic battle scenes and swordfights was a box-office smash in 1913 and made King Baggot an international star.
Don’t miss the The King Baggot Tribute September 28th!
A Facebook Invite for the event can be found HERE
https://www.facebook.com/events/1764545990458351/
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