Photo from POST MORTEMS the still-missing Raymond Griffith talkie

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Ed Watz
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Photo from POST MORTEMS the still-missing Raymond Griffith talkie

Postby Ed Watz » Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:04 am

Came across this item today on eBay. Abcdvdvideo sells copies of the old Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee photo archives. When you purchased an original still from Brandt 40+ years ago, he'd photograph it in the back room. This reprint from POST MORTEMS at least retained its snipe information, and I immediately recognized it as a short that I saw on Joe Franklin's Memory Lane tv show in the late 1960s.

As I recall it, Raymond Griffith played a gentleman burglar who breaks in and discretely watches a married couple in their home badly losing a game of bridge. After the other couple leaves and the homeowners retire for the night, Griffith pops up in their bedroom and calmly explains all the mistakes they made during the game. I remember Griffith whispering his dialogue though I didn't know he had lost his voice until I borrowed Kevin Brownlow's THE PARADE'S GONE BY from my local library, probably a year after seeing the film.

Something else I didn't know at the time but the snipe informs us: Robert Emmett O'Connor and Mabel Forrest portrayed the married couple. As we all know, along with THE SLEEPING PORCH this was the only other talkie short that Griffith made, for Christie-Paramount release.

So at least one 16mm print of POST MORTEMS was in circulation half a century ago. I'd hate to imagine it's sitting somewhere in a sealed unmarked can, experiencing the ravages of VS.

Robert Emmett O'Connor, Raymond Griffith, Mabel Forrest Christie Films short subject Post Mortems crp-11103.jpeg
Robert Emmett O'Connor, Raymond Griffith, Mabel Forrest Christie Films short subject Post Mortems crp-11103.jpeg (184.2 KiB) Viewed 5674 times
"Of course he smiled -- just like you and me." -- Harold Goodwin, on Buster Keaton (1976)

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