Silent Echoes - Early Hollywood Through Buster Keaton Films
I purchased a book recently that satisfies my fascination with “then & now” photos. It is doubly satisfying because the photos are from Buster Keaton films. Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, & Buster Keaton are my favorites from the silent era. The book I refer to is Silent Echoes by John Bengston. It’s a remarkable collection of detective work, discovering movie locations in and around Los Angeles. And it also gives us some insight of the making of some of Keaton’s classic films. It was published in 2000 so I guess that instead of “now & then” the comparison is more like “not too long ago & a longer time ago”. More recently Bengtson released a similar book based on Chaplin films called Silent Traces.
The photo on top is a scene from Keaton’s “The Navigator”. The photo below was taken by the author ca. 1999 on Divisadero looking north from Pacific to Broadway. He states that it was an easy location to find just by driving around Pacific Heights because it was at the crest of a hill.
The book is filled with a ton of these fun photo comparisons!