William K. Everson

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For other people named William Everson, see William Everson (disambiguation).
William K. Everson
Born
William Keith Everson

8 April 1929
New York City, New York
, U.S.
Occupation(s)Archivist, author, critic, educator, collector and film historian

Keith William Everson (8 April 1929 – 14 April 1996) was an English-American archivist, author, critic, educator, collector, and film historian. He also discovered several lost films. Everson's given first names were Keith William, but he reversed them so that "William K." would mimic the name of Hollywood director William K. Howard, whom he admired.[1]

Early life and career

Everson was born in

motion picture industry; as a teenager he was employed at Renown Pictures as publicity manager. He began to write film criticism and operated several film societies.[3]

Later career

Following service in the

Allied Artists)[4] and subsequently became a freelance publicist.[3]

Concurrently with his employment as writer, editor and researcher on the

TV series Movie Museum and Silents Please,[3] Everson became dedicated to preserving films from the silent era to the 1940s which otherwise would have been lost. Through his industry connections, he began to acquire feature films and short subjects that were slated to be destroyed or abandoned.[1]

Many of his discoveries were projected at his

Union Square.[3]

Occasionally, he would make special arrangements with a select invited group to see a 35mm print in a theater. For example, on a Sunday morning in the mid-1960s, he took over Daniel Talbot's New Yorker Theater to show the silent She (1925) to an audience of no more than 15 silent-film buffs. Later, the Huff Society screenings relocated from Union Square to The New School, by invitation of Everson's friend and fellow Huff Society member Joseph Goldberg, who was a professor at The New School. Everson was an influential figure to the generation of film historians who came of age from the 1960s to the 1980s, many of whom were regulars at his New School screenings. Other attendees at the Huff Society included such New York personalities as author Susan Sontag and publisher Calvin Beck.

Kevin Brownlow described an infamous incident at the Huff Society:

It was a society that showed the rarest films — often in a double bill with a recognised classic. Everson's programme notes became world-famous (and let us hope that some enterprising publisher will bring them out).

In 1959,

FBI what Everson was doing, and they confronted him after the performance.[6] They seized the print, and Everson spent the next few days squirreling other hot titles around New York. Lillian Gish
had to intervene on his behalf.

In the 1970s, the FBI instituted a "

witch hunt
" among film collectors, but by then Everson was too highly respected to be touched. Archives came to depend on him — he would not only loan rare prints for copying or showing, but he would travel the world presenting the films he loved. I was astounded to meet him at an airport weighed down by three times as many cans of films as any human could be expected to carry. He had the uncanny knack of finding lost films. It would be no exaggeration to say that single-handedly, he transformed the attitude of American film enthusiasts towards early cinema.

Many of Everson's film programs were assembled from his own personal collection, which comprised over 4,000 titles by the 1970s.

Pacific Film Archive[7] and the Telluride Film Festival.[3][7][8][9][10][11][12]

He worked as a consultant to producers and studios preparing silent-film projects, and collaborated closely with

TV specials Hollywood, the Golden Years (1961) and The Legend of Rudolph Valentino (1982).[3]

From 1964 to 1984 he taught film history at The

Barry Gray's late-night radio talk show in New York. He appeared as an actor in Louis McMahon's serial parody Captain Celluloid vs. the Film Pirates (1966); the four-part film, made by a cast and crew of like-minded movie buffs, concerned heinous traffic in rare silent-screen masterpieces.[13]

In 1994, the National Board of Review established the William K. Everson Award for Film History, of which Everson was the first recipient.[14]

Works

  • Classics of the Silent Screen (1959) – attributed to Joe Franklin but actually written by Everson
  • The Western: From Silents to Cinerama (1962) with George N. Fenin; later updated and retitled The Western: From Silents to the Seventies (1973)
  • The American Movie (1963)
  • The Bad Guys: A Pictorial History of the Movie Villain (1964)
  • The Films of Laurel and Hardy (1967)
  • The Art of W. C. Fields (1967)
  • A Pictorial History of the Western Film (1969)
  • Days of Thrills and Adventure: An Affectionate Pictorial History of the Movie Serial (foreword, 1970) by Alan G. Barbour
  • The Films of Hal Roach (1971)
  • The Detective in Film (1972)
  • Classics of the Horror Film (1974)
  • Claudette Colbert (1976)
  • American Silent Film (1978)
  • Love in the Film: Screen Romance from the Silent Days to the Present (1979)
  • The Further Perils of Dracula (foreword, 1979) by Jeanne Youngson
  • More Classics of the Horror Film (1986)
  • The Hollywood Western (1992)
  • Hollywood Bedlam: Classic Screwball Comedies (1994)

In addition, Everson contributed articles and reviews to numerous film magazines, including Films in Review (1909–), Variety and Castle of Frankenstein.

Death and legacy

On 14 April 1996, Everson died of

Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, comprising the William K. Everson Collection.[16]

In 2004, Everson was inducted into the Monster Kid Hall of Fame at the

Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards.[17]

Further reading

References

  1. ^ a b "William K. Everson profile". TCM.com. Archived from the original on 2012-10-21.
  2. ^ Profile, filmreference.com; accessed 1 May 2016.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Grimes, William. "William K. Everson, Historian And Film Preservationist, 67", The New York Times, 16 April 1996.
  4. ^ a b Everson biography, nyu.edu; accessed 1 September 2016.
  5. ^ Mallory, Mary (9 September 2016). "52nd Cinecon Offers Something for Everyone". ladailymirror.com. Cinecon: "Ghost Town: The Story of Fort Lee" (1935, Theodore Huff) played after lunch Monday afternoon, a sad and moving documentary about the disappearing or destroyed silent film studios of Fort Lee, a metaphor for the Great Depression and the United States' financial collapse.
  6. ^ "Raymond Rohauer: King of the Film Freebooters by William K. Everson". Brenton Film. 22 October 2018.
  7. ^
    Pacific Film Archive
    . 1984. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  8. ^ Maltin, Leonard (5 September 2019). "FORTY YEARS OF TELLURIDE". Leonard Maltin .com. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  9. ^ http://telluridecms-production.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/guides/34th_tff_prog_guide_FINAL.pdf
  10. ^ Pristin, Terry (30 August 1998). "FILM; The Festival That Tries To Dodge the Spotlight". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  11. ^ Everson, William K. (27 September 1987). "TELLURIDE". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  12. ^ Thompson, Anne (24 August 2007). "The Big Change at Telluride". Variety. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  13. ^ "Captain Celluloid vs. the Film Pirates", imdb.com; accessed 1 May 2016.
  14. ^ "William K. Everson Award for Film History: Archive". nationalboardofreview.org. National Board of Review. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
  15. ^ "Bambi Everson". bambieverson.com. Retrieved 2022-01-07.
  16. ^ "William K. Everson Collection". New York University.
  17. ^ "Legends, Newcomers Win 3rd Annual Rondo Awards". Rondo Awards.

External links

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