Fred Davis, one of the Festival's organizers, with Linda Stirling (1991)
and with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (1994)

 Reeling in the Years
Putting the silver back into the Silver Screen -
25 years of the Memphis Film Festival
by David D. Duncan of The Memphis Flyer

      The first full week in August signals the return of a star-studded annual celebration - the Memphis Film Festival. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the event, which started as the Western Film Festival at The Peabody Hotel back in 1972. The Film Festival has evolved into a nationally recognized gathering of movie fans and performing artists, with hundreds traveling to Memphis each year to participate in the festivities.
       Mitchell Schaperkotter was one of the original founders, along with Packey Smith, Wayne Lackey, and the late Tommy Floyd. Schaperkotter, who also managed the Bristol Theater in its last days, is still actively involved with the Festival. "We started out as just a little B-western get together then," explains Schaperkotter, "and we really didn't know if there would be another one after the first one. But it just took on a life of its own. It seems like a long time ago when it began, but it also seems like yesterday in a way, if you think of everything that's happened in between. Most of the talent that appeared in those films are now gone. We've actually been celebrating longer than the B-western probably played in theatres."
       The audience for the Film Festival has changed over the years as well, mainly due to the rise of videotape as an inexpensive medium for collectors. People essentially collect what they grew up with, so that now much of the focus is on obtaining and trading information about early television shows. But one of the biggest lures of the Film Festival (in addition to its celebrity guest stars and film exhibitions) is the dealers' room.
       According to Schaperkotter, "all of the dealers' tables this time - and there's 130 of them - are completely sold out. People can find a wide range of collectible memo-rabilia ranging from original movie posters to videos to prints of 16mm films gathered together in one place. It's a movie collector's heaven."
      Shelby State Community College instructor Fred Davis became involved with the Film Festival back in 1981 and echoes the allure of the renowned dealer's room. "We've got a pretty interesting fan base," notes Davis. "Movies cross socioeconomic lines, and our fans do that too. Movies are a more social hobby than some other interests, but collectors are indeed a special breed. When I was a kid, I collected stamps. Then I switched to post-World War II blues records, then pulp magazines. Then I started collecting 16mm films. I always liked movies when I was a kid - heck, everybody including Grandma likes movies.
      "I lived in a little town called Bradford, Tennessee, which is 100 miles north of Memphis. Bradford was too small to have a movie theatre, so I had to go to another town - Greenfield. Bradford had a theatre in the silent days, but never built a theatre with sound. I remember seeing every chapter of the first Batman serial back in 1941, except for the last one because I had the measles. I had to wait over 30 years to see the final chapter, but of course, now I have my own 16mm print of it."
      By acting as a yearly one-stop shopping center for movie buffs, the Film Festival continues to carry on a Memphis tradition that has been all but forgotten to its current residents. From the 1930s until its decline in the early 1970s, Memphis was a bustling film exchange center for the Mid-South. There were only a handful of other exchange cities servicing the area below the Mason-Dixon line - Atlanta, New Orleans, Charlotte - and their importance cannot be overlooked. Major and minor studios a like maintained film exchanges in Memphis, all located in the area around Second Street and Calhoun.
      Every company from Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer and Paramount to Republic and Monogram looked to the Memphis exchanges for consistent performance of a substantial percentage of their business. In addition, Memphis-based trucking delivery company Film Transit originated by transporting the 35mm film prints from theatre to theatre in small towns throughout the South. But today, a trip to the once active film distribution area reveals only flaking remnants on the buildings of the previous activity that went on there.
       The surviving business still in operation from those halcyon days is Theater Poster Exchange, which was started down on Calhoun by Henry Werling back in the late 1940s and taken over by his son, Robert, who moved the business to Frayser in the early 1980s. The current proprietor, Bill Luton, bought the remaining inventory from Robert Werling in 1988. "The poster exchange in its heyday used to service a lot of little towns," states Luton, "but back then, the theatres would change movies every three days. The posters would be rented for a very nominal fee, and then sent from theatre to theatre as the film would play across the territory. When it was done, most of the paper would be returned to the exchange. We've got original paper from some 15,000 different films available."
      Luton indicates that "only about 30 percent of my business is new posters. I really miss the odd poster sizes that were discontinued by the mid-'80s - inserts, half-sheets, window cards - and the really big paper, from six-sheets to billboard-sized 48 sheets." (Today's movie posters mainly adhere to the standard one-sheet size - 28 inches by 41 inches - and the tried-and- true display items of stand-ups and banners.)
      So why do people collect movie posters'? For many, the reward is recapturing the ephemera of one's lost youth, but most movie-poster collectors simply love the medium. Today's mentality is to purchase a collectible item (i.e., comic book, base- ball card, etc.) purely on speculation, to be sealed away with little or no contact with the actual object. But not with movie posters, which were colorfully and dynamically printed with the intent to be displayed proudly. To own a poster from a favorite film is to possess a vivid piece of the past, one that was most likely hung on the walls of a movie palace in full splendor.
      According to Luton, the vintage movie poster market has been artificially inflated due to an inordinate number of high-dollar auctions from blue-chip houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's. The number of auctions has slowed down, but not due to a lack of product. Interest in these posters has also crossed over to the fine arts, where art dealers are actually buying movie posters now. Some poster artists such as Reynold Brown, who labored in unsigned obscurity, are now recognized with reverence. Luton also notes that there are rare posters surfacing now that were not seen back in the '70s when the collector's market began in earnest, giving rise to the hope that somewhere - in someone's attic or an abandoned theater - there lies an undiscovered treasure-trove of as-yet-unseen poster masterpieces. It should be noted that the present world record for an original movie poster at auction belongs to a one- sheet from James Whale's 1931 version of Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff, which went for $198,000.
      And no Memphis Film Festival would be complete without its impressive lineup of celebrity guests and little-seen films. This difficult task resides in the very capable hands of Ray Nielsen, one of the foremost locators of movie performers in the country. Nielsen has probably conducted over a thousand celebrity interviews on his Good Times Picture Show, which is the longest-running program on the Arkansas Educational Television Network.
      Nielsen states that he essentially recruits the guest stars, rounds up all the films that are shown and makes sure their advertisements get placed in the right publications - Movie Collector's World, Classic Images, and The Big Reel. "Our schedule is predominated by the work of the people we invite to the Festival," notes Nielsen. "Twenty-five collectors from around the country donate the use of 16mm prints from their personal archives based on request lists that I supply them with. We have five screening rooms, and show films from early in the morning until about 10 p.m. We also try to get actors and actresses who haven't appeared at other festivals."
      One of the most rewarding aspects of the Festival is the appreciation among its members of segments of these artists' careers that no one else focuses upon. Nielsen also attempts to book stars who have worked together in the past. When you examine a film actor's life, it's kind of a bizarre way to make a living. Actors and actresses will go to work on a film, and while they're making that film, it's like there is a family there. But then when that film is over, they leave that family and go to another family, and may not see the people from that first film ever again or not until many decades later. But when they are gathered at an event like the Memphis Film Festival, it's like a reunion, with their family members for the stars.
      This year, Nielsen had to deal with the cancellation of the appearances of three of his most prominent guests, due to unforeseen circumstances. Nielsen indicates that "unfortunately, it's the nature of the beast. Anne Francis (Forbidden Planet, Honey West) offered to refund the airplane ticket we bought her, but we told her just to keep it and use it for next year, and she said she would." Brian Keith had to cancel due to jury duty, and director Andrew V. McLaglen was also unable to attend. This year's confirmed celebrity guests include actors Jack Elam, Jeremy Slate, Andrew Prine, Gene Evans, and Michael Pate, actresses Lori Nelson, Heather Lowe, Peggy Stewart, and Ann Robinson, and directors Charles B. Pierce and Burt Kennedy.
      In addition to Schaperkotter, Davis, and Nielsen, the fourth musketeer of this year's Memphis Film Festival is Harold Stamey, who owns Tennessee Blood Services Corporation. Each man donates his time, along with about four dozen others who are responsible for the logistics of putting on a yearly show. The dedication of the partici- pants can be seen in the example of Jim Plummer, a union projectionist who lives in Los Angeles. Plummer spends his vacation in Memphis, screening films for the Festival free of charge.
      All are enthusiastic about the increasing use of Memphis as a film location, as witnessed by recent Hollywood pictures like The Firm and The People Vs. Larry Flynt. Fred Davis offers the following observation, "It's interesting to see what a director sees. We locals just look at it as a city with a lot of warts. But then when you start seeing the locations used, such as Riverside Drive, The Peabody hotel, the monorail at Mud Island, and Beale Street with the dancers and everything, then all of a sudden the city takes on this aura of glamour that you don't normally see."
      This year's Memphis Film Festival will be held on August 7th through 10th at Four Points Hotel, 2240 Democrat Road (formerly Best Western). Fees for single-day admission are $20 per adult, $10 after 5 p.m. According to Davis, "Ray will be handling stars, Mitchell usually handles the dealers' rooms, and I'll be on the desk. We're fully a four-day show, but the most fun for me is Tuesday, the day before the festivities officially start. That's when the dealers are getting set up and there's excitement in the air." The Memphis Film Festival has been keeping the city's movie tradition alive for 25 years, so be sure to come check out this landmark occasion on its silver anniversary.

Check out the Playbook article on the Festival