If you are a fan of old movies made in Mendocino you’ll want to come early to the Kelley House Museum on Sunday July 25 at 3 p.m. if you expect to get a seat. “A Sunday Afternoon with the Making of the Movies in Mendocino” is the event. Local historian Bruce Levene is bringing the black and white home movies to show…you get to be the audience.
This show wouldn’t be possible without Addie Reise. Though she passed away in 1985 she left a legacy in the home movies she took whenever a movie crew came to town from the 1940’s to the 1960’s. Levene’s interest in these film clips contributed to his definitive book “Mendocino and the Movies”, a perennial best seller at local bookshops and museums. Reise filmed casts and crews of motion pictures produced locally and filmed all the locals employed as extras and used in crowd scenes.
Addie Reise was the switchboard operator at Union Lumber Company in Fort Bragg and her husband was a deputy sheriff. She played accordion in the Senior Kitchen Band and was so well loved by the community she was the 1976 Bicentennial Belle of the Redwoods in the Paul Bunyan Days Parade. She left the community a treasure in her home movies and Levene has them copied and transformed into modern viewing technology.
Katy Tahja has a vivid memory of Levene showing these films for the first time, probably in the 1980’s, in the multi-purpose room of the old grammar school. The room was packed with elders and since Reise’s footage has no sound the audience helped provide the commentary. An older woman would say “See that actor on the left? He got two women pregnant before he left town!” It was dark in that room so you couldn’t see who made the comment. Then a shot of an actress would come up and another voice called out “She was a home-wrecker and caused so-and-so’s divorce with her loose morals!” Let me tell you readers…it was one of the most truly enjoyable and informational nights at the movies I’d ever experienced in Mendocino. The elders in the viewing audience had a story to share about everyone in every movie.
These movies are featured in Levene’s book along with many others. His research found many movies we will never be able to see because the film literally disintegrated with old age. All that is left is the poster and a press release. Some, like Murder She Wrote segments, will probably be forever available for your grandchildren to watch. Some movies, like Humanoids from the Deep, locals don’t even want to ADMIT they were in the crowd scenes of such a trashy movie. Others, like Racing With the Moon, find locals pointing with pride at their fleeting image on the screen.
Join us on Sunday, July 25, at 3 pm at the Kelley House Museum, 45007 Albion St., Mendocino. $5 members; $7 non-members. 707-937-5791