Starting with the Overture Center 2023-2024 season, I will be the film advisor for the Duck Soup Cinema series of silent films screened in the Capitol Theater. This series has a long history in Madison, and I’m humbled to take part in continuing its tradition.
Brief History
Rudy Lienau began a local silent cinema revival at the Madison Civic Center (now the Overture Center) with a series in 1983 that included The Thief of Baghdad (1924), The Son of the Sheik (1926), and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928). In addition to curating the series, Lienau recruited silent-era music specialist Gaylord Carter to perform on the historic Grand Barton Organ in the Oscar Meyer Theater (which has now returned to its original name, the Capitol Theater).
Lienau then established “The Sounds of Silence,” an annual series of two to six silent films per year, as a regular feature of Madison Civic Center programming from 1986 to 1998. He recruited additional theater organ specialists for the series, including Carter’s protege Christian Elliott, Dennis James, and local organist R. Cameron Monschein.
I cannot recall how many Sounds of Silence screenings I attended, but the mid-to-late 1980s was roughly when I became more interested in film history after taking Film Studies with Bill Keys and Mass Media with Mary Moen at Madison West High School. I recall that the series prompted me to transition from a Chaplin fan to a Keaton fan, especially with screenings of One Week (1920) and Three Ages (1923).
R. Cameron Monschien later played a role in my graduate work in Film Studies at UW-Madison. He was frequently called upon by Lea Jacobs and Ben Brewster to accompany silent films in Vilas Hall, and eventually at the UW-Cinematheque.
In 1998, the series was re-branded as Duck Soup Cinema, and it incorporated vaudeville-influenced performances at each of the screenings.
The Madison Civic Center underwent many changes as it transformed into the Overture Center, too many changes to discuss here. Rudy Lienau served as the Events Manager at the Madison Civic Center from 1983 to 2003, and then Vice President of Operations at the Overture Center through 2017, while continuing the Duck Soup Cinema series. He decided to hand the reigns over to new programmers after 2022-2023 season, which wrapped up on June 3, 2023 with Ten Nights in a Bar Room.
There are several more detailed overviews of the history of Duck Soup Cinema. Here are links to a few of them.
- “Marking Movie History with Duck Soup Cinema,” Gayle Worland, Wisconsin State Journal, October 2, 2016
- “The Way It Was: 30 Years of Duck Soup Cinema,” Justin Mory, Zekefilm, June 10, 2017 (I drew heavily on this overview for the brief summary above.)
- “Duck Soup Cinema spotlights silent films in the vaudeville tradition,” Joel Patenaude, Madison Magazine, January 15, 2019
What’s Next?
I’m working with Overture Center Director of Programming and Community Engagement Alanna Medearis to start mapping out the 2023-2024 season. The first season will stay the course, in line with recent Duck Soup Cinema programming.
Alanna provided me with a screening history for Sounds of Silence and Duck Soup Cinema, and I created a spreadsheet to get a sense of what films have been featured the most frequently over the years. The most frequently screened film has been The Phantom of the Opera (1925), with 8 screenings between 1986 and 2022. Needless to say, we’ll take a break from Phantom for a while.
Other than that, there is a wide range of possibilities, especially as the Capitol Theater approaches the centenary of its original opening in 1928.
I will keep you up to date with blog posts in the Film Programming category, as well as Program Notes as the first screening approaches in October, 2023.