From PEMBERVILLE OPERA HOUSE
Buster Keaton’s “The General” will be screened as the annual Silent Movie Night featuring Lynne Long on piano, Saturday, Jan.6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Pemberville Opera House, 115 Main St., Pemberville
The Live! In The House Concert Series show is presented by the Pemberville Freedom Area Historical Society. Tickets are $12and are available at Beeker’s General Store, at the door or by contacting Carol at 419-287-4848 or at www.pembervilleoperahouse.org.
Lynne E. Long, a cum laude graduate of BGSU in piano performance, started taking lessons at age 7 from her church organist, and she found it was a wonderful way to express herself because she was so shy. Growing up, her parents were at every recital and performance, and her husband and family have taken over as her inspiration.
Long has maintained a private piano studio in her home for over 50 years. She has been a long-time member of the Ohio Music Teachers’ Association and holds a Permanent Professional Certificate.
Long has performed and accompanied at a variety of functions in the Northwest Ohio area including solo recitals, dedication concerts, and senior recitals (cooperative pianist) at BGSU. Practicing is sometimes demanding and tedious, but the outcome is always worth the effort whether anyone is listening or not.
She was a charter member of the Fayette Arts Council and also the Grand Rapids Arts Council. She served as a church organist for over 25 years and worked as a paralegal and court administrator in the Fulton and Wood County Common Pleas Courts for 23 years.
As a trustee of the Historical Society of Grand Rapids, she coordinates the “Rhythm on the River” music series in the summers. She has recorded two CDs of sacred music.
Currently, Lynne accompanies silent movies at four different venues. She and her husband, Joe, reside on the Long Sesquicentennial Farm outside Grand Rapids.
“The General” stars Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname “The Great Stone Face.”
Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton’s “extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929” when he “worked without interruption” as having made him “the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies.”
In 1996, Entertainment Weekly recognized Keaton as the
seventh-greatest film director, writing that “More than Chaplin, Keaton understood movies: He knew they consisted of a four-sided frame in which resided a malleable reality off which his persona could bounce. A vaudeville child star, Keaton grew up to
be a tinkerer, an athlete, a visual mathematician; his films offer belly laughs of mind-boggling physical invention and a spacey determination that nears philosophical grandeur.”
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him as the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema.
“The General” is viewed as his masterpiece: Orson Welles considered it “the greatest comedy ever made…and perhaps the greatest film ever made.”
In “The General,”Keaton is the first action hero; to be precise, he is a small, pale-faced American who is startled, tripped, drenched and inspired into becoming a hero.”
