Event

SAND! with William S. HArt

WILLIAM S. HART IN SAND!
Wednesday, September 21 at 7:30pm
Members $9 / Public $13
Live Musical Accompaniment by Ben Model on the Cinema's Miditzer Theater Organ

In the early days of movies, William S. Hart was one of the biggest stars in America. SAND! was Hart's first film
for his own production company. He plays a railroad-station agent fired from his job because of a villain's crafty
scheme. The villain is a major stockholder in the railroad company and covets Hart's girl. While working as a
ranch hand, Hart discovers that his enemy is actually the leader of a gang of train robbers and he sets out to
expose the truth. This exciting movie was President Woodrow Wilson's favorite William S. Hart western. Hart
(1864-1946) could be described as the Clint Eastwood of the silent era. He brought freshness and complexity to
the genre's usual stock characters. His heroes were emotionally complex "good bad men," who, underneath their
rugged exterior, exemplified those most basic of American values: honesty and loyalty, toughness tempered with
fairness. A successful Shakesperean actor on Broadway, Hart went on to become one of the first great stars of the
motion picture western. (USA, 1920, 60 min., b/w, 35mm print courtesy of the Library of Congress)