MFAH Film – Passion for Cinema: Northwest Chicago Film Society Presents: Corn’s-A-Poppin’

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents Passion for Cinema: Northwest Chicago Film Society Presents.

Formed in 2011 by a group of film projectionists and programmers, this dedicated organization presents a year-round selection of 35mm and 16mm films from studio vaults, film archives, and private collections.

One of the founders, Kyle Westphal, has accepted the invitation to escape the Chicago winter and present two films at the Museum.

Each screening will be accompanied by customized pre-show trailers.

Corn’s-A-Poppin’

DirectorRobert Woodburn
Released1955
Country USA
Running Time 58 minutes
Format 35mm, B/W

Presented by Kyle Westphal, Northwest Chicago Film Society.

Scripted by 28-year-old Robert Altman, Corn’s-A-Poppin’ is a bargain-basement backstage musical that puts the corn in cornpone.

Real-life crooner Jerry Wallace plays Johnny Wilson, the down-home star of the Pinwhistle Popcorn Hour, a low-rent variety show with acts ranging from ex-hog caller Lillian Gravelguard to Hobie Shepp and His Cow Town Wranglers.

Might the tone-deaf bookings be an act of corporate sabotage engineered by rogue PR man Waldo Crummit in his bid to gut the Pinwhistle empire? It’s up to Wallace and his kid sister Little Cora Rice to save the day.

Along the way, they perform such memorable songs as “On Our Way to Mars,” “Running After Love,” and “Mama, Wanna Balloon.” Shot in Kansas City by the Midwest’s most innovative industrial film studio, Corn’s-A-Poppin’ saw extremely limited play at rural drive-ins and hootenannies before disappearing for decades.

The 35mm print has been restored by the Northwest Chicago Film Society in conjunction with the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Kyle Westphal spent his adolescence in Sacramento, California and learned about movies at the Crest and Tower Theatres. For four years Kyle served variously as treasurer, projectionist, historian, and ultimately programming chair for Doc Films at the University of Chicago.

He has also interned or worked at the Bank of America Cinema, the University of Chicago Film Studies Center, the Little Theatre, Monaco Digital Film Lab, UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Pacific Film Archive, and the George Eastman House. His program notes are featured on Kino’s “Avant-Garde 3” DVD box set, which recently won a Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

He is a 2009 graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation.

At the Northwest Chicago Film Society, Kyle serves as co-programmer and writes the organization’s blog. He is interested in avant-garde cinema, early talkies, the history of non-theatrical distribution and exhibition, and everything else. He is working on a book or two.

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/nwcfs