Chaplin and Jolson Lead It Off

The Silent Movie Theatre reopens Friday at 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, with two days of private screenings and opens to the public on Sunday with shows at 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

The regular screening schedule is evening shows Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30. Doors and box office open at 6 p.m. Matinees begin at 1 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays; doors and box office open at noon. Shorts, serials and cartoons precede the feature. Tickets are $8 for adults, $5 for ages 65 and older or 13 and younger. The cafe and photo gallery upstairs are open to all guests of the theater. Information: (323) 655-2520.

Here is the upcoming schedule (* denotes talkies--shown every Tuesday).

Sunday: “Modern Times” (1936). Charlie Chaplin’s last silent feature--although it contains out-of-sync TV dialogue and a priceless nonsense recitative from Charlie--is one of his best-loved movies. Obviously inspired by Rene Clair’s “A Nous la Liberte,” Chaplin gives us a whimsical view of modern industry, labor unrest and the clash between rich and poor. In the most famous sequences, he’s a hapless worker strapped into a madly malfunctioning eating device and a repairman trapped in the gears of his own machinery. With Paulette Goddard as a sexy gamin.

Tuesday: *”The Jazz Singer” (1927). Hollywood’s first “talkie”--with Al Jolson electrifying as the cantor’s son who defies his parents to knock ‘em dead on Broadway--which sounded the death knell of the silent picture.

Wednesday-Nov. 11: “My Best Girl” (1927). One of Mary Pickford’s best films and her last silent, in which she plays a dime-store clerk who catches the eye of the boss’ son. Charles “Buddy” Rogers, who became Pickford’s third husband and widower, co-stars.

Nov. 12-14: “City Lights” (1931). Released, anachronistically, as a silent film in the early talkie years, “City Lights” is the pinnacle of Chaplin’s career as writer-director-composer-star. Here, he’s the ultimate gentleman tramp, trapped in a schizoid relationship with a drunken millionaire (Harry Myers) while acting as benefactor to a lovely blind girl (Virginia Cherrill).

Nov. 16: *Laurel and Hardy’s “Flying Deuces” (1939). Heartbroken Oliver joins the Foreign Legion and drags Stanley along. One of the duo’s funniest films.

Nov. 17: “Thief of Bagdad” (1924). Quintessential Douglas Fairbanks: impudent and buoyant, athletic, grinning ear-to-ear, the prince of swashbucklers. It’s a roaring Arabian Nights fantasy: one of the silent screen’s most exuberant fantasies.

Nov. 18-20: “The Kid” (1921). Charlie Chaplin’s first feature film, and one of his best, finds the Little Tramp caring for an abandoned waif (Jackie Coogan).

Nov. 23: *Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup” (1933). Groucho Marx is Rufus T. Firefly, the lazy and lecherous prime minister of Freedonia. Zeppo is his aide and Chico and Harpo are two scandalously inept spies sent to undermine his regime. It’s a scathing satire on government, war and international diplomacy that leaves no pun untold, no snob unpunctured, no sacred cow unslaughtered.

Nov. 24: Early Douglas Fairbanks movies.

Nov. 26: Program of Charlie Chaplin shorts made for Mutual Films in 1916-17.

Nov. 27-28: Audience choice between two Douglas Fairbanks movies: “Three Musketeers” (1921) or “Robin Hood” (1922).

Nov. 30: *”They Were Expendable” (1945). Robert Montgomery, John Wayne and Donna Reed star in John Ford’s World War II classic.

Dec. 1-3: “Three Bad Men” (1926). A “noble outlaw” western by the master, John Ford.

Dec. 4-5: “Son of the Sheik” (1926). Smoldering Rudolph Valentino drives the women mad all over again, in a desert-lust sequel to his most famous vehicle, “The Sheik.”

Dec. 7: *”How Green Was My Valley” (1941). One of John Ford’s loveliest, most lyrical and heartbreaking films: the saga of a Welsh mining town and its slow dissolution into poverty, misery, blight, drifting ash over the once verdant hills.

Dec. 8-9: “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” (1927). Buster Keaton’s last film as an independent. And one of his great ones, with a wild, climactic comic cyclone--in one of the great stunts, it sends an entire building front crashing down around Buster’s unsmiling face.

Dec. 10-12: “The General” (1927). Many critics regard this as Keaton’s finest film, in which he plays a Confederate soldier with two loves: his locomotive engine, named the General, and his reluctant sweetheart (Marion Mack).

Dec. 14: *”Casablanca” (1942). Everyone’s favorite Hollywood intrigue-adventure-romance--with a cast that cannot be topped: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Paul Henreid and many more.

Dec. 15-16: “It” (1927). Clara Bow--grinning, wiggling and flirting--radiates flapperish sex appeal in this sometimes funny, sometimes dumb romance of a shop girl and a millionaire.

Dec. 17-19: “Wings” (1927). William Wellman’s full-throttle World War I aerial adventure--the first Oscar winner for best film--is a real movie-movie.

Dec. 21: *”It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946). George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), beleaguered, suicidal, is shown by a whimsical angel named Clarence what life would have been like had he never been born. The ultimate Frank Capra film.

Dec. 22-23: “King of Kings” (1927). With friends like Cecil B. DeMille, the Bible needs no enemies. But C.B.--the master of biblical shtick--can milk more pizazz and pull juicier stories from the Gospels than many a shameless, rip-roaring TV evangelist.

Dec. 24-26: “The Gold Rush” (1925). Chaplin is the floundering but plucky gentleman-tramp somehow cast into a roughhouse Klondike snow-scape of miners, murderers, bears and louts.

Dec. 25: *”The Bishop’s Wife” (1947). Cary Grant plays an urbane angel who descends upon an Episcopalian bishop (David Niven) and his family to help them raise funds for a new cathedral. Loretta Young co-stars as the title character. (Matinee only.)

Dec. 28: *”Things to Come” (1936). One of the classic early sci-fi films: H.G. Wells adapted his own speculative novel, imagining several future ages--some utopian, some dystopian.

Dec. 29-30: “Metropolis” (1926). Fritz Lang’s silent sci-fi masterpiece about a futuristic city paralyzed by warfare between workers, industrialists, evil scientists and robots. With Brigitte Helm and Rudolf Klein-Rogge.