My next silent film show at the Plaistow Library will be on Tuesday, April 7. This time I’ll accompany three short comedies:

• The Immigrant with Charlie Chaplin
• Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde with Stan Laurel
• His Royal Slyness with Harold Lloyd

Chaplin, Laurel, and Lloyd were major comedy stars in their time. I shouldn’t have to say much about Chaplin. Stan Laurel’s career peaked after he joined with Oliver Hardy, but before that he had some excellent films on his own. Harold Lloyd’s “glasses” persona was a middle-class character, best known for his image hanging from a clock tower in Safety Last.

The Immigrant isn’t very controversial, in spite of its title. It has two distinct parts. The first shows Chaplin coming to America on a crowded boat from an unspecified country and helping a young woman whose money has been stolen. In the second part, he goes into the restaurant with a silver dollar he has found and encounters the young lady again. He discovers that the coin has fallen through a hole in his pocket and he has nothing to pay with. All turns out well, though.

I love mad scientists, Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde is a great parody of John Barrymore’s 1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this version, the doctor turns into not a murderous fiend but a silly prankster. The ending is lost, and what we have ends on a cliffhanger as a crowd breaks into the lab to save Pyckle’s assistant from Pryde. I’ll handle it by continuing to play, accompanying the way I think the film would have ended.

Finally, His Royal Slyness has a book salesman, played by Harold Lloyd, impersonate a prince and compete for a princess’s hand. The salesman looks just like the real prince, and you see them together on screen. No trick photography was used. Harold’s brother Gaylord looked a lot like him, and with glasses and makeup, they were nearly impossible to tell apart. Gaylord plays the real prince, who changes his mind about the deal and tries to claim the princess.

It’s a change of pace for me. The three movies together don’t run much over an hour, but they provide some of the best laughs of the period. They’re still fun today, and I aim to make them more fun with my accompaniment. Each one his its own keyboard setup, with a couple of surprises programmed in. If you’re in the area and it sounds interesting, drop by the Plaistow Library on April 7 at 6:00 PM.

This summer, the library will have some special events for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. On of them will be D. W. Griffith’s America, an epic presentation of the American Revolution. The date hasn’t been set yet.