Next month the Knox County Public Library will host a five day film festival in celebration of Knoxville’s own prolific and influential Hollywood director Clarence Brown. Brown, whose moniker graces the Clarence Brown Theatre on UT Campus, helped make Greta Garbo famous, and who received most of his formal education in Knoxville, notably a diploma from Knoxville High School and two degrees in engineering from UT.
Among the numerous events will be a tour of Brown’s Old North neighborhood by Laura Still on Wednesday, Aug. 16, and a KHP-hosted live Zoom at Central Cinema on Aug. 17 at 6:00, which happens to be located in Clarence Brown’s old neighborhood, just a block and a half down the hill from his family’s ca. 1910 home. KHP will be broadcasting its monthly Zoom from Central Cinema that evening.
The Clarence Brown Film Festival will showcase several of his notable films, both silents and talkies, at the Tennessee Theatre and at UT campus, and also host a visit from Irish film scholar Gwenda Young, whose thick biography, Clarence Brown: Hollywood’s Forgotten Master, got national attention when it was published five years ago. For more, see the Knox County Library website.
