The Silver Spur

USA, 1956, 16mm film

James Blue made these films during his undergraduate and graduate school years studying Speech and Theater at the University of Oregon. The original 8mm of Hamlet was discovered by Dan Blue, James Blue’s nephew and administrator of the James and Richard Blue Foundation, and donated to the UO Libraries’ James Blue Archive, where it was restored.

Blue’s parodic version of Hamlet was a huge sensation when it screened on campus to over 2000 people in the UO Student Union ballroom. The student paper, the Daily Emerald, covered screenings in 1952 and again in 1955, reporting on its popularity. Word of this sensational student production even attracted national attention with an article in the March 1953 issue of the amateur film magazine, Movie Makers, and the April 1954 issue of American Cinematographer.