William K. Everson

American historian (1929–1996)

Keith William Everson (8 April 1929 – 14 April 1996) was an English American archivist, author, critic, educator, collector, and film historian. He also discovered several lost films. Everson's given first names were Keith William, but he reversed them so that "William K." would mimic the name of Hollywood director William K. Howard, whom he admired.

Everson was born in Yeovil, Somerset, the son of Catherine (née Ward) and Percival Wilfred Everson, an aircraft engineer. His earliest jobs were in the motion picture industry; as a teenager he was employed at Renown Pictures as publicity manager. He began to write film criticism and operated several film societies.

Following service in the British Army from 1946 to 1948, Everson worked as a cinema theatre manager for London's Monseigneur News Theatres. and subsequently became a freelance publicist. and the biographer of Charlie Chaplin), Everson, film critic Seymour Stern and Variety columnist Herman G. Weinberg as the Theodore Huff Film Society. After Huff's death, Everson added the word "Memorial". At each screening, Huff members were presented with extensive program notes written by Everson about each film. During the 1960s, these screenings were held in a hall at Union Square. They seized the print, and Everson spent the next few days squirreling other hot titles around New York. Lillian Gish had to intervene on his behalf. In the 1970s, the FBI instituted a "witch hunt" among film collectors, but by then Everson was too highly respected to be touched. Archives came to depend on him — he would not only loan rare prints for copying or showing, but he would travel the world presenting the films he loved. I was astounded to meet him at an airport weighed down by three times as many cans of films as any human could be expected to carry. He had the uncanny knack of finding lost films. It would be no exaggeration to say that single handedly, he transformed the attitude of American film enthusiasts towards early cinema.</blockquote>

Many of Everson's film programs were assembled from his own personal collection, which comprised over 4,000 titles by the 1970s. and the Telluride Film Festival. He worked as a consultant to producers and studios preparing silent film projects, and collaborated closely with Robert Youngson, screening and assembling the best in silent comedy for Youngson's feature length revivals. (Everson even wrote some of Youngson's promotional feature articles for publication.) He assisted in the production of the syndicated TV series The Charlie Chaplin Comedy Theatre (1965) and its offshoot feature film The Funniest Man in the World (1967). He was technical advisor on David L. Wolper's TV specials Hollywood, the Golden Years (1961) and The Legend of Rudolph Valentino (1982). In 1994, the National Board of Review established the William K. Everson Award for Film History, of which Everson was the first recipient.

On 14 April 1996, Everson died of prostate cancer at the age of 67 in Manhattan, and he was survived by his wife, Karen Latham Everson, (named for ballerina Bambi Linn), his son, Griffith and his granddaughter, Sarah. His film collection was taken over by his widow and sold to the George Eastman House. Most of his manuscripts, film screening notes and memorabilia were donated to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, comprising the William K. Everson Collection. In 2004, Everson was inducted into the Monster Kid Hall of Fame at the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards.