WILTON, N.H.–A seldom screened picture featuring iconic silent-era megastar John Barrymore will return to the silver screen in August for a rare revival.

‘Beau Brummel’ (1924), a period drama produced by Warner Bros., will be shown on Sunday, Aug. 20 at 2 p.m. at the Town Hall Theatre, 40 Main St., Wilton, N.H.

Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $10. Live music will be provided by silent film accompanist Jeff Rapsis.

The screening is part of a series of early films that never played at the Wilton venue when originally released.

The ‘Not Known to be Shown’ series runs through October and features obscure dramas, comedies, and adventure flicks from the silent era.

“In putting together this series, we wanted to give audiences a chance to see some rarely screened titles from the first years of motion pictures,” Rapsis said.

“Also, they’re all movies I’ve never scored before,” Rapsis added. “So it’s also a chance to work with ‘new’ material, although the films themselves are about 100 years old,” Rapsis said.

‘Beau Brummel,’ is an historical drama set in the 18th century starring John Barrymore as George Bryan Brummel, a British military officer.

Brummel loves Lady Margery (played by Mary Astor), the betrothed of Lord Alvanley. Despite her own desperate love for Brummel, she submits to family pressure and marries Lord Alvanley.

Brummel, broken-hearted, embarks upon a life of revelry. He befriends the Prince of Wales and leaves the army, becoming subsequently the best-known rake and decider of fashion in Europe.

As his affairs flourish, he falls out of favor with his benefactor, the Prince. Only Lady Margery has any chance of helping him–but will she?

Barrymore, known as The Great Profile and heralded as “the foremost English-speaking actor of his time,” first achieved fame on the stage, later moving into motion pictures.

He starred in more than 60 feature films, during both the silent and sound era, before succumbing to alcoholism at age 60 in 1942.

Shooting on ‘Beau Brummel’ began in September 1923, with Barrymore and Astor conducting an affair throughout the production.

Barrymore and Willard Louis, who played the Prince of Wales, frequently told off-color jokes during camera takes rather than say their lines, since it was a silent film.

However, they did not take into account deaf audience members who could lip read what they were saying. Many patrons wrote to Warner Bros. to complain about the actors’ antics.

The picture was a remake of a 1913 version and was in turn remade in 1954 with Stewart Granger, Elizabeth Turner, and Peter Ustinov.

Upcoming films in the Town Hall Theatre’s ‘Not Known to be Shown’ series include:

• Sunday, Aug. 27, 2 p.m.: ‘The Divine Lady’ (1929) starring Corrine Griffith. Frank Lloyd won the ‘Best Director’ Oscar for this romantic melodrama about British naval hero Horatio Nelson’s romantic adventures.

• Sunday, Sept. 17, 2 p.m.: ‘Eagle of the Night’ (1928) starring Frank Clarke, Shirley Palmer. An inventor creates a new muffler for noisy airplane engines, but the bad guys are out to steal the breakthrough and put it to evil use.

• Sunday, Oct. 8, 2 p.m.: ‘The Red Kimona’ (1925). A small-town girl finds escape from her cruel home life in the arms of a handsome stranger, a situation that leads her to work as a prostitute in New Orleans.

‘Beau Brummel’ (1924), a drama starring John Barrymore, will be shown on Sunday, Aug. 20 at 2 p.m. at the Town Hall Theatre, 40 Main St., Wilton, N.H.

Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $10. For more information, call (603) 654-3456.

For more about the music, visit www.jeffrapsis.com.