How many silents gone?
AChiWriter
and/or dissappeared over the year? I don't need hard numbers (though that
would be nice); percentages will do.
Thanks!
Robert Birchard
authoritative figures on percentages of films that survive by studio several
months ago.
AChiWriter wrote:
--
Bob Birchard
bbir...@earthlink.net
http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/Guest/birchard.htm
ChaneyFan
>fairly
>authoritative figures on percentages of films that survive by studio several
>months ago.
-----
Here is a repost of the earlier message Bob refers to:
LOST SILENT FILMS: FACTS AND FIGURES
I have recently updated my database of archival holdings of American silent
feature films. I have included a number of recent acquisitions, including the
Hampton/Packard collection of silents at UCLA and a number of titles in foreign
archives. I thought all of you might be interested in the following numbers.
First the caveats: This is compiled from numerous sources, some of which are
probably wrong. Gosfilmofond in Moscow is notorious for misinformation. Also,
you may not care for my definitions, but here they are:
American Feature Film: A film of 4 reels or longer that was produced or
financed primarily by American producers. Documentaries are *not* included.
Silent Film: Any feature where the majority of the film does not have
dialogue. Therefore, THE JAZZ SINGER, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, and THE YOUNGER
GENERATION are silent films. *Not* included are sound films that were released
as silent versions (e.g., LADIES OF LEISURE, HELL'S HEROES, Garbo's ANNA
CHRISTIE)
Incomplete Films: I consider an extant film to be incomplete if it is
missing enough footage to make a continuity gap obvious to the average viewer.
Therefore, GREED, HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, and TOLL OF THE SEA are *not*
incomplete, even though there is footage missing, whereas MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
(color is lost), THE RIVER (first and last reel missing) and WHILE THE CITY
SLEEPS (1 reel missing) are. I do not consider a film with a missing
soundtrack incomplete unless it is a part talkie with a significant amount of
dialogue.
Film Gauge: A purist would consider the film incomplete if the film
doesn't exist in 35mm, but so many silents exist *only* in 16mm that these
numbers would be far too grim to report. Besides, I have good data on gauge
for UCLA, LOC, National Film Archives (London), and Eastman House, but not for
anyone else. Therefore, these figures include all surviving gauges.
Archival Holdings: In the majority of cases, at least one major archive
holds a film on this list, but a number of studio-held (e.g., Turner/Warner
Bros. Classics) and private collector titles are also included. In some cases,
I don't actually know where a print is, but there are videos out there and I
assume they were copied from an extant print. This only represents a very
small fraction of the total anyway.
One final *big* caveat. Some of these titles are in archives on nitrate only.
Keep your fingers crossed (and donate your next paycheck to your favorite
archive)!
Now, on to the figures:
# American Silent Films Released: 10,878
# That Exist (including incomplete): 2,518 (23.1%)
# That Exist Essentially Complete: 2,105 (19.4%)
# That Exist Only in Non-U.S. Archive: 526 (4.8%)
I did a breakdown of "major studios" who I defined as a studio or production
company with at least 100 releases. #Extant is the total, complete or
incomplete. These totals are as follows (if this table looks funny in your
newsreader or e-mail, copy it into a word processor with fixed- space font like
Letter Gothic or Courier to straighten it out):
STUDIO TOTAL #EXTANT #COMPLETE
------ ----- ------- ---------
AMERICAN FILM CO. 144 10 (7%) 7 (5%)
COLUMBIA 129 46 (36%) 35 (27%)
FAMOUS PLAYERS 165 21 (13%) 20 (12%)
FOX 827 137 (17%) 131 (16%)
FAMOUS-PLAYERS LASKY 577 165 (29%) 151 (26%)
FIRST NATIONAL 123 33 (27%) 31 (25%)
GOLDWYN PICTURES CORP. 166 34 (20%) 30 (18%)
THOMAS INCE 114 56 (49%) 47 (41%)
JESSE LASKY 141 48 (34%) 43 (30%)
METRO PICTURES 189 33 (17%) 29 (15%)
MGM 178 122 (69%) 107 (60%)
NEW YORK MOTION PICTURES 116 35 (30%) 34 (29%)
PARAMOUNT 131 41 (31%) 39 (30%)
R-C PICTURES 129 16 (12%) 15 (12%)
TRIANGLE FILM CORP. 159 19 (12%) 14 (9%)
UNIVERSAL 950 180 (19%) 145 (15%)
VITAGRAPH 346 15 (4%) 12 (3%)
WARNER BROS. 173 54 (31%) 51 (29%)
WORLD FILM CORP. 183 26 (14%) 20 (11%)
The above data are interesting because they show the huge difference in
survival rates based on studio. MGM is clearly the survival leader, largely
due to aggressive preservation policies that started earlier than most studios.
MGM is even more impressive when you consider that they were one of the few
studios who never released films as 16mm prints (ala Show-at-Home and Kodascope
prints) in the 20's and 30's. Survival on Universal is better than expected
given the folk lore surrounding their print destruction policies, but an awful
lot survive solely as 16mm Show-at-Home prints. What happened with Vitagraph
and American Film Co.? Who knows? And why is survival poor for Famous
Players, but is twice as good for Famous-Players Lasky and Jesse Lasky? Did
‘ol Jesse have a preservation streak, or is this due to release policies that
allowed stray prints to lurk in projectionist's basements?
Another set of studios that caught my eye were the following:
STUDIO TOTAL #EXTANT #COMPLETE
------ ----- ------- ---------
COSMOPOLITAN PICTURES 54 39 (72%) 27 (50%)
DEMILLE PICTURES 54 44 (81%) 43 (80%)
D.W. GRIFFITH PRODUCTIONS 24 21 (88%) 21 (88%)
THOMAS A. EDISON, INC. 55 31 (56%) 27 (49%)
DOUG FAIRBANKS (ELTON CORP) 24 18 (75%) 18 (75%)
WM S. HART PRODUCTIONS 26 23 (88%) 19 (73%)
MARY PICKFORD PRODUCTIONS 28 26 (93%) 26 (93%)
NORMA TALMADGE PRODUCTIONS 37 26 (70%) 18 (49%)
What every one of these studios has in common is a star/businessman (or woman)
who had a personal or financial interest in preserving their own films...or
someone else did.
My LOC and Eastman lists are somewhat out of date (late 80's) and I hope to get
those updated later this year. If I do another update in a few years, let's
hope these numbers go up even further.
===============================
Jon Mirsalis
e-mail: Chan...@aol.com
Lon Chaney Home Page: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan
Jon's Film Sites: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan/jonfilm.htm
Jonah Horwitz
And besides THE GREATEST THING IN LIFE, which late Griffiths are missing?
Jonah
--
Make sure to remove "nospam" from my address to e-mail me
AChiWriter
>>
"That Royale Girl," which starred W. C. Fields and was partially shot in
Chicago by Griffith is on the American Film Institute's "Ten Most Wanted
Missing Films" List.
paghat
Up until the 1970s you could walk into used book shops throughout Europe,
& a few on the east coast of the United States run by Europeans, & ask if
they had any silent film stock. In the back rooms of many of these
old-generation bookshops they'd have piles of reels or even old wooden
boxes with loose film in a knotty heap. Many scenes from Abel Gance's
Napoleon epic were salvaged five feet at a time from back rooms of
bookshops.
Since the beginning of the 1980s & the process speeded up in the 1990s
entire streets of bookshops have vanished from London, Paris's left bank,
Berlin, Prague, Manhattan -- where once you could find ten or even THIRTY
used bookshops in walking distance of a hotel you can now frequently find
only ONE and that won't be the old-style big rambling affair with
back-rooms & attics, but only a little place that can't afford to store
odd things for decades hoping someday to sell it. There are no longer
backrooms with posters & film reels.
Perhaps those reels would've rotted to nothing anyway but the loss of such
shops in this era bottom-line era of expensive leases & small floorspaces
is a tragedy for many more reasons. But it remains that up through the
1970s many presumed-lost silent films were being recovered by fanatics &
exist on video today because second-third-or-fourth generation bookshop
owners never threw anything away. Even now things turn up but no longer
for pennies from some backroom; if the few collectors didn't grab that
stuff by 1979, it got tossed as leases expired & big old bookshops were
transformed into little boutiques.
-paghat the ratgirl
greta de groat
identified from last time you posted this message. Since you were nice enough last
time to respond to someone's request for the existing First National titles, i was
wondering if you could post the titles of the 34 extant Goldwyn films? (or if you
have extra time on your hands, i'd also love to know the 54 surviving Warners, I'm
dying to know which of Irene Rich's films survive, they sound fascinating).
thanks,
greta
ChaneyFan wrote:-----
> Here is a repost of the earlier message Bob refers to:
>
> LOST SILENT FILMS: FACTS AND FIGURES
>
>
>
ChaneyFan
>have extra time on your hands, i'd also love to know the 54 surviving
>Warners,
For reasons a bit too complicated to explain, listing all the extant Warners
silents (my list includes a few part talkies as well since I consider them
silent films with filler) is easier than doing the Goldwyns (it has to do with
the fact that Goldwyn worked under a couple of different company names). So
here's the surviving Warner Bros. list: (Title, Year)
Beau Brummel 24
Better 'Ole, The 27
Beware 18
Beware of Bachelors 28
Brass 23
Brass Knuckles 27
Broken Hearts of Hollywood 26
Brute, The 27
Caught in the Fog 28
Cave Man, The 26
Clash of the Wolves 25
Conducter 1492 24
Daddies 24
Don Juan 26
First Auto, The 27
Footloose Widow, The 26
Fortune Hunter, The 27
Girl from Chicago, The 27
Glorious Betsy 28
Golden Cocoon, The 26
Greyhound Limited, The 29
Heart of Maryland, The 27
Her Marriage Vow 24
Heroes of the Street 22
Hills of Kentucky 27
His Majesty, Bunker Bean 25
If I Were Single 27
Jaws of Steel 27
Jazz Singer, The 27
Lady Windermere's Fan 25i
Lighthouse by the Sea 25
Limited Mail, The 25
Little Church Around the Corner, The 23
Lover of Camille, The 24
Lucretia Lombard 23
Man on the Box, The 25
Marriage Circle, The 23
Missing Link, The 27
My Official Wife 26
Night Cry, The 26
Noah's Ark 29
Oh, What a Nurse! 26
Old San Francisco 27
Pleasure Buyers, The 25
Sailor's Sweetheart, A 27
Sea Beast, The 26
Singing Fool, The 28
So This is Paris 26
Third Degree, The 26
Three Women 24
Tiger Rose 23
Tracked by the Police 27
When a Man Loves 27
Where the North Begins 23
greta de groat
Chaplin fans, anyway. Only 4 Irene Rich, darn. Do you know whether her Craig's
Wife from Pathe survives?
greta
ChaneyFan
survives?
No, the 1928 CRAIG'S WIFE is lost.
greta de groat
Compromise (1925)--i always wanted to know why she was horsewhipping Pauline
Garon!)
Thanks so much for the info, it's always greatly appreciated.
greta
Jim Harwood
>No, the 1928 CRAIG'S WIFE is lost.
A couple of years back, David Shepard told me that this existed in nitrate in
the Rohauer library and that it hadn't been copied.
I have no idea on it's status today.
Jim Harwood
"Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else."
All opinions expressed here are my own and no one else's. No one else would
want them.
Jim Harwood
>
>A couple of years back, David Shepard told me that this existed in nitrate in
>the Rohauer library and that it hadn't been copied.
>
>I have no idea on it's status today.
>
>Jim Harwood
Scratch that last message of mine regarding "Craig's Wife." It's actually the
silent version of "The Awful Truth" that I was referring to as existing in the
Rohauer Library. Sorry for the confusion.
Dan Condon
vita...@my-deja.com wrote:
> I would love to see a list of the First National Silents that
> survive. Thanks for this great list. Sorry to see that so few
> of the Warner Brother silents still exist.
>
> Best,
>
> Jason
>
> In article <19991003042033...@ng-cd1.aol.com>,
> chan...@aol.com (ChaneyFan) wrote:
> > >(or if you
> > >have extra time on your hands, i'd also love to know the 54
> surviving
> > >Warners,
> >
> > Jon Mirsalis
> > e-mail: Chan...@aol.com
> > Lon Chaney Home Page: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan
> > Jon's Film Sites: http://members.aol.com/ChaneyFan/jonfilm.htm
> >
>
> --
> Jason Almeida
> Email: vita...@thetaband.com
> Vitaphone Web Site: http://vitaphone.thetaband.com
> Orthophonic Site: http://vitaphone.thetaband.com/victor1.html
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.