List of incomplete or partially lost films
Encyclopedia
The following is a list of notable lost film
Lost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...

s that are incomplete or partially lost
. See also

1900s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1906 The Story of the Kelly Gang
The Story of the Kelly Gang
The Story of the Kelly Gang is a 1906 Australian film that traces the life of the legendary bushranger Ned Kelly . It was written and directed by Charles Tait. The film ran for more than an hour, and was the longest narrative film yet seen in Australia, and the world. Its approximate reel length...

 
Charles Tait
Charles Tait (film director)
Charles Tait , together with two of his brothers, was an Australian concert, film and theatrical entrepreneur, but his most notable achievement was as the director and writer of The Story of the Kelly Gang, an Australian film, regarded as the world's first feature length film...

 
Frank Mills Only 17 minutes of this 70-minute feature survive; it is often considered to be the world’s first feature
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

-length motion picture.

1910s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1911 A Victim of the Mormons
A Victim of the Mormons
A Victim of the Mormons is a 1911 Danish silent film directed by August Blom. The film was controversial for demonizing the Mormon religion, and its box-office success is cited for initiating a decade of anti-Mormon propaganda films in America...

 
August Blom
August Blom
August Blom was a Danish film director, production leader and pioneer of silent films during the "golden age" of Danish filmmaking from 1910 to 1914.-Career:...

 
Valdemar Psilander
Valdemar Psilander
Valdemar Psilander was a Danish silent film actor, who was the highest paid performer of his period and received critical acclaim as the greatest male lead during the golden era of Danish cinema.-Early life:...

 
Danish film that initiated a decade of anti-Mormon propaganda films in America. Only about half of the 60-minute feature has been found, a copy of which is preserved at the LDS archive in Salt Lake City.
1913 Raja Harischandra  D.G. Phalke  D.D. Dabke, P.G. Sane  First Indian feature film, of which a fragmentary print still exists.
1914 My Official wife  James Young
James Young
James Young was a Scottish chemist best known for his method of distilling paraffin from coal.-Early life:James Young was born in the Drygate area of Glasgow, the son of John Young, a cabinetmaker and joiner...

 
Clara Kimball Young
Clara Kimball Young
Clara Kimball Young was an American film actress, who was highly regarded and publicly popular in the early silent film era.-Early life:...

 
Tells the story of Helen Marie, a woman on the run from the St. Petersburg police, who plots to assassinate the Tsar
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...

. Only 44 seconds of this film exist. These fragments contain an extra mistakenly said to be Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....

, in fact, Trotsky was not yet in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 when this was filmed.
1914 Neptune's Daughter
Neptune's Daughter (1914 film)
Neptune's Daughter is a 1914 American silent fantasy film featuring the first collaboration between actress Annette Kellerman and director Herbert Brenon. It was filmed by Universal on Bermuda, cost US$35,000 to make, and grossed one million dollars at the box office...

 
Herbert Brenon  Annette Kellerman
Annette Kellerman
Annette Marie Sarah Kellerman was an Australian professional swimmer, vaudeville and film star, and writer...

 
A reel of footage exists in Australia's National Film and Sound Archive
National Film and Sound Archive
The National Film and Sound Archive is Australia’s audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national collection of audiovisual materials and related items...

.
1914 The Perils of Pauline
The Perils of Pauline (1914 serial)
The Perils of Pauline is a motion picture serial shown in weekly installments featuring Pearl White as the title character. Pauline has often been cited as a famous example of a damsel in distress, although some analyses hold that her character was more resourceful and less helpless than the...

 
George B. Seitz
George B. Seitz
George Brackett Seitz was an American playwright, screenwriter, film actor and director. He was known for his screenplays for action serials, including:*The Perils of Pauline *The Exploits of Elaine...

 
Pearl White
Pearl White
Pearl Fay White was an American film actress, the so-called "Stunt Queen" of silent films, most notably in The Perils of Pauline.-Early life:...

 
Of the original 20-chapter serial running 410 minutes, only a 90-minute version, released in Europe in 1916, is known to exist.
1915 The Golem  Paul Wegener
Paul Wegener
Paul Wegener was a German actor, writer and film director known for his pioneering role in German expressionist cinema.-Stage and early film career:...

 
Henrik Galeen  Only about 3 minutes survive. Found in private collection
1915 The Millionaire Paupers
The Millionaire Paupers
The Millionaire Paupers is a 1915 silent drama film directed by Joe De Grasse and featuring Lon Chaney, Sr. Only a fragment of the film survives.-Cast:* Grace Thompson - Enid* Gretchen Lederer - Mabel* Lon Chaney, Sr. - Martin - landlord...

 
Joe De Grasse
Joe De Grasse
Joseph Louis De Grasse was a Canadian film director. Born in Bathurst, New Brunswick, he was the elder brother of actor Sam De Grasse....

 
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...

 
Only a fragment of the film survives.
1916 The Place Beyond the Winds
The Place Beyond the Winds
The Place Beyond the Winds is a 1916 silent drama film directed by Joe De Grasse and starring Lon Chaney, Sr. Four of the five reels survive in the film archive in the Library of Congress.-Cast:* Dorothy Phillips - Priscilla Glenn...

 
Joe De Grasse
Joe De Grasse
Joseph Louis De Grasse was a Canadian film director. Born in Bathurst, New Brunswick, he was the elder brother of actor Sam De Grasse....

 
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...

 
Four of the five reels survive in the film archive of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

.
1916 Kiss of Death
Kiss of Death (1916 film)
Kiss of Death is a 1916 Swedish silent drama film directed by Victor Sjöström. Approximately 30 minutes of the film survives in the Cinémathèque Française film archive.-Cast:* Victor Sjöström - Överingenjör Weyler / Ingenjör Lebel...

 
Victor Sjöström
Victor Sjöström
Victor Sjöström was a Swedish actor, screenwriter, and film director.- Biography:Born in Silbodal, in the Värmland region of Sweden, he was only a year old when his father, Olof Adolf Sjöström, moved the family to Brooklyn, New York. His mother died when he was seven years old in 1886...

 
Victor Sjöström Approximately 30 minutes of the film survives in the Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...

 film archive.
1917 Cleopatra
Cleopatra (1917 film)
Cleopatra was directed by J. Gordon Edwards and starred Theda Bara in the title role. Fritz Leiber, Sr. played Julius Caesar and Thurston Hall played Mark Antony....

 
J. Gordon Edwards
J. Gordon Edwards
J. Gordon Edwards was a Canadian-born film director, producer, and a writer who began his career as a stage actor and as a stage director. He made his directorial debut on film in 1914's St. Elmo. Soon went on helming all of the Fox studio's mega-budget spectacles, including all of actress Theda...

 
Theda Bara
Theda Bara
Theda Bara , born Theodosia Burr Goodman, was an American silent film actress – one of the most popular of her era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" . The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman...

 
Approximately 40 seconds exist at George Eastman House
George Eastman House
The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...

.
1917 Nuts in May
Nuts in May (film)
Nuts in May is a 1917 silent comedy short, directed by Robin Williamson and featuring Stan Jefferson in his onscreen debut. It was filmed at Bernstein Studios, in Hollywood, California. Very little of the film survives...

 
Robin Williamson  Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel
Arthur Stanley "Stan" Jefferson , better known as Stan Laurel, was an English comic actor, writer and film director, famous as the first half of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy. His film acting career stretched between 1917 and 1951 and included a starring role in the Academy Award winning film...

 
Laurel's first film, with only 60 seconds of footage surviving.
1917 The Red Ace
The Red Ace
The Red Ace is a 1917 adventure film serial directed by Jacques Jaccard. A incomplete print which is missing four chapters survives in the film archive of the Library of Congress.-Cast:* Marie Walcamp - Virginia Dixon...

 
Jacques Jaccard
Jacques Jaccard
Jacques Jaccard was an American film director, writer and actor whose achievements in cinema were mostly in silent film....

 
Marie Walcamp
Marie Walcamp
Marie Walcamp was an American actress of the silent film era.-Biography:Born in Dennison, Ohio, Walcamp headed to the East Coast in search of acting jobs on the stage after she finished her formal education. After landing various roles in New York, she eventually landed a role in 1913's The...

 
Originally a 16-episode serial, only Episode 7 survives in the film archive of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 
1917 The Devil-Stone
The Devil-Stone
The Devil-Stone is a 1917 romance film directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The film had sequences filmed in the Handschiegl Color Process ....

 
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...

 
Two reels of this feature film. originally with Handschiegl Color Process
Handschiegl Color Process
The Handschiegl color process produced motion picture film prints with color artificially added to selected areas of the image. Aniline dyes were applied to a black-and-white print using gelatin imbibition matrices.-History of the process:...

 sequences, survive in the AFI
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...

 collection of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 
1917 The Secret Man
The Secret Man
The Secret Man is a 1917 Western film directed by John Ford and featuring Harry Carey. Two of the five reels of the film survive at the Library of Congress film archive.-Production:...

 
John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

 
Harry Carey  Two of the five reels survive at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 film archive.
1917 Triumph
Triumph (1917 film)
Triumph is a 1917 silent drama film directed by Joe De Grasse and starring Lon Chaney Only three of the five reels survive.-Cast:* Dorothy Phillips - Nell Baxter* Lon Chaney - Paul Neihoff* William Stowell - Dudley Weyman...

 
Joe De Grasse
Joe De Grasse
Joseph Louis De Grasse was a Canadian film director. Born in Bathurst, New Brunswick, he was the elder brother of actor Sam De Grasse....

 
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...

 
Three of the five reels survive.
1918 The Ghost of Slumber Mountain
The Ghost of Slumber Mountain
The Ghost of Slumber Mountain was a 1918 film, written and directed by special effects pioneer Willis O'Brien, produced by Herbert M. Dawley, and starred both men; Dawley played Uncle Jack Holmes, while O'Brien played the ghost of Mad Dick the Hermit...

 
Willis O'Brien
Willis O'Brien
Willis Harold O'Brien was an Irish American pioneering motion picture special effects artist who perfected and specialized in stop-motion animation. He was affectionately known to his family and close friends as "Obie"....

 
Herbert M. Dawley, Willis O'Brien
Willis O'Brien
Willis Harold O'Brien was an Irish American pioneering motion picture special effects artist who perfected and specialized in stop-motion animation. He was affectionately known to his family and close friends as "Obie"....

 
Only 19 minutes survive.
1918 Riddle Gawne
Riddle Gawne
Riddle Gawne is a 1918 silent Western film directed by William S. Hart and Lambert Hillyer and starring Lon Chaney, Sr. Considered lost for decades, one of the five reels was found to have survived in a Russian archive, and is kept in the film archive of the Library of Congress.-Cast:* William S...

 
William S. Hart
William S. Hart
William Surrey Hart was an American silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is remembered for having "imbued all of his characters with honor and integrity."-Biography:...

, Lambert Hillyer
Lambert Hillyer
Lambert Hillyer was an American film director and screenwriter. He directed over 160 films between 1917 and 1949. He also wrote for 54 films between 1917 and 1948....

 
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...

 
One of the five reels survives in the film archive of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 
1918 The Scarlet Drop
The Scarlet Drop
The Scarlet Drop is a 1918 Western film directed by John Ford and featuring Harry Carey. Just over 30 minutes of footage of the film now survives in the Getty Images Archive.-Cast:* Harry Carey - 'Kaintuck' Harry Ridge* Molly Malone - Molly Calvert...

 
John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

 
Harry Carey  Just over 30 minutes of footage survives in the Getty Images Archive
Getty Images
Getty Images, Inc. is a stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington, USA. It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 80 million still images and illustrations and more than 50,000 hours of stock film footage...

.
1919 A Gun Fightin' Gentleman
A Gun Fightin' Gentleman
A Gun Fightin' Gentleman is a 1919 Western film directed by John Ford and starring Harry Carey. Because only three reels of originally five or six are believed to exist, this film is considered a partially lost film.-Cast:* Harry Carey - Cheyenne Harry...

 
John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

 
Harry Carey, John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

 
Only three reels of originally five or six are believed to have survived.
1919 J'accuse (1919 film)  Abel Gance
Abel Gance
Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. He is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse , La Roue , and the monumental Napoléon .-Early life:...

 
Séverin-Mars Original film was in four episodes (film length 5250 metres). The most complete reconstruction is 3525 metres long.
1919 Just Squaw  George E. Middleton Beatriz Michelena
Beatriz Michelena
Beatriz Michelena was an American actress during the silent film era, known at the time for her operatic soprano voice and appearances in musical theatre. She was one of the few Latina stars visible on the silver screen in the United States in the 1910s...

 
Four of five reels survive at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

.
1919 The Miracle Man
The Miracle Man (1919 film)
The Miracle Man is a 1919 dramatic film based on a 1914 play by George M. Cohan, which in turn is based on the novel of the same title by Frank L. Packard. It was directed by George Loane Tucker and stars Thomas Meighan, Betty Compson, and Lon Chaney...

 
George Loane Tucker
George Loane Tucker
George Loane Tucker was an American film director and screenwriter. He directed 61 films between 1911 and 1921. Tucker had been an actor before moving to directing. In 1913 he directed Traffic in Souls, which concerned the topic of white slavery. The film, over 70 years later, remains an early...

 
Thomas Meighan
Thomas Meighan
Thomas Meighan was an American actor of silent films and early talkies. He played several leading man roles opposite popular actresses of the day including Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. At one point he commanded $10,000 a week....

, Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...

 
Two clips exist as part of compilation films released by Paramount, The House That Shadows Built
The House That Shadows Built
The House That Shadows Built is a short feature film, roughly 55 minutes long, from Paramount Pictures, made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the studio's founding in 1912...

 (1931) and Movie Memories (1935).

1920s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1921 The Centaurs
The Centaurs
The Centaurs was an animated film produced by Winsor McCay between 1918 and 1921. There is no record that the film was completed or publicly screened. The film was destroyed by negligent storage that allowed the sole surviving nitrate film print to deteriorate into dust. All that remains are...

 
Winsor McCay
Winsor McCay
Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator.A prolific artist, McCay's pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades...

 
Animated film
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

, ninety seconds of footage survives.
1921 Devil Dog Dawson
Devil Dog Dawson
Devil Dog Dawson is a 1921 black and white American western directed by Karl R. Coolidge and starring Jack Hoxie, Helene Rosson and Evelyn Selbie....

 
Jack Hoxie
Jack Hoxie
Jack Hoxie was an American rodeo performer and motion picture actor whose career was most prominent in the silent film era of the 1910s through the 1930s...

 
Jack Hoxie
Jack Hoxie
Jack Hoxie was an American rodeo performer and motion picture actor whose career was most prominent in the silent film era of the 1910s through the 1930s...

, Helene Rosson
Helene Rosson
Helene Rosson was an American silent film actress.Rosson entered film in 1915 and starred in 37 films over her ten year career until 1925....

, Evelyn Selbie
Evelyn Selbie
Evelyn Selbie was a stage actress and performer in silent films.Born in Louisville, Kentucky, as a young woman she was a side-saddle rider. She had a career which lasted twenty-five years on the stage. She began in Proctor's stock companies in New York after leaving her home. She acted in plays...

, Wilbur McCaugh, Arthur Mackley
Arthur Mackley
Arthur Mackley was an English actor and director of the silent era. He appeared in 151 films between 1910 and 1925...

 
38 seconds of footage from this Western, found in a mislabeled tin, were the subject of an investigation in a 2006 episode of the PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

 series History Detectives
History Detectives
History Detectives is a documentary television series on PBS. A group of researchers help people to seek answers to various historical questions they have, usually centering around a family heirloom, an old house or other historic object or structure...

 
1921 Disraeli
Disraeli (1921 film)
Disraeli is a 1921 silent historical drama directed by Henry Kolker and starring George Arliss. This movie was Arliss's second outing in film and first screen portrayal of Disraeli as he had made famous in the play in 1911. A British film of the play had been made in 1916 with the permission of...

Henry Kolker
Henry Kolker
Henry Kolker was an American stage and film actor and director...

 
George Arliss
George Arliss
George Arliss was an English actor, author and filmmaker who found success in the United States. He was the first British actor to win an Academy Award.-Life and career:...

 
The entire film was screened at the MOMA in 1947. In the sixty years since only reel 3 survives at George Eastman House.
1921 The Mechanical Man
The Mechanical Man
The Mechanical Man is a 1921 Italian science fiction film directed by André Deed. The original film was about 80 minutes in length. However, only about 26 minutes of footage remains...

 
Andre Deed
André Deed
Henri André Chapais, known as André Deed, was a French-born actor and director, best known for his Foolshead comedies, produced in the 1900s and 1910s...

 
Gabriel Moreau, Valentina Frascaroli, Fernando Vivas-May  Originally around an hour long, only about 26 minutes remain.
1921 The Adventures of Tarzan
The Adventures of Tarzan
The Adventures of Tarzan is a 15 chapter movie serial which features the third and final appearance of Elmo Lincoln as Tarzan. The serial was produced by Louis Weiss, written by Robert F. Hill and Lillian Valentine , and directed by Robert F...

 
Robert F. Hill
Robert F. Hill
Robert F. Hill was a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor during the silent film era.-Selected filmography:-External links:...

 
Elmo Lincoln
Elmo Lincoln
Elmo Lincoln was an American film actor.Born Otto Elmo Linkenhelt, the barrel-chested actor is best known in his silent movie role as the first Tarzan in 1918's Tarzan of the Apes as an adult --...

, Louise Lorraine
Louise Lorraine
Louise Lorraine was an American film actress.-Life and career:Born Louise Escovar in San Francisco, California in 1904, Louise Lorraine's rise to film happened quite accidentally....

 
Originally released as a 15-chapter movie serial, the film only survives in the 10-chapter 1928 re-release.
1923 The Darling of New York King Baggott  Diana Serra Cary
Diana Serra Cary
Diana Serra Cary , best known as Baby Peggy, was one of the three major American child stars of the Hollywood silent movie era along with Jackie Coogan and Baby Marie....

 
Only the last reel showing the fire exists. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013975/
1923 Flaming Youth
Flaming Youth (film)
Flaming Youth was a 1923 silent film featuring Colleen Moore that centered on the sotry of a young woman named Patricia Frentiss. The portrayal cemented Colleen's position in the film world as the prototypical flapper .-Story:When Mona Frentiss dies, she has her confidante "Doctor Bobs" watch over...

 
John Francis Dillon
John Francis Dillon (director)
John Francis Dillon was an American film director and actor of the silent era. He directed 130 films between 1914 and 1934...

 
Colleen Moore
Colleen Moore
Colleen Moore was an American film actress, and one of the most fashionable stars of the silent film era.-Early life:...

 
Only one reel, and a film trailer, exists.
1923 La Roue
La Roue
La Roue is a French silent film, directed by Abel Gance, who also directed Napoléon and J'accuse!. It was released in 1923. Originally 32 reels in length , the current reconstruction runs 20 reels...

 
Abel Gance
Abel Gance
Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. He is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse , La Roue , and the monumental Napoléon .-Early life:...

 
Séverin-Mars  The original film was 32 reels long and shown over three days. Only 12 reels exist, with some supplementary material
1923 The White Shadow
The White Shadow (film)
The White Shadow is a British drama film directed by Graham Cutts and starring Betty Compson, Clive Brook, and Henry Victor.Long thought to have been a completely lost film, in August 2011 the National Film Preservation Foundation announced that the first three reels of the six-reel picture had...

 
Graham Cutts
Graham Cutts
Graham Cutts was a British film director who was one of the leading British directors in the 1920s. His fellow director A. V. Bramble believed that Gainsborough Pictures had been built on the back of his work. His daughter was actress Patricia Cutts...

 
Betty Compson
Betty Compson
Betty Compson was an American actress. Born Eleanor Luicime Compson in Beaver, Utah, she had an extensive film career. Her father died when she was young, and she was forced to drop out of school and earn a living for herself and her mother...

 
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

 received his first screen credit, as a writer and assistant director. Three of the six reels were found in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 in August 2011.
1923 Lost and Found on a South Sea Island
Lost and Found on a South Sea Island
Lost and Found on a South Sea Island is a 1923 drama film directed by Raoul Walsh and produced by Samuel Goldwyn. The movie was filmed on location in Tahiti. One reel from this film survives according to a new bio on director Raoul Walsh.-Plot:...

 
Raoul Walsh
Raoul Walsh
Raoul Walsh was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh...

House Peters, Pauline Starke
Pauline Starke
Pauline Starke was an American silent-film actress born in Joplin, Missouri.She made her acting debut appearing as a dance extra in D.W. Griffith's film Intolerance...

, Antonio Moreno
Antonio Moreno
Antonio "Tony" Moreno was a notable Spanish-born American actor and film director of the silent film era and through the 1950s.- Biography :...

, Rosemary Theby
Rosemary Theby
Rosemary Theby was an American film actress. She appeared in some 250 films between 1911 and 1940.-Early life and career:Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Theby studied at Sargent's School in New York...

 
One reel survives from this film
1924 A Sainted Devil
A Sainted Devil
A Sainted Devil is a 1924 silent drama film starring Rudolph Valentino. The film is considered to be lost.-Cast:* Rudolph Valentino as Don Alonzo Castro* Nita Naldi as Carlotta* Helena D'Algy as Julietta...

 
Joseph Henabery
Joseph Henabery
Joseph Henabery Omaha, Nebraska, was a US film actor, screenplay writer, and director.-Career:Henabery's acting career began in The Joke on Yellentown . Henabery appeared in the D. W. Griffith silent film Birth of a Nation as Abraham Lincoln...

 
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...

, Nita Naldi 
Less than one reel has survived
1924 Greed
Greed (film)
Greed is a 1924 American dramatic silent film. It was directed by Erich von Stroheim and starring Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Dale Fuller, Tempe Pigott, Sylvia Ashton, Chester Conklin, Joan Standing and Jack Curtis....

 
Erich von Stroheim
Erich von Stroheim
Erich von Stroheim was an Austrian-born film star of the silent era, subsequently noted as an auteur for his directorial work.-Background:...

 
Initially running 9½ hours, the film was cut by Von Stroheim to just under four hours, and then trimmed by the studio to 140 minutes of surviving footage.
1925 Body and Soul  Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films...

 
Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...

 
Originally running nine reels, it was cut to five reels to gain approval from New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 censors. The surviving copy is based on the censor-approved edited version; the original nine-reel version is considered lost.
1925 The Lost World
The Lost World (1925 film)
The Lost World is a 1925 silent film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name. The movie was produced by First National Pictures, a large Hollywood studio at the time, and stars Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger. This version was directed by Harry O...

 
Harry Hoyt  Wallace Beery
Wallace Beery
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...

, Bessie Love
Bessie Love
Bessie Love was an American motion picture actress who achieved prominence mainly in the silent films and early talkies. With a small frame and delicate features, she played innocent young girls, flappers, and wholesome leading ladies. Her role in The Broadway Melody earned her a nomination for...

, Lewis Stone
Lewis Stone
Lewis Shepard Stone was an American actor.Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, son of Bertrand Stone and Philena Heald Ball. Stone's hair grew gray by the time he was twenty. He fought in the Spanish-American War, then returned to a career as a writer. He soon began acting...

 
It initially had a running time of 106 minutes. Though partially restored, the longest cut runs at approximately 100 minutes.
1926 The American Venus
The American Venus
The American Venus is an American feature film directed by Frank Tuttle, and starring Esther Ralston, Ford Sterling, Edna May Oliver, Lawrence Gray, Fay Lanphier, Louise Brooks, Kenneth MacKenna, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and released by Paramount Pictures. Brooks appears, in her first credited...

 
Frank Tuttle
Frank Tuttle
Frank Tuttle was a Hollywood film director and writer who directed films from 1922 to 1959 ....

 
Esther Ralston
Esther Ralston
Esther Ralston was an American movie actress whose greatest popularity came during the silent era.-Early life and career:...

, Louise Brooks
Louise Brooks
Mary Louise Brooks , generally known by her stage name Louise Brooks, was an American dancer, model, showgirl and silent film actress, noted for popularizing the bobbed haircut. Brooks is best known for her three feature roles including two G. W...

 
Two trailers and a short color clip are held at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

.
1926 The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby (1926 film)
The Great Gatsby is a silent film adaptation of the novel of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film was directed by Herbert Brenon, produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky at Famous Players-Lasky, and released by Paramount Pictures. The film is a famous example of a lost film....

 
Herbert Brenon  Warner Baxter
Warner Baxter
Warner Leroy Baxter was an American actor, known for his role as The Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona , for which he won the second Academy Award for Best Actor in the 1928–1929 Academy Awards. Warner Baxter started his movie career in silent movies...

 
A one-minute trailer exists.
1927 Now I'll Tell One
Now I'll Tell One
Now I'll Tell One is a 1927 silent film starring Charley Chase. It also features Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, however, whilst both had parts in this short they did not officially become a duo until several months after this film was released. It was directed by James Parrott , produced by Hal...

 
James Parrott
James Parrott
James Parrott , was an American actor and film director; and the younger brother of film comedian Charley Chase.-Early years:...

 
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...

 
The first reel is missing.
1927 The Enemy
The Enemy (1927 film)
The Enemy is a 1927 drama film directed by Fred Niblo, and starring Lillian Gish. The film has been thought to be lost. The MGM library, now controlled by Turner Classic Movies, has a print which is missing the final reel...

 
Fred Niblo
Fred Niblo
Fred Niblo was an American pioneer film actor, director and producer.-Biography:He was born Frederick Liedtke in York, Nebraska, to a French mother and a father who had served as a captain in the American Civil War and was wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg...

 
Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....

 
The last reel is missing.
1927 The Magic Flame
The Magic Flame
The Magic Flame is a feature film directed by Henry King. It was based on the play Konig Harlekin by Rudolph Lothar. George Barnes was nominated at the 1st Academy Awards for Best Cinematography. The film promoted itself as the "Romeo and Juliet" of the circus upon its release...

 
Henry King
Henry King (director)
Henry King was an American film director.Before coming to film, King worked as an actor in various repertoire theatres, and first started to take small film roles in 1912. He directed for the first time in 1915, and grew to become one of the most commercially successful Hollywood directors of the...

Ronald Colman
Ronald Colman
Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...

 
The first five reels out of nine are preserved at George Eastman House
George Eastman House
The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...

.
1927 The Battle of the Century
The Battle of the Century
The Battle of the Century is a 1927 Hal Roach two-reeler starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who, although just teamed, had yet to take on their recognisable Stan and Ollie characters on a more or less permanent basis. A young Lou Costello can be seen in an early scene as a member of the...

 
Clyde Bruckman
Clyde Bruckman
Clyde A. Bruckman was an American writer and director of comedy films during the late silent era as well as the early sound era of cinema. Bruckman collaborated with such comedians as Buster Keaton, W.C...

 
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...

 
The first reel (featuring a boxing match) was found in the late 1970s, but scenes featuring Eugene Pallette, and a final climatic gag showing a cop receiving a pie in the face are still missing.
1927 The Private Life of Helen of Troy
The Private Life of Helen of Troy
The Private Life of Helen of Troy is a 1927 silent film about Helen of Troy based on a novel by John Erskine and adapted to screen by Gerald C. Duffy. The film was directed by Alexander Korda and starred Maria Corda as Helen, Lewis Stone as Menelaus, and Ricardo Cortez as Paris...

 
Alexander Korda
Alexander Korda
Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian-born British producer and film director. He was a leading figure in the British film industry, the founder of London Films and the owner of British Lion Films, a film distributing company.-Life and career:The elder brother of filmmakers Zoltán Korda and Vincent...

 
Maria Corda
María Corda
María Corda was a Hungarian actress and a star of the silent film era in Germany and Austria....

 
Academy Award nominated film; one reel of film exists in the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...

.
1927 The Dove  Roland West
Roland West
For the basketball player, see Roland West Roland West was a Hollywood director known for his innovative film noir movies of the 1920s and early 1930s.-Biography:...

 
Norma Talmadge
Norma Talmadge
Norma Talmadge was an American actress and film producer of the silent era. A major box office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most popular idols of the American screen.Her most famous film was Smilin’ Through , but she also...

 
at the Library of Congress, reels 1,3,4&8 survive. Lost are reels 2,5,6,7&9.
1928 Beau Sabreur
Beau Sabreur
Beau Sabreur is a 1928 silent film produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by John Waters and starred Gary Cooper and Evelyn Brent. The plot was based on a novel by P. C. Wren. Only a trailer exists of this film...

 
John Waters  Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...

, Evelyn Brent
Evelyn Brent
Evelyn Brent was an American film and stage actress.-Early life:Born Mary Elizabeth Riggs in Tampa, Florida and known as Betty, she was a child of 10 when her mother Eleanor died, leaving her father Arthur to raise her alone...

 
A trailer exists with footage from the film.
1928 The Divine Woman
The Divine Woman
The Divine Woman is an American silent film directed by Victor Sjöström and starring Greta Garbo. Produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it was Garbo's fifth Hollywood film. Only a single nine-minute reel is currently known to exist of this otherwise lost film...

 
Victor Sjöström
Victor Sjöström
Victor Sjöström was a Swedish actor, screenwriter, and film director.- Biography:Born in Silbodal, in the Värmland region of Sweden, he was only a year old when his father, Olof Adolf Sjöström, moved the family to Brooklyn, New York. His mother died when he was seven years old in 1886...

 
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...

 
One reel was found in a Russian film archive and has been shown on Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...

. Another short excerpt was found in a Swedish newsreel and has been shown at Filmhuset
Filmhuset
Filmhuset may refer to:* Filmhuset building in Stockholm, the house of the Swedish Film Institute* Filmhuset AS, a Norwegian film production company....

 in Sweden.
1928 My Man
My Man (1928 film)
My Man is a 1928 black and white part-talkie American comedy-drama musical film from Warner Brothers Pictures starring Fannie Brice and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams The tagline was "FANNIE BRICE in the SINGING-TALKING VITAPHONE PICTURE "MY MAN""...

 
Archie Mayo
Archie Mayo
Archie Mayo was a movie director and stage actor who moved to Hollywood in 1915 and began working as a director in 1917....

 
Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice was a popular and influential American illustrated song "model," comedienne, singer, theatre and film actress, who made many stage, radio and film appearances and is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series, The Baby Snooks Show...

 
Reels #1,#2 & #11 survive. Almost complete set of soundtrack discs plus soundtrack trailer survive.
1928 The Patriot
The Patriot (1928 film)
The Patriot is a 1928 semi-biographical film that was directed by Ernst Lubitsch and released by Paramount Pictures. The film was written by Hanns Kräly ; it is an adaptation of several different plays: Paul I by Dmitri Merezhkovsky, Der Patriot by Alfred Neumann, and The Patriot by Ashley Dukes...

 
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...

 
Emil Jannings
Emil Jannings
Emil Jannings was a German actor. He was not only the first actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, but also the first person to be presented an Oscar...

 
A few fragments, and a trailer, survive at the UCLA Film and Television Archive
UCLA Film and Television Archive
The UCLA Film and Television Archive is an internationally renowned visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. It holds more than 220,000 film and television titles and 27 million feet of...

. Also, a six minute reel was found in the Portuguese Archive, which was copied to safety stock.
1928 The Terror
The Terror (1928 film)
The Terror is a 1928 "mystery melodrama" written by Harvey Gates and directed by Roy Del Ruth, based on a play by Edgar Wallace. It was the second "all-talking" motion picture released by Warner Bros...

 
Roy Del Ruth  May McAvoy
May McAvoy
May McAvoy was an American actress, who worked mainly during the silent film era. She starred in Hollywood's revolutionary part talking film, The Jazz Singer.-Career:...

 
Soundtrack exists.
1929 Red Hot Rhythm  Leo McCarey
Leo McCarey
Thomas Leo McCarey was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. During his lifetime he was involved in nearly 200 movies, especially comedies...

 
Alan Hale Sr.  One filmed sequence, the title song ("Red Hot Rhythm"), survives in early Technicolor process.
1929 Fox Movietone Follies of 1929
Fox Movietone Follies of 1929
Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 was a black-and-white and color American musical film released by Fox Film Corporation.-Preservation status:...

 
David Butler  Sue Carol
Sue Carol
Sue Carol was an American actress and talent agent.While at a social function in Los Angeles in 1927, a director offered her a part in a film. She took it and began playing minor parts...

 
With Multicolor
Multicolor
Multicolor is a subtractive natural color process for motion pictures. Multicolor, introduced to the motion picture industry in 1929, was based on the earlier Prizma Color process, and was the forerunner of Cinecolor....

 inserts; partial soundtrack survives.
1929 Gold Diggers of Broadway
Gold Diggers of Broadway (film)
Gold Diggers of Broadway is a 1929 Warner Bros. comedy/musical film which is historically important as the second two-strip Technicolor all-talking feature length movie . Gold Diggers of Broadway was also the third movie released by Warner Bros...

 
Roy Del Ruth  Winnie Lightner
Winnie Lightner
Winnie Lightner was an American motion picture actress. Perhaps her most famous role was as a gold-digger named Mabel, in Gold Diggers of Broadway...

 
Last ~20 minutes survive, but are missing a bridging sequence and the last minute of the film.
1929 Honky Tonk
Honky Tonk (1929 film)
Honky Tonk is a 1929 American musical film starring Sophie Tucker in her film debut. The film was a flop when released and is now lost, although the soundtrack for the trailer still exists...

 
Lloyd Bacon
Lloyd Bacon
Lloyd Francis Bacon was a screen, stage, and vaudeville actor and film director.-Life:Bacon was born in San Jose California, the son of actor Frank Bacon, later the co-author and star of the long running Broadway show 'Lightnin' , and Jennie Bacon. He was not related to actor Irving Bacon whom he...

 
Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker was a Russian/Ukrainian-born American singer and actress. Known for her stentorian delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first half of the 20th century...

 
Complete soundtrack survives.
1929 Married In Hollywood
Married in Hollywood
Married in Hollywood is an American musical film. The only known footage to survive is a 12-minute fragment from the final reel in Multicolor at UCLA Film and Television Archive. The film is also known as Maritati ad Hollywood in Italy and Pantremmenoi sto Hollywood in Greece...

 
Marcel Silver J. Harold Murray
J. Harold Murray
.J. Harold Murray was an American baritone. For more than a decade, during the Roaring Twenties and the Depression Thirties, he contributed to the development of musical theater by bridging vaudeville, operetta and the modern American musical...

 
The final reel survives (in Multicolor
Multicolor
Multicolor is a subtractive natural color process for motion pictures. Multicolor, introduced to the motion picture industry in 1929, was based on the earlier Prizma Color process, and was the forerunner of Cinecolor....

) at the UCLA Film and Television Archive
UCLA Film and Television Archive
The UCLA Film and Television Archive is an internationally renowned visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. It holds more than 220,000 film and television titles and 27 million feet of...

 
1929 On With the Show
On with the Show (1929 film)
On with the Show! is a 1929 American musical film released by Warner Bros. The film is noted as the first ever all-talking all-color feature length movie, and the second color movie released by Warner Bros.; the first was a partly color, black-and-white musical, The Desert Song . -Plot:With unpaid...

 
Alan Crosland
Alan Crosland
Alan Crosland was an American stage actor and film director.-Early life and career:Born in New York City, New York to a well-to-do family, Alan Crosland attended Dartmouth College. After graduation he took a job as a writer with the New York Globe magazine...

 
Betty Compson
Betty Compson
Betty Compson was an American actress. Born Eleanor Luicime Compson in Beaver, Utah, she had an extensive film career. Her father died when she was young, and she was forced to drop out of school and earn a living for herself and her mother...

 
First all-Technicolor, all-talking feature. Survives only in black and white, although a very brief clip of color footage was found in a toy projector.
1929 Paris
Paris (1929 film)
Paris is a black-and-white musical comedy film with Technicolor sequences: four of ten reels were originally photographed in Technicolor. Paris was the fourth color movie released by Warner Bros.; the first three were The Desert Song, On With the Show and Gold Diggers of Broadway, all released in...

 
Clarence Badger  Irene Bordoni
Irène Bordoni
Irène Bordoni was a French singer and a Broadway and film actress.-Early years:Born in Ajaccio, France, from an Italian family, she had been a child actor, performing in Paris on stage and in silent films for a few years, having signed with theatrical agent André Charlot...

 
Soundtrack discs survive.
1929 Thunder
Thunder (film)
Thunder is a melodrama film released by MGM, starring Lon Chaney.Directed by William Nigh, it is noteworthy for several reasons. First, it was Chaney's penultimate film appearance and his last silent film, as well as one of the very last films of the silent era...

 
William Nigh
William Nigh
William Nigh was an American film director, writer, and actor. His film work sometimes lists him as either "Will Nigh" or "William Nye".He was born in Berlin, Wisconsin....

 
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...

 
Chaney's last silent film; several clips exist.

1930s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1930 General Crack
General Crack
General Crack is an all-talking historical costume drama film with Technicolor sequences which was produced by Warner Bros. in 1929 and released early in 1930...

 
Alan Crosland
Alan Crosland
Alan Crosland was an American stage actor and film director.-Early life and career:Born in New York City, New York to a well-to-do family, Alan Crosland attended Dartmouth College. After graduation he took a job as a writer with the New York Globe magazine...

 
John Barrymore
John Barrymore
John Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...

 
The silent version of this film exists. dialogue version is lost
1930 The Man from Blankley's
The Man from Blankley's
The Man from Blankley's was a 1930 history epic and comedy film by Alfred E. Green starring John Barrymore and Loretta Young. The film was based upon the 1903 play by F. Anstey, and was considered to be a major comedy masterpiece of the early sound era. The film was Barrymore's first feature...

 
Alfred E. Green  John Barrymore
John Barrymore
John Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...

complete soundtrack survives on Vitaphone discs.
1930 Bright Lights  Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtiz was an Academy award winning Hungarian-American film director. He had early creditsas Mihály Kertész and Michael Kertész...

 
Dorothy Mackaill
Dorothy Mackaill
Dorothy Mackaill was an English-born American actress, most notably of the silent film era and into the early 1930s.-Early life:...

 
No Technicolor print of this Vitaphone musical has survived.
1930 Good News
Good News (films)
Good News is the title of two American MGM musical films based on the 1927 stage production of the same name.The first, released in 1930, was directed by Nick Grinde. The cast included Bessie Love, Cliff Edwards and Penny Singleton. The film was shot in black-and-white, although the finale was in...

 
Nick Grinde
Nick Grinde
Nick Grindé was an American film director and screenwriter. He directed 57 films between 1928 and 1945....

 
Bessie Love
Bessie Love
Bessie Love was an American motion picture actress who achieved prominence mainly in the silent films and early talkies. With a small frame and delicate features, she played innocent young girls, flappers, and wholesome leading ladies. Her role in The Broadway Melody earned her a nomination for...

 
Final reel in Technicolor is lost.
1930 No, No Nanette  Clarence G. Badger
Clarence G. Badger
Clarence G. Badger was an American film director of feature films in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. His most noteworthy films include It, starring Clara Bow, more than a dozen features and shorts starring Will Rogers, and two features starring Raymond Griffith, Paths to Paradise and Hands...

 
Bernice Claire
Bernice Claire
Bernice Claire was an American singer and actress. She appeared in 13 films between 1930 and 1938.-Career:...

, Alexander Gray
Alexander Gray
Air Vice Marshal Alexander Gray CB, MC, RAF was a senior Royal Air Force leader during World War II.-RAF career:...

 
Soundtrack discs survive.
1930 The Rogue Song  Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul...

 
Lawrence Tibbett
Lawrence Tibbett
Lawrence Mervil Tibbett was a great American opera singer and recording artist who also performed as a film actor and radio personality. A baritone, he sang with the New York Metropolitan Opera company more than 600 times from 1923 to 1950...

 
A Technicolor film. Soundtrack, two reels, and several clips survive.
1931 Annabelle's Affairs  Alfred L. Werker
Alfred L. Werker
Alfred L. Werker was a film director whose work in movies spanned from 1917 through 1957. After a number of film production jobs and assistant directing, Werker co-directed his first film, Ridin' the Wind in 1925 alongside director Del Andrews...

 
Jeanette MacDonald
Jeanette MacDonald
Jeanette MacDonald was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier and Nelson Eddy...

 
The last of Jeanette MacDonald's films for Fox, only one reel is known to survive.
1931 Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht  Robert Siodmak
Robert Siodmak
Robert Siodmak was a German born American film director. He is best remembered as a thriller specialist and for the series of Hollywood film noirs he made in the 1940s.-Early life:...

 
Heinz Rühmann
Heinz Rühmann
Heinrich Wilhelm "Heinz" Rühmann was a popular German film actor.-Life and work:Rühmann was born in Essen, Westphalia. His role in the 1930 movie Die Drei von der Tankstelle led him to film stardom. He remained highly popular as a comedic actor throughout the 1930s and early 1940s...

, Lien Deyers, Hermann Speelmans, Friedrich Holländer 
A very little known early Robert Siodmak film which was in fact the inspiration for D.O.A. (1950). Though a comedy, it follows the same idea. Upon release, it was acclaimed as "a fun, fast-paced mix of crime drama and musical". Only 50 of the original 98 minutes are known to exist. It is also known as Jim, The Man with the Scar.
1932 Freaks
Freaks
Freaks is a 1932 American Pre-Code horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with a cast mostly composed of actual carnival performers. The film was based on Tod Robbins' 1923 short story "Spurs"...

 
Tod Browning
Tod Browning
Tod Browning was an American motion picture actor, director and screenwriter.Browning's career spanned the silent and talkie eras...

 
Olga Baclanova
Olga Baclanova
Olga Vladimirovna Baclanova, or Baklanova, was a Russian-born actress, who achieved prominence during the silent film era. She was billed as the Russian Tigress and remains most noted by modern audiences for portraying the leading lady in Tod Browning's unique horror movie Freaks , which features...

 
Because of disastrous test screenings, 26 minutes of the original 90 were cut out, leading to a final length of 64 minutes. These parts of Browning's second and last big-budget production are considered lost.
1932 Horse Feathers
Horse Feathers
Horse Feathers is a Marx Brothers film comedy. It stars the four Marx Brothers and Thelma Todd. It was written by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S. J. Perelman, and Will B. Johnstone. Kalmar and Ruby also wrote some of the original music for the film...

 
Norman Z. McLeod
Norman Z. McLeod
Norman Zenos McLeod was an American film director, cartoonist and writer...

 
Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950...

 
The only existing prints of this film are missing several minutes, due to both censorship and damage.
1932 Veiled Aristocrats
Veiled Aristocrats
Veiled Aristocrats is a 1932 race film directed, written, produced and distributed by Oscar Micheaux. It dealt with the theme of "passing" by mixed-race African Americans to avoid racial discrimination.-Plot:...

 
Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films...

 
Lorenzo Tucker
Lorenzo Tucker
Lorenzo Tucker , known as the "Black Valentino," was an African-American stage and screen actor who played the romantic lead in the early black films of Oscar Micheaux.-Acting career:...

 
All that survives is the trailer and fragments of two reels.
1933 King Kong
King Kong (1933 film)
King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...

 
Merian C. Cooper
Merian C. Cooper
Merian Caldwell Cooper was an American aviator, United States Air Force and Polish Air Force officer, adventurer, screenwriter, and film director and producer. His most famous film was the 1933 movie King Kong.-Early life:...

, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Ernest B. Schoedsack
Ernest Beaumont Schoedsack was an American motion picture cinematographer, director, and producer.Born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Schoedsack is probably best remembered for being the co-director of the 1933 film, King Kong....

 
Fay Wray
Fay Wray
Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...

 
A famous scene following that in which Kong shakes several sailors off a log into a crevice, showing them eaten alive by a giant spider, a giant crab, a giant lizard, and an octopoid is only available in some stills. After the preview of the film, Cooper was forced to cut the scene, since it caused horror among the test audience. In one of Cooper's notes, however, it is indicated that he might have cut the scene for pacing reasons.
1933 My Lips Betray  John Boles
John Boles (actor)
-Early life:Boles was born in Greenville, Texas, into a middle-class family. He graduated with honors from the University of Texas in 1917 and married Marielite Dobbs in that same year. His parents wanted him to be a doctor and Boles studied and finally got his B.A. degree, but the stage called...

 
The sixth reel is assumed to be lost forever.
1935 Devdas
Devdas
Devdas is a Bengali Romance novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. Essentially, it is a retelling of the Krishna, Radha, and Meera myths, the relationships between its three protagonists - Devdas, Parvati, and Chandramukhi - paralleling the Hindu deities'.-Plot summary:Devdas is a young man from...

 
P.C. Barua P.C. Barua, Jamuna Barua Of this classic Bengali film, only 60% still survives.
1936 Things To Come
Things to Come
Things to Come is a British science fiction film produced by Alexander Korda and directed by William Cameron Menzies. The screenplay was written by H. G. Wells and is a loose adaptation of his own 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come and his 1931 non-fiction work, The Work, Wealth and Happiness...

 
William Cameron Menzies
William Cameron Menzies
William Cameron Menzies was an Academy Award-winning American film production designer and art director who also worked as a director, producer, and screenwriter during a career spanning five decades...

 
The most complete existing version of this film runs 96 minutes compared with its original running time of 117 minutes upon submission to the BBFC. A reconstructed version using extant film, production stills, and extracts from the script is available on DVD.
1937 Lost Horizon
Lost Horizon (film)
Lost Horizon is a 1937 American drama-fantasy film directed by Frank Capra. The screenplay by Robert Riskin is based on the 1933 novel of the same title by James Hilton....

 
Frank Capra
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...

 
Ronald Colman
Ronald Colman
Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...

 
Capra's initial 210-minute version was cut down to 131 minutes after a preview screening of the film went badly. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have personally destroyed the first two reels. Subsequent re-releases were further edited to downplay alleged "communist" elements, as well as hints of swinging
Swinging
Swinging or partner swapping is a non-monogamous behavior, in which both partners in a committed relationship agree, as a couple, for both partners to engage in sexual activities with other couples as a recreational or social activity...

 and various scenes which were felt to present the native children
Chinese people
The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....

 in too positive a light. While a complete soundtrack of the original 131-minute release has survived, no complete 131-minute print is known to exist. In many currently-used versions, still photos and individual frames are used to replace the seven minutes of missing footage that accompanies the soundtrack.
1939 Tsuchi
Tsuchi
Tsuchi may refer to*Zhuxi Earth Castle group*地, Japanese character ‎for Earth...

 (Earth)
Tomu Uchida
Tomu Uchida
was a Japanese film director. Tomu Uchida, whose name translates to “spit out dreams” is considered one of the less well known masters of Japanese cinema in the West, whose films are rarely screened and not widely available on DVD...

 
Mieshi Bando, Donguriboya, Masako Fujimura, Akiko Fujimura, Mari Ko The print of Earth that made its way to the Internet was apparently discovered in Germany in 1968, and is seriously compromised. On top of a bad case of nitrate damage and hard-coded German subtitles, the film is missing its first and last reel. (The IMDb says that Earth was originally 142 minutes long; this version is 93 minutes.) A 119-minute version of the film, again with hard-coded subtitles, was discovered in Russia around the turn of the millennium. It too is missing the last reel.
1939 The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...

 
Victor Fleming
Victor Fleming
Victor Lonzo Fleming was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were The Wizard of Oz , and Gone with the Wind , for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.-Life and career:Fleming was born in La Canada, California, the son of Elizabeth Evaleen ...

 
Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...

 
Originally contained a musical number called "The Jitterbug
The Jitterbug
"The Jitterbug" was a song sung by Judy Garland as Dorothy, together with the Scarecrow, Tinman and Lion, that was cut from the soundtrack of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. It was both a jazzy development of the plot and a nod to the then popular bobby-soxer dance craze...

", which was included in test showings. The musical number was edited for general release, and the footage of this scene has been lost. The soundtrack recording, however, survives, as does behind-the-scenes home movies showing the cast either rehearsing or actually filming the sequence. This footage, edited together with stills, has been edited together to recreate the sequence and this has been included on numerous retrospectives and DVD releases of the film.

1940s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1940 Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...

 
Various Directors Deems Taylor
Deems Taylor
Joseph Deems Taylor was a U.S. composer, music critic, and promoter of classical music.-Career:Taylor initially planned to become an architect; however, despite minimal musical training he soon took to music composition. The result was a series of works for orchestra and/or voices...

 
For its 60th Anniversary DVD release in 2000, Disney's manager of film restoration, Scott MacQueen, supervised a restoration and reconstruction of the original 125-minute roadshow version of Fantasia. The visual elements from the Deems Taylor segments that had been cut from the film in 1942 and 1946 were restored, as was the intermission. However, the original nitrate audio negatives for the long-unseen Taylor scenes had deteriorated several decades earlier, so Disney brought in voice actor Corey Burton to rerecord all of Taylor's lines. Although it was advertised as the "original uncut" version, the Sunflower edit in Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 made in 1969 was maintained. In this version, it was accomplished by digitally zooming-in on certain frames to avoid showing the black centaurette character.
1942 The Magnificent Ambersons
The Magnificent Ambersons (film)
The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1942 American drama film written and directed by Orson Welles. His second feature film, it is based on the 1918 novel of the same name by Booth Tarkington and stars Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins...

 
Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

 
Joseph Cotten
Joseph Cotten
Joseph Cheshire Cotten was an American actor of stage and film. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original productions of The Philadelphia Story and Sabrina Fair...

 
44 minutes were cut by RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chains and Joseph P...

 from Welles' version after an unsuccessful preview. A handful of shots from the original version exist in the film's original trailer, which has survived.
1943 Sanshiro Sugata  Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...

 
The film is missing 17 minutes of its running time.
1944 Meet Me in St. Louis
Meet Me in St. Louis
Meet Me in St. Louis is a 1944 musical film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which tells the story of an American family living in St. Louis at the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair in 1904...

 
Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made...

 
Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...

 
The musical number "Boys and Girls Like You and Me", originally deleted from the initial Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 run of Oklahoma!
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...

 and replaced with "People Will Say We're In Love
People Will Say We're in Love
"People Will Say We're In Love" is a show tune from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! . In the original Broadway production, the song was introduced by Alfred Drake and Joan Roberts.-Plot context:...

", followed "The Trolley Song
The Trolley Song
"The Trolley Song" is a song written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and made famous by Judy Garland in the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis...

" but wound up being deleted as well and is presumed lost. The soundtrack alone remains.
1946 Ivan the Terrible, Part III
Ivan the Terrible (film)
Ivan the Terrible is a two-part historical epic film about Ivan IV of Russia made by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Part 1 was released in 1944 but Part 2 was not released until 1958 due to political censorship...

 
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...

 
Nikolay Cherkasov  About 20 minutes were filmed, but the USSR Communist Party disapproved of the production's homosexual and political themes. About 16 minutes were burned following the death of Eisenstein in 1948, leaving the trilogy unfinished. The remaining 4 minutes can be seen as a Special Feature on The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...

 DVD version.

1950s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1951 The Idiot  Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...

 
Kurosawa's adaptation of the novel of the same name
The Idiot (novel)
The Idiot is a novel written by 19th century Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published serially in The Russian Messenger between 1868 and 1869. The Idiot is ranked beside some of Dostoyevsky's other works as one of the most brilliant literary achievements of the "Golden Age" of...

. After one test screening that ended with poor reviews, the studio cut the film from 265 minutes to 165. The 100 minutes that were cut have never been recovered.
1954 A Star Is Born
A Star Is Born (1954 film)
A Star Is Born is a 1954 American musical film directed by George Cukor. The screenplay written by Moss Hart was an adaptation of the original 1937 film, which was based on the original screenplay by Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell...

 
George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...

 
Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...

 
Originally premiering at 181 minutes, Warner Bros. cut the film down by about 27 minutes for general release. The 1983 restoration included soundtrack from this cut and a few establishing shots, with stills filling in the rest.
1954 Southwest Passage
Southwest Passage
Southwest Passage is a 1954 Pathécolor Western film directed by Ray Nazarro and starring Joanne Dru and John Ireland, who are determined to make a unique trek across the west, using camels as his beasts of burden...

 
Joanne Dru
Joanne Dru
Joanne Dru was an American film and television actress, known for such films as Red River and All the King's Men.-Career:...

 
Initially released in 3-D, this feature only survives in its flat form.
1954 Top Banana
Top Banana (film)
Top Banana is a movie musical based on the musical of the same name starring Phil Silvers, and released by United Artists. It stars most of the original cast...

 
Alfred E. Green  Phil Silvers
Phil Silvers
Phil Silvers was an American entertainer and comedy actor, known as "The King of Chutzpah." He is best known for starring in The Phil Silvers Show, a 1950s sitcom set on a U.S...

 
Shot and edited in 3-D
3-D film
A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...

, the film was released flat. The film only exists in 16mm, and does not exist in 3-D at all.
1956 The Burmese Harp  Kon Ichikawa
Kon Ichikawa
was a Japanese film director.-Early life and career:Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture. In the 1930s Ichikawa attended a technical school in Osaka. Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O. Studio, in their animation department...

 
In Japan, Nikkatsu, the studio that commissioned the film, released it in two parts, three weeks apart. Part one (running 63 minutes) opened on January 21, 1956, and part two (80 minutes) opened on February 12, both accompanied by B movies. Its total running time of 143 minutes was cut to 116 minutes for later re-release and export, reputedly at Ichikawa’s objection. The original 143 version is lost.

1960s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1961 One-Eyed Jacks
One-Eyed Jacks
One-Eyed Jacks, a 1961 Western, is the only film directed by actor Marlon Brando, who also played its lead character, Rio.The film was originally to be directed by Stanley Kubrick and Sam Peckinpah...

 
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...

 
Marlon Brando Brando shot 5 hours of additional footage that was later destroyed. The theatrical cut stands at 141 minutes, while the 300-minute version does not exist.
1963 It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a 1963 American comedy film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer about the madcap pursuit of $350,000 in stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers...

 
Stanley Kramer
Stanley Kramer
Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer. Kramer was responsible for some of Hollywood's most famous "message" movies...

 
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was an American theatrical and film actor, who appeared in 75 films from 1930 to 1967. Tracy was one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, ranking among the top ten box office draws for almost every year from 1938 to 1951...

 
Originally premiered at 192 minutes, then edited to 162 for general release. In the late 1980s, 20 minutes of deleted footage were found in a warehouse which had been slated for demolition, and edited back into the film. Kramer was technical adviser on the partial-restoration project, and this 182-minute partial restoration was issued on VHS in the early 1990s. This version is also the one shown on Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...

. When the film was released on DVD in the early 2000s, MGM chose to issue the 162-minute general release version and not the 182-minute partial restoration.
1964 Man in the 5th Dimension
Man in the 5th Dimension
Man in the 5th Dimension is a 1964 short film produced and directed by Dick Ross and starring Billy Graham.-Plot:Man in the 5th Dimension opens with Rev...

 
Dick Ross Billy Graham
Billy Graham
William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian evangelist. As of April 25, 2010, when he met with Barack Obama, Graham has spent personal time with twelve United States Presidents dating back to Harry S. Truman, and is number seven on Gallup's list of admired people for...

 
This short film was originally shot in the 70mm Todd-AO
Todd-AO
Todd-AO is a post-production company founded in 1953, providing sound-related services to the motion picture and television industries. The company operates three facilities in the Los Angeles area.-History:...

 widescreen process. Eleven 70mm prints were created, but none survive. The film exists in a 16mm version only.
1968 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...

 
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

 
Keir Dullea
Keir Dullea
Keir Dullea is an American actor best known for the character of astronaut David Bowman, whom he portrayed in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and in 1984's 2010: The Year We Make Contact...

 
After the original premiere
Premiere
A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...

, Kubrick cut 24 minutes (also adding title cards and a small insertion at the "Dawn of Men" sequence). These trims are considered lost, although there are rumors of the cut sequences being in the possession of Kubrick's family. Seventeen minutes of cut footage were discovered in a Kansas salt mine where some motion pictures are archived.

1970s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1971 The Big Boss
The Big Boss
The Big Boss, previously known by its U.S. title Fists Of Fury is a 1971 Hong Kong martial arts action crime thriller film. The Big Boss was Bruce Lee's first major film. It was written to star James Tien; however, Lee's strong performance relegated Tien, already a star in Hong Kong, to second...

 
Lo Wei
Lo Wei
Lo Wei was a famous Hong Kong film director and film actor best known for launching the martial arts film careers of both Bruce Lee, in The Big Boss and Fist of Fury, and Jackie Chan, in New Fist of Fury....

 
Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee was a Chinese American, Hong Kong actor, martial arts instructor, philosopher, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and founder of the Jeet Kune Do martial arts movement...

 
After the original premiere
Premiere
A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...

, Hong Kong censors demanded that some of the footage be trimmed, including more graphic violence, and an explicit "pre-sex" scene, featuring Bruce Lee's only implied nude scene. The missing footage has been rumored to still exist, but hasn't been confirmed.
1971 Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a 1971 musical film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution Company which combines live action and animation and was released in North America on December 13, 1971...

 
Robert Stevenson
Robert Stevenson (director)
Robert Stevenson was an English film writer and director. He was educated at Cambridge University where he became the president of both the Liberal Club and the Cambridge Union Society....

 
Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury
Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...

, David Tomlinson
David Tomlinson
David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson was an English film actor. He is primarily remembered for his roles as authority figure George Banks in Mary Poppins, fraudulent magician Professor Emelius Browne in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and as hapless antagonist Peter Thorndyke in The Love Bug.-Early life:Born...

 
Many scenes were cut for theatrical release. Most of these scenes were located, restored, and re-inserted for the 30th anniversary DVD release in 2001. However, several lines of dialogue were lost and had to be redubbed, and one complete musical number, "A Step in the Right Direction", is presumed lost. However, the original demo recording does exist, and is available in a reconstruction using production stills on the DVD.
1973 The Wicker Man  Robin Hardy
Robin Hardy (film director)
Robin Hardy is an English author and film director. His most famous directorial work was The Wicker Man, and his latest project is a film adaptation of his book Cowboys for Christ, which has been retitled as, The Wicker Tree...

 
Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ is an English actor and musician. Lee initially portrayed villains and became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films...

, Edward Woodward
Edward Woodward
Edward Albert Arthur Woodward, OBE was an English stage and screen actor and singer. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art , Woodward began his career on stage, and throughout his career he appeared in productions in both the West End in London and on Broadway in New York...

 
All original elements to the film (camera negative, etc.) are thought to be lost after having been destroyed in the late 1970s.
1976 Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is a 1976 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The film is set in New York City, soon after the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro and features Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Cybill Shepherd. The film was nominated for four Academy...

 
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

 
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...

, Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....

 
Scorsese was obliged to de-saturate the colors of the infamous climactic shoot-out scene in order to obtain an "R" rating. The original full-color footage has become lost.
1977 Martin
Martin (film)
Martin is a 1978 American horror film written and directed by George A. Romero.Romero claims that Martin is the favorite of all his films...

 
George A. Romero
George A. Romero
George Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...

 
John Amplas
John Amplas
John Amplas is an American actor known primarily for his work with director George A. Romero. His first work with Romero was the cult classic Martin , in which he played the title role...

 
The original copy was entirely in monochrome and ran for 165 minutes. To Romero's knowledge, no copy of this version exists.
1977 The Hills Have Eyes
The Hills Have Eyes
The Hills Have Eyes may refer to:*The Hills Have Eyes *The Hills Have Eyes , a 1977 film by Wes Craven*The Hills Have Eyes Part II, the 1985 sequel...

 
Wes Craven
Wes Craven
Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven is an American actor, film director, writer, producer, perhaps best known as the director of many horror films, particularly slasher films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character, the...

 
To avoid an X rating violent shots were trimmed.The cut footage is believed to be lost however the alternate ending appeared on the DVD from Anchor Bay. -
1979 Caligula
Caligula (film)
Caligula is a 1979 American-produced Italian biographical film directed by Tinto Brass, with additional scenes filmed by Giancarlo Lui and Penthouse founder Bob Guccione. The film concerns the rise and fall of Roman Emperor Gaius Caesar Germanicus, better known as Caligula...

 
Tinto Brass
Tinto Brass
Giovanni Brass , better known as Tinto Brass, is an Italian filmmaker. He is noted especially for his work in the erotic genre, with films such as Così fan tutte , Paprika, Monella and Trasgredire...

 
Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell is an English actor with a career spanning over forty years.McDowell is principally known for his roles in the controversial films If...., O Lucky Man!, A Clockwork Orange and Caligula...

 
This much-maligned film is missing most of the third act and many small scenes in the first two thirds.

1980s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1980 The Blues Brothers
The Blues Brothers (film)
The Blues Brothers is a 1980 musical comedy film directed by John Landis and starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues, characters developed from a musical sketch on the NBC variety series Saturday Night Live. It features musical numbers by R&B and soul singers James...

 
John Landis
John Landis
John David Landis is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is known for his comedies, his horror films, and his music videos with singer Michael Jackson.-Early life and career:...

 
John Belushi
John Belushi
John Adam Belushi was an American comedian, actor, and musician, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, The Star of the Films National Lampoon's Animal House and the The Blues Brothers and for fronting the American blues and soul...

 
Though much footage was restored for the 25th-Anniversary DVD release, an extended car chase and other scenes are lost.
1980 Heaven's Gate
Heaven's Gate (film)
Heaven's Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film based on the Johnson County War, a dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s...

 
Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for writing and directing Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter and the infamous Heaven's Gate. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial subject...

 
Kris Kristofferson
Kris Kristofferson
Kristoffer "Kris" Kristofferson is an American musician, actor, and writer. He is known for hits such as "Me and Bobby McGee", "For the Good Times", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night"...

 
According to Steven Bach
Steven Bach
Steven Bach was senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists studios.In 1990, he was a member of the jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival....

's book Final Cut, the version first screened by Cimino for executives at United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....

 ran approximately 320 minutes, more than an hour longer than the longest version shown in public.
1980 The Shining
The Shining (film)
The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an...

 
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

 
Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...

 
Kubrick cut a scene at the end, which was a discussion about the disappearance of Jack's frozen body. The scene was cut soon after being released in theaters, and the footage was apparently destroyed by the studio.
1981 Friday the 13th Part 2
Friday the 13th Part 2
Friday the 13th Part II is a 1981 slasher film directed by Steve Miner, who also directed its sequel, Friday the 13th Part III and several other popular horror films. A sequel to Friday the 13th , it is the second film in the Friday the 13th film series. It was a moderate box-office hit, opening on...

 
Steve Miner
Steve Miner
Stephen C. "Steve" Miner is an American film and television director who is also a film producer.Miner was born in Westport, Connecticut. Television programs Miner has directed include The Wonder Years, Jake 2.0, Felicity, Dawson's Creek , and Diagnosis: Murder...

 
Amy Steel
Amy Steel
Amy Steel is an American film and television actress, also credited as Amy Steel Pulitzer.-Biography:She is perhaps best known for her role as Ginny Field in the 1981 horror film Friday the 13th Part 2. She was offered the chance to reprise the role for the third film in the long-running series,...

 
Almost a minute's worth of footage had to be cut from the film in order to secure an R-rating from the MPAA. Part 2 received a deluxe DVD release in February 2009, but the edited footage was not included, much to the disdain of fans, who have long clamored for an uncut release. Paramount has stated that the excised footage has been lost.
1984 Once Upon a Time in America
Once Upon a Time in America
Once Upon a Time in America is a 1984 Italian epic crime film co-written and directed by Sergio Leone and starring Robert De Niro and James Woods. The story chronicles the lives of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in New York City's world of organized crime...

 
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots...

 
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...

 
Originally six hours in length, Leone was forced to cut it down to four. Though some footage has been restored, Leone's full-length version has never surfaced.
1985 The Breakfast Club
The Breakfast Club
The Breakfast Club is a 1985 American teen drama film written and directed by John Hughes. The storyline follows five teenagers as they spend a Saturday in detention together and come to realize that they are all deeper than their respective stereotypes.-Plot:The plot follows five students at...

 
John Hughes  Molly Ringwald
Molly Ringwald
Molly Kathleen Ringwald is an American actress, singer and dancer. Having appeared in the John Hughes movies Sixteen Candles , The Breakfast Club , and Pretty in Pink , Ringwald has been frequently named the greatest teen star of all time...

 
Hughes wrote a script for a film of about 2½ hours, but the film released runs 97 minutes. Many of the cut scenes were filmed and the negatives destroyed. Hughes, who died in 2009, said that he had a copy of the uncut film.
1988 Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is the seventh installment in the original Friday the 13th series, released in 1988. It also marked the first appearance of Kane Hodder in the role of Jason Voorhees.-Plot:...

 
John Carl Buechler  Lar Park Lincoln
Lar Park Lincoln
Lar Park Lincoln is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles in the 1987 film House II: The Second Story as Kate, and in the 1988 horror film Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood as Tina Shepard.-Biography:...

 
This entry is infamous for its extremely harsh treatment at the hands of the MPAA. Virtually all of the death scenes were heavily edited to remove gore. All home video releases have been further trimmed down from the theatrical release. On video the "sleeping bag scene" shows Jason only slamming his victim against a tree once. In theaters it showed him slamming the person against the tree six times, and was much bloodier. Some of the deleted material was included in the boxed set of the series released by Paramount, but the footage was not integrated into the film itself. This same footage was included in the deluxe DVD edition released in 2009. Daniel Farrands, who has been supervising the deluxe DVD editions for the series, stated that it will be impossible to release a true director's cut of the film, as some of the deleted footage was accidentally destroyed in the early 1990s.
1988 The Land Before Time
The Land Before Time
The Land Before Time is a 1988 American animated adventure film directed and co-produced by Don Bluth , and executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, and Frank Marshall....

 
Don Bluth
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth is an American animator and independent studio owner. He is best known for his departure from The Walt Disney Company in 1979 and his subsequent directing of animated films such as The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail ,The Land Before Time , and All Dogs Go to Heaven ,...

 
The film was originally about 11 minutes longer, but several shots were cut due to them being seen as potentially traumatic or too scary for children. Many of these shots can be seen in the original theatrical trailer, and fans of the series have scoured auction websites and online markets for any copy with these scenes, but Don Bluth has stated that these scenes were cut before the film was released, and the original film has probably been destroyed or lost by now for storage reasons. However, highly collectible animation cels can be found from some of these shots.
1989 All Dogs Go to Heaven
All Dogs Go to Heaven
All Dogs Go to Heaven is a 1989 Irish-English animated film directed and produced by Don Bluth and released by United Artists. The film tells the story of two dogs, Charlie B. Barkin and his loyal best friend Itchy Itchiford...

 
Don Bluth
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth is an American animator and independent studio owner. He is best known for his departure from The Walt Disney Company in 1979 and his subsequent directing of animated films such as The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail ,The Land Before Time , and All Dogs Go to Heaven ,...

 
Two darker scenes involving Charlie being hit by a car and his vision of Hell;Bluth owned an uncut print but was stolen,Goldcrest films destroyed the remaining uncut print to avoid storage fees.

1990s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1990 Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III  Jeff Burr
Jeff Burr
Jeff Burr is an American film director, Writer and producer best known for his work in horror sequels, such as Stepfather II, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, Puppet Master 4 and 5, and Pumpkinhead II....

 
Kate Hodge
Kate Hodge
Kate Hodge is an American actress and film producer.-Career:Born in Berkeley, California, Hodge's first starring role was as Michelle, the heroine of the 1990 horror film Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III...

 
The film was threatened with an X over 3 times. Though the DVD has both cut and uncut versions, the full original version is believed to be lost after the extensive cuts.
1997 Event Horizon
Event Horizon (film)
Event Horizon is a 1997 science fantasy horror film. The screenplay was written by Philip Eisner and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. The film stars Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill...

 
Paul W. S. Anderson
Paul W. S. Anderson
Paul William Scott Anderson , also known as Paul W. S. Anderson or Paul Anderson, is an English film director who regularly works in science fiction movies and video game adaptations.-Life and career:...

 
Laurence Fishburne
Laurence Fishburne
Laurence John Fishburne III is an American film and stage actor, playwright, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Morpheus in the Matrix science fiction film trilogy, as Cowboy Curtis on the 1980's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse, and as singer-musician Ike Turner...

The original version, shown to test audiences, had 30 minutes of extra footage including graphic, violent, and orgiastic scenes and several other scenes that were later removed in post-production by order of Paramount Pictures. Most of this footage has been lost, except for a few remaining scenes without sound that were found in an abandoned salt mine; these appear on the 2006 special edition of the film.

External links

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