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Lost film
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A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in either studio archives or private collections. The phrase "lost film" is also used in a literal sense for instances where footage of deleted scenes, unedited and alternate versions of feature films, and recordings of early television programming are known to have been created but can no longer be accounted for.
Sometimes a copy of a "lost" film is rediscovered; these have been referred to as "Lazarus" films. A film that has not been recovered in its entirety is called a "partially lost film".
lost films are from the silent film and early talkie era, from about 1894 to 1930.
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Encyclopedia
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in either studio archives or private collections. The phrase "lost film" is also used in a literal sense for instances where footage of deleted scenes, unedited and alternate versions of feature films, and recordings of early television programming are known to have been created but can no longer be accounted for.
Sometimes a copy of a "lost" film is rediscovered; these have been referred to as "Lazarus" films. A film that has not been recovered in its entirety is called a "partially lost film".
Reasons for film loss
Most lost films are from the silent film and early talkie era, from about 1894 to 1930. Martin Scorsese's Film Preservation Foundation estimates that 80 percent of the films from this era are lost.
Many early motion pictures are lost because the nitrate film used in that era was extremely unstable and flammable. Fires have destroyed entire archives of films; for example, a storage vault fire in 1937 destroyed all the original negatives of Fox Pictures's pre-1935 movies. In addition, film can deteriorate rapidly if not preserved in temperature and humidity controlled storage.
But the largest cause of silent film loss was intentional destruction, as silent films had little or no commercial value after the silent era ended in 1930. As film preservationist Robert A. Harris has said,"Most of the early films did not survive because of wholesale junking by the studios. There was no thought of ever saving these films. They simply needed vault space and the materials were expensive to house."
Many early talkies from Warner Bros. and First National were lost because they used a sound-on-disk process which utilized separate soundtracks on special phonograph records. These records were often lost or misplaced, thereby making the reel a virtually worthless "mute print", and consequently they were often thrown away. This all changed by 1930, when those studios converted to a sound-on-film process.
Before the eras of home video and television, films were viewed as having little value after their theatrical run ended. Thus, many films were deliberately destroyed by the studios as a space-saving maneuver. Many old Technicolor two-color negatives from the 1920s and 1930s were thrown out as a space-clearing measure when the studios refused to reclaim their films still being held by Technicolor in its vaults. Many films were recycled for their silver content. Some prints were sold either intact or broken into short clips to individuals who bought early novelty home projection machines and wanted scenes from their favorite movies to play for guests or family members.
In order to preserve films with a nitrate base, they can be copied to safety film or digitized, although the former is preferred over the latter in the archival community because of its proven longevity and approximation of original format.
Particularly striking is the case of Theda Bara: of the 40 films she made, only three and a half survive. More typical is the case of Clara Bow; of her 57 movies, 20 are completely lost and five more are incomplete.
There are occasional exceptions. All of Charlie Chaplin's films from his entire career have survived as well as extensive amounts of unused footage dating back to 1916, save for A Woman of the Sea (which he destroyed himself as a tax writeoff) and one of his early Keystone films, Her Friend The Bandit. (see Unknown Chaplin).
Later lost films
35mm safety film was introduced in 1949; it was much more stable than early nitrate film and as a result, there are comparatively few lost films from after about 1950. However, color fading of certain color stocks and vinegar syndrome threaten the preservation of films made since about this time.
Most mainstream movies from the 1950s and beyond survive today, but several early pornographic films and some B-Movies are lost. In most cases these obscure films go unnoticed and unknown, but some films by noted cult directors have been lost as well:
- Cult favorite Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1969 films, Ecstasies of Women and Linda and Abilene, have disappeared.
- Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s 1972 film, The Undergraduate, has been lost along with his 1970 film Take It Out In Trade, which exists only in fragments without sound. Wood's 1971 film Necromania was believed lost for years until an edited version resurfaced at a yard sale in 1992, followed by a complete unedited print in 2001. A complete print of the previously lost Wood pornographic film The Young Marrieds was discovered in 2004.
- Tom Graeff's first feature film, The Noble Experiment (1955), in which director/writer Graeff plays a misunderstood genius scientist, was considered lost until found by Elle Schneider during the production of a documentary about Graeff entitled The Boy from Out of This World.
- Most of Andy Milligan's early films are considered lost.
- Many short sponsored films—films made for educational, training, or religious purposes—from the 1940s through the 1970s are also lost, as they were thought of as disposable or upgradeable.
Sometimes only certain aspects of films may be lost. Early color films such as Lucien Hubbard's The Mysterious Island and John G. Adolfi's The Show of Shows exist only partially or not at all in color because the copies that were made of the film that exist were created on black and white stock. Two 3-D films from 1954, Top Banana and Southwest Passage, both exist only in their flat form because only one print made for either the left or right eye to see exists.
Almost lost films
Many important silent-era films, and films which involve important actors, directors, and creative talent, exist in single prints in museums, archives, and private collections — single prints which have not been copied, digitized, or preserved in any way.
Lost film soundtracks
Some films produced in 1926–1930 in sound-on-disc systems such as Vitaphone, where the sound discs are separate from the film element, are now considered lost because the sound discs were damaged or destroyed, while the picture element was not. Some surviving Vitaphone films exist in picture only, while the soundtracks, which were played from discs, are lost. Conversely, some Vitaphone films survive only as sound, with the film missing.
Many stereophonic soundtracks from the early-to-mid 1950s that were either played in interlock on a 35mm fullcoat magnetic reel or single-strip magnetic film (such as Fox's four-track magnetic, which became the standard of mag stereophonic sound) are now lost. Films such as House of Wax, The Caddy, The War of the Worlds, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, and From Here to Eternity that were originally available with 3-track, magnetic sound are now available only with a monophonic optical soundtrack. The chemistry behind adhering magnetic particles to the tri-acetate film base eventually caused the autocatalytic breakdown of the film (vinegar syndrome). As long as studios had a monaural optical negative that could be printed, studio executives felt no need to preserve the stereophonic versions of the soundtracks.
Commercially unavailable films
The term "lost films" has also been applied figuratively to films that do survive in their entirety, but have never been made available to the public in consumer formats such as VHS and DVD and in some cases have never been broadcast on television (a few of these are available on bootlegs of varying quality):
- Letty Lynton, a 1932 MGM film starring Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, and Nils Asther, has been unavailable since a U.S. Federal Court ruled on 17 January 1936 that the script used by MGM followed too closely the 1930 play Dishonored Lady by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes, without acquiring the rights to the play or giving credit (the film's credits say the film is based on the 1931 novel of the same name by Marie Belloc Lowndes).
- Disney's Song of the South, last reissued theatrically in 1986, is not available in North America for concerns over its racial stereotypes in the Reconstruction period after the American Civil War. It is available in some formats in Europe and Asia. It is, however, sold as region free, meaning it can be played on any DVD player, or on the Internet.
- The 1968 Anthony Newley musical film Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, the first X-rated musical.
- Owing to concerns about footage of illegal activity, the Rolling Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues is prohibited from being shown unless the director (Robert Frank) is present.
- The 1982 film Inchon has never been released on any format after its disastrous run at movie theaters.
- A Day at the Beach, made in 1970, and set in a rundown British seaside resort. It was written by Roman Polanski, and starred Mark Burns and Beatie Edney. Peter Sellers makes a cameo appearance. After making a few appearances at film festivals, it was never released to theaters.
- At Long Last Love, the 1975 Cole Porter tribute musical starring Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd that brought down the then high-flying career of director Peter Bogdanovich.
- The Day the Clown Cried, a 1972 film featuring Jerry Lewis as a clown entertaining children in a concentration camp, finished principal photography, but has been in legal limbo with the author of the book the film is based on and has never been fully edited.
- A low-budget 1994 feature film version of The Fantastic Four directed by Oley Sassone and produced by Roger Corman.
- The Girl Who Knew Too Much, a 1969 film starring Adam West.
- Fear and Desire, the first feature film from Stanley Kubrick; Kubrick bought up almost all film copies in order to prevent future showings.
- 1971's Red Sky at Morning has never been released on video or DVD.
- The 1980 release of The Gong Show Movie has never been available on video or DVD. Some segments have been shown, particularly on Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
- The 1978 television broadcast of The Star Wars Holiday Special was shown only once and has never been made available on VHS or DVD by the decision of the franchise's creator, George Lucas. It is availabe only varying quality of the VHS recordings of the broadcast.
Lost television broadcasts
- See also: wiping.
A significant amount of early television was lost under the same rationale as early motion pictures. Early television programming is lost because of a combination of a lack of means to record content, the reason to do so when the means to playback material was limited, or the content itself was reasoned to have little monetary or historical value.
Magnetic videotape technologies became a viable method to record and distribute material in the 1950s but would not prove their worth until the rise of the home video industry in the 1970s. In this twenty-year gap, programming was still considered disposable and much was lost in the practice of reusing video tape by recording over previous content.
- The debut broadcast of The Ed Sullivan Show (then called Toast of the Town) from June 20, 1948, is considered lost. The episode featured the first television appearance of the comedy act of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
- Episodes from shows Captain Video, Your Show of Shows, and other programming from the defunct DuMont network are lost supposedly because its kinescope recordings were dumped into Upper New York Bay.
- This practice of re-using video tape continued well into the 1970s: many episodes of the pioneering Australian prime time soap opera Number 96 are lost.
- The Madhouse on Castle Street, a 1963 BBC teleplay starring a then-unknown Bob Dylan, is considered lost.
- The BBC wiped many editions of Not Only... But Also, starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore from its archives in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as it did with many other programmes. Cook and Moore had even allegedly offered to pay for the cost of preservation and buy new videotapes so that the old tapes would not need to be reused, but this offer was rejected. Some telerecordings of the black and white episodes survive, but all of the videotaped footage from the colour series was wiped, so that the only surviving colour sketches are on 16mm film inserts.
- 108 black and white episodes of the cult BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who, particularly from the tenures of William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton (the first two Doctors), do not exist in the BBC's archives, though they have an ongoing appeal for help from viewers who may have recorded the shows during their original airings. Audio recordings exist for all of the lost episodes, however, many of which have been released commercially by the BBC, and two episodes of the serial The Invasion which survive only in audio form were reconstructed using animation for the serial's DVD release in 2006.
- Many other BBC shows are missing from the archives, including the BBC studio footage from the Apollo 11 moon landings. Many series, such as football-themed soap opera United!, are missing in their entirety, while others only survive in fragments, such as A for Andromeda, a science fiction series that was Julie Christie's first major role. Also missing are episodes of The Avengers, Dad's Army, Hancock's Half Hour, Doomwatch, Out of the Unknown, Dixon of Dock Green, Z Cars, and many others.
- Many early music programs, including Top of the Pops and Ready Steady Go, are mostly lost, so many significant television appearances - such as The Beatles' last live television performance in 1966, and most appearances of Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett - are unavailable. Other programs, such as Hullabaloo and American Bandstand, have been preserved only on black-and-white kinescope, although they were broadcast in color.
- None of the episodes of The Vampira Show, the first television horror movie show, were ever preserved.
- Almost all of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jack Paar and the first ten years (1962–1972) hosted by Johnny Carson were taped over by the network and no longer exist. This is why Carson's The Tonight Show picture looked muddy during broadcast in the late '60s: the videotape was being used repeatedly. A single episode from Carson's first year on The Tonight Show turned up in a closet a few years ago. Selected sequences from Carson's 1962–72 era do survive and were often replayed by Carson himself (particularly in the months preceding his retirement in 1992) and have been released to home video. Some Paar episodes also survive and have been released to DVD.
- With home VCRs being uncommon until the mid-1980s, it is unlikely that lost television episodes exist in the collections of individuals, though this occasionally happens. One well-known example is a clip of John Lennon visiting the announcers booth during a 1974 Monday Night Football broadcast. ABC lost the footage of this event, but a private collector's copy of the event appears in the Beatles Anthology.
- Many of the original master tapes of the controversial and anarchic British children's Saturday morning television series Tiswas were wiped after the series was canceled in 1983. When a series of Tiswas highlight compilation tapes were released on video in the early 1990s (followed in 2006 by a DVD), much of the footage appeared to have been culled from the off-air recordings of private archivists.
- Super Bowl I was broadcast by both NBC and CBS, but no copies were kept of either broadcast. Super Bowl II is also lost. However, both were captured on film by NFL Films, and these have been released on DVD.
- Many soap operas such as Search for Tomorrow and The Edge of Night have lost episodes. Owing to archiving policies, episodes of All My Children produced between 1970 and 1975 exist only as black-and-white kinescopes although all episodes were originally produced in color.
- The original slow-scan TV footage of the first manned moon landing in 1969 — believed to be of significantly higher quality than the standards-converted version broadcast on TV — is missing from NASA's archives. This, among other things, has led to all manner of conspiracy theories about the landings, though both NASA and non-NASA authorities have repeatedly debunked any claims of foul play.
- The original black & white first episode of series one of the British series Upstairs, Downstairs does not exist in any form with the possible exception of a few stills and the location footage which features at the start of the episode. The original recording took place on November 13, 1970 and was in monochrome due to a dispute with studio technicians who refused to work with colour recording equipment as part of a work-to-rule. The following five episodes were also recorded in monochrome before the dispute ended with the recording of episode 6 in color on February 12, 1971. After the entire thirteen-episode season run had been recorded, it was decided to re-record the first episode in color to gain the highest possible audience for its first UK transmission and to help with overseas sales. The re-recording took place on May 21, 1971 and the series' UK debut was on October 10, 1971. The original monochrome recording was never transmitted and has since been wiped. All of the other five black & white episodes from series one survive.
- The 1957 CBS production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella was believed to be lost for years. It was rediscovered in the late 1990s but only in black-and-white kinescope; the original color broadcast has been lost.
- All but four episodes of the original 1964–1975 version of the game show Jeopardy! are said to be lost.
- The 1st edition ever of the Eurovision Song Contest of 1956 was broadcast live and never recorded, and only a sound recording of the radio transmission has survived from the original broadcast. The 9th edition of 1964 was indeed recorded on tape, but fire destroyed the copy, and it's unknown if any other TV station in Europe has another copy. Only small portions of the original broadcast, and audio from the radio transmission have survived.
List of lost films
List of incomplete or partially lost films
List of rediscovered films
Occasionally, prints of films and television broadcasts considered lost have been rediscovered. An example is the 1910 version of Frankenstein which was believed lost for decades until the existence of a print (which had been in the hands of an unwitting collector for years) was discovered in the 1970s. A print of Richard III (1912) was found in 1996 and restored by the American Film Institute. Similarly, a number of episodes of Doctor Who previously thought lost have been recovered from private collectors and various other sources over the years, such as Tomb of the Cybermen.
Beyond the Rocks (1922) with Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino was considered a lost film for several decades. Swanson lamented the loss of this and other films in her 1980 memoirs, but optimistically concluded, "I do not believe these films are gone forever". In 2000, a print was found in the Netherlands and restored by the Nederlands Filmmuseum and the Haghefilm Conservation. It turned up among about 2000 rusty film canisters donated by an eccentric Dutch collector, Joop van Liempd, of Haarlem. It was given its first modern screening in 2005, and has since been aired on Turner Classic Movies.
Sometimes a film believed lost in its original state has been restored, either through the process of colorization, or other restoration methods. The Cage, the original 1964 pilot film for Star Trek, only survived in a black and white print until 1987 when color elements were discovered that allowed a full-color version to be recreated. And in the early 2000s, the 1927 German film Metropolis — which had been distributed in many different edits over the years — was restored to as close to the original version as possible by reinstating edited footage and using computer technology to repair damaged footage. At that point, however, approximately a quarter of the original film footage was considered lost, according to Kino Video's DVD release of the restored film. On July 1, 2008, Berlin film experts announced that a complete copy of the original 210 minute cut of the film had been discovered in the archives of the film museum Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Select list of TV programs with missing episodes
- Mary Kay and Johnny (1947–1950) - Almost completely destroyed. Most episodes still existed by 1970, but only a few seconds from the show's last few episodes still exist today. A complete 1949 episode is documented as existing in the Paley Media Collection (see their Web Site catalogue).
- Captain Video (1949–1955) - Almost entire run destroyed after the DuMont Television Network ceased to exist.
- The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson - Almost all 1962-1972 episodes were erased by NBC.
- Young Talent Time - Almost all early episodes were erased by the Ten Network.
- Beulah (1950–1953) - Only 7 episodes have survived.
- Rocky King, Inside Detective (1950–1955) - Original negatives were dumped into upper New York Bay in the 1970s.
- Queen for a Day (1956–1964) - Almost every episode of this popular TV series was destroyed.
- Doctor Who - 108 episodes of this series were destroyed by the BBC: See Doctor Who missing episodes.
- The Pinky Lee Show (1954–1955) - Few episodes of this critically-acclaimed TV series have survived.
- Cavalcade of Stars - Popular variety series; dozens of episodes were destroyed in the 1970s.
- The Avengers - All but two episodes of 1961–62 season lost.
- Countdown (Australian TV series) - Numerous episodes erased by ABC.
- Snap Judgment - A game show believed to be completely wiped from the NBC archives.
- Dollar a Second (1953-1957) - Only two episodes have survived.
- Barley Charlie - Only 3 of the 13 episodes produced survive.
- The Trouble with Tracy (1970–1971) - Rumored to have been almost completely destroyed.
- Sense and Nonsense (Circa 1954) - Only one episode survives of this WABD series.
- Number 96 (TV series) - Most of the black and white episodes were taped over by the Ten Network.
- School House (1949) - Only one episode has survived from early 1949 of this DuMont show, featuring Wally Cox (flubbing his lines in a live DuMont TV set commercial) and Arnold Stang with musical performances set in a high school classroom.
- Young Nation - Only a few minutes survive of this BBC program.
- In Melbourne Tonight (1957-1970) - Hundreds of episodes no longer exist.
- Faraway Hill (1946) - No footage, stills, or scripts survive from this program, which was the first soap opera aired on American television.
- Jul og Grønne Skove (1980) - One of the later examples of lost TV shows, this was a Christmas calendar originally broadcast on Danish television by DR. Half of the 24 episodes were wiped some time in the mid-80's, as were many of DR's productions made prior to 1987, where DR made an agreement with "Statens Mediesamling" to archive all future productions
- Various CNN Broadcasts (1980-Today) - Although CNN does keep extensive footage and news coverage, copies of programming with original presenter links (ie the newsreader) are rarely kept
Lost film in film
Several films have been made with lost film fragments incorporated into the work. Decasia (2002) used nothing but decaying film footage as an abstract tone poem of light and darkness, much like Peter Delpeut's more historical Lyrisch Nitraat (Lyrical Nitrate, 1990) which contained only footage from canisters found stored in an Amsterdam cinema. In 1993, Delpeut released Forbidden Quest, combining early film footage and archival photographs with new material to tell the fictional story of an ill-fated Antarctic expedition.
Peter Jackson's mockumentary Forgotten Silver purports to show recovered footage of early films. Instead, the filmmakers used newly-shot film sequences treated to look like lost film.
In Robert Rodriguez's film Planet Terror a missing reel is used as a plot device.
See also
External links
- a website about the search for lost and rare cinema
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- Book on Josef von Sternberg's last silent movie - one of the legendary lost masterpieces of the American cinema; Published by the
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