by Allan Fish
This post is a contribution to the third annual For the Love of Film blogathon and fundraiser, which will be running from May 13-18. This year, hosts Marilyn Ferdinand, Farran Smith Nehme and Roderick Heath have dedicated the week to Alfred Hitchcock, whose early (non-directorial) work “The White Shadow” will be the beneficiary of any money earned during the event. The film preservation theme of course is at the center of this cinematic lament. We can certainly hope for a miracle. Be sure to donate!]
In discussions regarding film preservation, what often gets lost in the mélée is at what cost our slowly awakening ourselves to the problem has come. Lost films are a source of anguish to film connoisseurs and historians. A read through the timelines on this site’s right menus will showcase just what treasures have been lost to us. The degree of loss varies, of course. In most cases the entire film is lost. In others it’s only a portion that’s lost, in a few we have snippets surviving, from the 10 seconds or so of the Theda Bara Cleopatra (1917) to the one or two scenes of The Way of All Flesh (1927) – with the only lost Academy Award winning performance, by Emil Jannings – to films whose trailers survive and whose films do not. The documentary Fragments (2011), financed by TCM, showcased many of these lost films and what footage we have of them. In the spirit of that programme, I present a personal choice of 25 lost films most mourned by this writer. I leave aside the legendary lost cuts of Foolish Wives (1921), Greed (1924), The River (1929), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Red Badge of Courage (1951) and the original six hour Cleopatra (1962) as we at least have them in butchered versions through to their conclusions. These 25 were not so fortunate.
25. The Ghost Train (1931, Walter Forde, UK)
Walter Forde’s original version of Arnold Ridley’s comedy thriller actually does partially survive, at least the first four reels. But only the soundtrack survives for the last half. Its reputation was as one of the key British comedies of the early thirties.
24. The Street of Sin (1928, Mauritz Stiller, USA)
Mauritz Stiller’s best Hollywood film, buried by studio executives, featuring Fay Wray and Emil Jannings (was any other actor so damaged by lost films?).
23. Europa (1931, Francsizka & Stefan Themerson, Poland)
One of the most feted avant garde pieces of the early thirties and probably the best film of the Themersons.
22. The Patriot (1928, Ernst Lubitsch, USA)
While The Way of All Flesh does mean a lost academy award winning performance, Jannings gave one of his most towering performances in the following year’s The Patriot. The curse of both he and Lubitsch in the silent era strikes again.
21. The Queen of Sheba (1921, J.Gordon Edwards, USA)
Along the same lines as Cleopatra but this time with Betty Blythe in the non-existent costumes rather than Theda Bara.
20. The Little Damozel (1933, Herbert Wilcox, UK)
Anna Neagle has two important lost films from the 1930s. Peg ‘o Old Drury (1935), which just missed the cut and this early musical, treasured in folklore as the one in which she wore that Doris Zinkeisen dress (see below, scanned from her autobiography).
19. The Sea Gull (1926, Charles Chaplin, Josef Von Sternberg, US)
A take on Chekhov with Edna Purviance that Chaplin and Von Sternberg both so hated it was never released. Chaplin eventually burnt it. Even pictures were impossible to find, hence I offer just a picture of Purviance from a press book on the film.
18. Bangaku no issho (1933, Sadao Yamanaka, Japan)
No director’s career has been more blighted by film loss than sadao Yamanaka, the majority of whose masterworks of the 1930s were destroyed by American bombing raids on Tokyo in WWII. This was said to be the best of them. There are not even any stills, the picture below is of the great man, taken from us too soon at 29, and leaving only 3 of 13 films surviving.
17. The Divine Woman (1928, Victor Sjöstrom, USA)
The lost masterpiece – aside from fragments - in which the divine Garbo worked for the first time with Victor Sjöstrom. A loss and a half.
16. The Dragnet (1928, Josef Von Sternberg, USA)
The missing link in Von Sternberg’s late silent slew of masterworks, a seminal cop film sadly no longer with us.
15. Ladies of the Mob (1928, William A.Wellman, USA)
Not only supposedly a seminal Wellman silent but also seminal role for Clara Bow. Reviews of the time were unanimous in their praise.
14. Dear Octopus (1943, Harold French, UK)
Maybe not as cinematically vital as some of those below it on the list, but the most recent and, thus, surely the most careless loss. Great performances from Margaret Lockwood, Celia Johnson et al supposedly wait for us.
13. Vignt ans Après (1922, Henri Diamant-Berger, France)
The sequel to Diamant-Berger’s magnificent Les Trois Mousquetaires (1921), with largely the same cast and just about as highly regarded at the time. Dumas fans like myself have long been in mourning.
12. The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927, Alexander Korda, USA)
Korda’s de Millean style take on the legendary beauty, told from a wit rather than a historical perspective. Around 1-2 reels survive. But the rest?
11. Cleopatra (1917, J.Gordon Edwards, USA)
Sadly most of Theda Bara’s vamp classics of the 1910s don’t survive, but this was the biggest loss by far. Someone, somewhere, MUST have it.
10. London After Midnight (1927, Tod Browning, USA)
Despite a still reconstruction of sorts released to DVD, this Tod Browning chiller still regularly tops Most wanted lists. Actually at the time it wasn’t seen as anything special other than for Chaney’s performance, but we’d love the chance to see for ourselves.
9. Bezhin Meadow (1937, Sergei M.Eisenstein, USSR)
The missing Eisenstein masterpiece, only a stills restoration survives. The master print was burnt by the Stalinist authorities.
8. The Devil’s Passkey (1920), Erich Von Stroheim, USA)
Often forgotten completely in retrospectives of the butchered career of Erich Von Stroheim, his second film doesn’t survive at all.
7. Kiss Me Again (1925, Ernst Lubitsch, USA)
Despite the attention of Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925) and The Marriage Circle (1924), much of Ernst Lubitsch’s silent work in Hollywood remains hard to see. Forbidden Paradise (1924) and So This is Paris (1926) only survive in 16mm third rate prints, but this masterpiece from 1925, with Marie provost and a young Clara Bow, doesn’t survive at all.
6. Convention City (1933, Archie Mayo, USA)
The most infamous of lost pre-code films, though unreleasable after the code and burnt by Warners in the 1940s. A classic was undoubtedly sent up in smoke.
5. Thérèse Raquin (1928, Jacques Feyder, France)
Regarded as pretty much Feyder’s masterpiece by most French film scholars of the age. A solid 1953 remake by Marcel Carné does survive, but it paled beside the original. As Georges Sadoul wrote, “all copies of this version have apparently disappeared. As far as one can recollect, it seems to have been one of the best films of the late silent period.”
4. Lost in the Dark (1914, Nino Martaglio, Italy)
Probably the one film in this list you have almost certainly never heard of and one with the most tragically prophetic title. Even writing in the 1950s, Georges Sadoul observed “it now seems to be lost forever, but this unknown masterpiece played a decisive role in the gestation of neo-realism.”
3. Human Wreckage (1923, Thomas Harper Ince, USA)
Thomas Ince’s legendary drug addict drama, regarded as a magnificent folly at the time, but still one of tinseltown’s biggest what ifs.
2. The Honeymoon (1928, Erich Von Str0heim, USA)
The second part of The Wedding March (1928), only surviving in stills. It only ever showed in Europe and the last prints of it were destroyed during World War II. We can dream, but don’t hold your breath…
1. 4 Devils (1928, Friedrich W.Murnau, USA)
It seems impossible to think that at the time this was seen as a better film than Sunrise (1927) but so this circus drama was. Sadly, it’s the most high profile and mourned casualty of them all. Silent star Mary Duncan apparently had the final known print, but it was lost.
Great job with this list here, Allan. It’s miserable business to ponder of course, and I could certainly go for long stretches without having the haunting mental image of an agitated Chaplin tossing reels of Sternberg into a hearth being reignited, but it’s obviously stuff that needs to be discussed and remembered.
How about Raoul Walsh’s THE HONOR SYSTEM (1917)? Existing reviews from the time claimed it a superior artistic feat to THE BIRTH OF A NATION, and even Ford said it was the greatest film he’d ever seen. So little of Walsh’s silent stuff survives today that it’s easy to forget that he was making films as great as anyone from the period, and he’d already had at least one full-blooded masterpiece under his belt (REGENERATION) by the time he got to this one. UGH.
Yes, The Honor System is one of those just missing the cut, but there’s The Way of All Flesh and so many others, too.
A great list of lost treasures here, Allan. As well as ‘Ladies of the Mob’, I’d also love to see another lost Wellman, ‘Legion of the Condemned’, which starred Gary Cooper and Fay Wray – all that survives of this are stills and posters. Also von Sternberg’s ‘The Case of Lena Smith’ – I’ve seen the surviving four minutes of this and it’s such a shame the rest is lost. But, as you say, there are so many films lost and not found.
I couldn’t make the donation link in your posting work for some reason, but the link in the site’s sidebar works fine.
Thanks, Judy. There are so many others I could have included. I could have done a top 50 but that would have been overkill. I still mourn missing off Jack Conway’s The Penitentes (1915), Thomas Ince’s The Aryan (1916) with Bill Hart and a young Bessie Love, Murnau’s Satanas (1919) and Bill Seiter’s Outcast (1928) – from which I remember the most gorgeous silent still in memory in Brownlow’s Hollywood book. Some truly terrible losses. Not to mention the hundreds of other Japanese 20s and 30s films that went up in smoke with 10 Yamanakas and the Chinese films of the 1930s conversely lost in the bombing of Shanghai in the late 1930s and of course the idiocy of the BBC erasing the tapes of so many classic TV shows, from The Devil’s Crown (1978) to various episodes of Doctor Who.
This is really a wonderful post, and a definitive reference point on this subject. We all can dream and maybe one of these will appear in an old warehouse. It has happened before.
If they’re going to appear, Frank, it’ll be either in South America, the Antipodes or Eastern Europe. Sadly WWII took many of them from us, with master prints throughout Europe and Japan bombed out of existence in air raids.
It’s a very sad state of affairs when art is lost forever. Yes we can hope -and in some instances prints have been found like the Lincoln film a few years ago- but it is like finding a needle in a haystack. I read somewhere that there is between 80 to 90% of all silent films made that are now lost.
Great feature for a worthy cause.
Yes, I think there’s more chance of Lord Lucan turning up riding Shergar along the beach of Atlantis, but we can dream.
Beautiful and loving tribute to these significant losses. It makes me so mournful that these treasures and many others are gone. That Murnau work must have been amazing as everything else he made was pretty much jaw-dropping.
Yes, 4 Devils would have been someone else. The stills of it in the huge Murnau Borzage Fox book inside that set are stunning. Far better than the ones I was able to find online and too big to put through my scanner.
Allan – Thanks so much for participating in the blogathon. I mourn the loss of many films, with Flaming Youth being at the top of the list because I am such a huge fan of Colleen Moore. At least a fragment of that exists, which only makes the rest of the film tantalizingly out of reach. Perhaps this post will cause someone to look more closely at any found footage.
I’d love to hope so, Marilyn. Yes, Flaming Youth is another sadly lost one and there’s another Moore, I think, the original So Big 1924. We have Ella Cinders but it’s not enough.
Originally I was to have posted in this spot instead of Allan, who was slated for this coming Thursday (the final day of the blogothon) After seeing this utterly spectacular and definitive survey of the goals and dreams of film preservation, and in marveling of Allan’s incomparable knowledge of a period I also love above all others, I immediately suggested that Allan go up first. (of course, the shuffling allowed me to enjoy Mother’s Day and allowed me to approach my own post on the Brigham Young film score archives with a bit more breathing room). What can one say about Allan’s post that doesn’t leave one wishing that somehow there will one day be finds that will stun the movie world. Until then we can only support worthy causes like this one. Fantastic collection of stills here too.
I’m surprised the censorial hard right haven’t been on here ticking me off for the scandalous photos of Theda Bara, Betty Blythe and Anna Neagle. Someone had suggested to me once to do a Wonders series on the history of nudity in cinema prior to 1960. I’d have loved to do it as it’s a subject pretty much ignored online, but what can you do without stills and screencaps
A real shame in all senses of the word. I get frustrated by films that were never made or were altered over the director’s head but this is much worse.
This is a valuable list for further reading and, of course, the more publicity these films get worldwide the more chance they might, miraculously, turn up.
I am amused when films that people haven’t seen are called masterpieces, though.
Yeah, you could have another post of those films that were never made or left unfinished, not just those we still have in butchered fashion like Von Stroheim’s Queen Kelly, Munk’s Passenger or Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico! but Korda/Von Sternberg’s I Claudius (1937), Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible Part Three (1948), Carné’s Le Fleur de l’Age (1949) And Clouzot’s L’Enfer (1964). Or those that were just about to go into pre-production but never made it, such as Olivier’s Macbeth with Vivien Leigh, abandoned after Alex Korda’s death meant the money was gone.
I remember being fascinated by Lon Chaney and seeing a still for London After Midnight in a biography many years ago. Reading that it was lost really saddened me. Back then I had no idea how many films perished through various causes. It seems that silents have really taken the brunt of such carelessness (though the preceding decades have also had notable victims). I’m utterly flabbergasted that the BBC would erase the tapes of their respective TV shows in such shockingly shortsighted manners.
Yes, but their attitude was pretty much the same as studios – who’d ever want to watch these again? So there are many missing episodes of Who with Hartnell and Troughton which are now only animated to the soundtracks. While The Devil’s Crown I believe only partially survives, its last two episodes (or is it the first two, I forget) now lost. Even Steptoe and Son, some episodes only survive as they were found abroad or because someone recorded them in the 1970s from primitive pre-VHS systems (so several colour episodes only survive in black and white).
Then there are those which probably do survive but are impossible to see, such as the 1930 Brit musical Raise the Roof with Betty Balfour or Rookery Nook, the best of the Aldwych/Ben Travers school from the same year. I’d kill for copies of either of those.
Wow, looking at the costumes that the ladies don’t have on, I can see why we would want to see Queen of Sheba and Cleopatra. As a pre-Code fan, my own #1 lost film is Convention City, which, like the Chaplin/Sternberg film, seems to have been a victim of deliberate destruction, and not of time, misplaced reels, or Allied bombing. The Murnau, Stroheim, & Jannings films seem like real losses to both history and art. Should serve as a reminder to everyone to check attics and basements!
Yes, my favourite story about survival was Keaton’s The General. Up until the mid 1950s it was presumed lost, but it turned up when James Mason bought Buster’s old house in Hollywood and found a copy of it and another lost film in a cupboard. Thankfully James saw to it that it was preserved immediately.
Always wish Mason had been able to narrate Brownlow’s Keaton bio as he did Unknown Chaplin and the Hollywood series just so he could take a bow for this.
Yes, indeed. If only he’d lived another year or two. Lvely man, James Mason. Very witty. Actually went to school not 10 miles from where I write in Windermere.
I recall very vaguely an anecdote about Keaton once cleaning out his garage (this was back in the 60s),finding some old reels, taking then to Laemmle (must have been Walter) and telling him “if you don’t want these I’m going to throw then all out.” Don’t remember the titles, but a couple were the only surviving copies of Keaton masterpieces.
OK, I apparently have a memory like a sieve. Here’s the skinny on the ‘lost’ Keaton films. Keaton approached a theater owner in Los Angeles named Rohauer saying he had a lot of junk in his garage that he wanted to get rid of, including some old films (it was the 1950s, not the 60s) and would Rohauer be interested. Sure, he was interested and when Rohauer went through Keaton’s garage he found the only surviving copies of ‘The Three Ages’, ‘College’ and…drum roll, please….STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.!!!!!!!!
(This Rohauer guy put together a Keaton film festival in New York in the 1970′s). Miraculous.
What a fabulous post augmented with mouth-watering images. That still from “The Dragnet” is amazing. Such body language. Talk about a picture saying a thousand words.
Being an Errol Flynn fan, I’ll have to include his first starring role, the British-made “Murder at Monte Carlo” (1934) in the pantheon of missing film titles. Perhaps one day.
Yes, Mr Flynn. There’s his unfinished William Tell, too, which would have been fun on a disaster level.
I will take the liberty of posting the text of an article from the March 17 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, which highlights the possibilties for recovery and sadly the wanton destruction that occurred after the silent era, after a fellow-Aussie did some detective work:
“TONIGHT in the New York city of Syracuse, film critic and author Leonard Maltin will welcome to the stage Paul Brennan, a film historian from Woollahra [a suburb of Sydney]..
Brennan will tell the dark, twisting story of Mamba, a drama that pioneered new technology and bankrupted a studio before it was lost, apparently forever.
On its release in 1930, Mamba astounded film-goers with its realistic sound and Technicolor visuals. Blending forbidden passion with a Zulu uprising, the lavish production was billed as ”the screen’s first all-talking, all-colour drama”.
”It is a landmark film from the dawn of sound,” Brennan says. ”It was so advanced. The rest of Hollywood didn’t catch up until the mid-’30s.”
Unfortunately, it soon went from landmark to waylaid. Despite performing well at the box office, Mamba was so expensive it bankrupted Tiffany Pictures, the independent studio that produced it. Within a decade, every one of the film’s prints was destroyed or missing – along with the performance of its Australian co-star, Claude Fleming.
But in 2009, in a twist worthy of Hollywood, Brennan hunted down a print in Adelaide [capital city of the state of South Australia] after some internet detective work. It was owned by an 80-year-old woman and her 85-year-old husband, who used to work as a travelling picture show man in Australia’s backblocks.
”I went to New York in 2009 and showed what I had, and their heads collectively exploded,” Brennan says. ”They could not believe the entire film was there.”
The print had vision but no sound – in this early period of talkies the soundtrack was provided by a record played on a turntable coupled with the projector. So the next step was to unearth the soundtrack.
After more hunting, Brennan jubilantly located a complete set of nine soundtrack records at UCLA. These he gave to Swedish sound engineer Jonas Nordin, who synchronised the soundtrack and the visuals. Thanks to Brennan and Nordin, the film had its emotional ”re-premiere” in Melbourne in November.
Tonight in Syracuse, at an event called Cinefest, Mamba will have its first US screening in 80 years.
”Cinefest is a four-day showcase of the last 12 months of discoveries and restorations,” Brennan says. ”And we have the Saturday night slot.
” They’re having us as the star attraction. Leonard Maltin is hosting, and Jonas and I have prepared a 70-minute PowerPoint presentation on the history of Tiffany Pictures, which was formed in 1922 and was really a production house of wealthy people making expensive movies starring their friends.
”One of their showcase pictures was Mamba, which was a movie of such scale and ambition that even Technicolor took out ads to say how good the colour was.”
Mamba comes from the era portrayed in The Artist. It’s the story of a brutish German in colonial Africa who marries a young beauty, but her heart belongs to a dashing Englishman.
”Love at first sight,” trumpeted the poster. ”But she was the wedded slave of the cruellest white man in Africa!” In response, the Zulus revolt.
The film couldn’t save Tiffany and when the studio went under, Mamba was lost – but not without playing a part in the making of another classic.
”In 1938, the David Selznick studio was about to start filming Gone With The Wind,” Brennan says. ”And they said: ‘We’re going to have a big fire, so anyone who has anything they don’t like, bring it down.’ Every single thing Tiffany owned, including all the props and negatives, were taken there.
”So when you’re seeing the burning of Atlanta, you’re seeing the burning of all these silent films and all these independent studio prints. Everything went up in smoke that night.”
Except for that one print of Mamba that found its way to Adelaide.”
Six hours with Liz of Beverly Hills as Queen of the Nile? Pass me the fucking asp.
Seriously, Allan, a fascinating list.
It would have been more balanced with two films, but it wouldn’t have fixed the casting problems. Should have been Stanley Baker as Antony, André Morll as Caesar and Loren as Cleo with O’Toole as Octavian. Ah well.
Loren as Cleo. I could certainly gaze upon that for 6 hrs.
What a great post, but at the same time, what a sad post as well. It is a tragedy that these, and so so so many other films have been lost to us, most of them, save for the occasional treasure find in some cave in Peru or some such place, forever.
Theda Bara’s Cleopatra is number one on my list, followed by London After Midnight and Convention City. I yearn for the day when one of these is found in that aforementioned Peruvian cave.
Perhaps Sam’s post on Lost Horizon is a propos, they’re probably all in Shangri-La.
Hi! Sam Juliano, Allan, and WitD readers…
This video may or may not be directly, related to lost silent films, but the posters do represent to me at least why I started to seek out film noir to a certain extent…
My love Of film noir is more closely, related to film noir memorabilia than to the films themselves. [For instance, the exciting, colourful, posters and lobby cards also "set the ball in motion" when it comes to my interests in film noir first and foremost...Well, not actually, first and foremost...my interests in the film was first and then the memorabilia. However, the films [noir] now are secondary to the memorabilia.]
@ Tony…
Wow! Tony, the article that you posted is truly frightening…too!
@ Allan…
Allan, I have linked back to the Network For Good donation page…
too!
deedee
Allan: This is sobering. It’s good for us to remember what is lost.
This is Paul Brennan who found the Technicolor print of MAMBA..
Thanks for the quote and the nod about lost cine heritage. I appreciate it and the SMH quote post very much.
Paul Brennan ph 0411 366 916.