Tweet A Night at the Opera: How about a restoration?

As reported here by Bruce Calvert in 2008, the Hungarian Film Archive has a print of A Night at the Opera including bits that were snipped out of the "standard" version for re-release sometime in the 1940s and have remained missing from all theatrical, TV and home video releases since:

http://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?t=1374

Four years later, I have not been able to find any indication that Warner has plans to restore the film using this footage. Does anyone have any idea? I realize of course that the good folks at Warner have limited time and budgets like anyone else, yet this seems to me to be an obvious high priority project.

And while they're at it, how about all of those missing bits from DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1941)? Their German video master has all of it.

Do they have a print of Horsefeathers?

Do they have a print of Horsefeathers?

Universal has that one along with most of the pre-1948 Paramount features.

As reported here by Bruce Calvert in 2008, the Hungarian Film Archive has a print of A Night at the Opera including bits that were snipped out of the "standard" version for re-release sometime in the 1940s and have remained missing from all theatrical, TV and home video releases since...four years later, I have not been able to find any indication that Warner has plans to restore the film using this footage.

As A NIGHT AT THE OPERA continues to be seen, it cuts abruptly to the grand restaurant without a Fade-In where Margaret Dumont is waiting for Groucho. It's obvious that a set up or opening sequence had to have preceded this. But the mystery is why was it removed, and can it be located to be replaced in its original position?

According to Glenn Mitchell's Marx Brothers Encyclopedia, the original opening was a Lubitsch-like musical sequence passing from one hotel restaurant employee to another, ending with the waiter seen in the existing print.

The existing version doesn't make it clear that the opening scenes are set in Italy. A first-time viewer has to figure this out along the way. The setting may have been much clearer from the original opening. Whether it exists anywhere today, I don't know - it doesn't even seem to be part of the Hungarian archive print. The theory is that some wartime re-release took pains to delete all references to Italy in the film, which seems weird but would explain some of the cuts.

s.w.a.c. mentioned Horse Feathers which also exists today only in a truncated version. One of the main scenes, with the boys running in and out of Thelma Todd's rooms, is especially badly mangled.

And then there is Animal Crackers, which since a late-30s re-release has been missing one bit from the "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" number: "I think I'll try and make her."

The Animal Crackers bit may be lost forever, but for the other two - Horse Feathers especially - it's hard to believe that more effort hasn't gone into reconstructing them or searching for better prints. I can't quite shake the feeling that it would have been a very different story if the films in question had been Gone With the Wind or Casablanca instead of "mere" comedies.

[Christopher Jacobs]

- it's hard to believe that more effort hasn't gone into reconstructing them or searching for better prints. I can't quite shake the feeling that it would have been a very different story if the films in question had been Gone With the Wind or Casablanca instead of "mere" comedies.

And didn't the first cut(s) of GONE WITH THE WIND run something like six or eight hours that were finally reduced to the four hours (including intermission) that we have today? What happened to all those outtakes and deleted scenes? They're not included in the latest video versions, although they show plenty of screen tests surviving.

Warners could also restore the cut bits from Garbo's "Mata Hari" that turned up in Belgium in 2005.

GONE WITH THE WIND

The late David Wolper & his company bought all the GWTW tests and I assume he got other surviving footage but I have read nothing about this. Anyone know what he actually bought at the time.

Warners could also restore the cut bits from Garbo's "Mata Hari" that turned up in Belgium in 2005.

It is amazing what footage or alternate versions has turned up in Belguim & Hungary. If this material was there before the war, it is truly hard to believe as both countries suffered at the hands of all sides in WW2. And it is nitrate footage as well. Hungary's case their riverside archives were bombed in early 1945 and many Hungarian titles made in the years of the war are missing as per lists on-line at imdb & other places. Jekyll & Hyde is a funny as I would not have expected it to get to Hungary in those years so it must have ended up there at a later date. Italy did not see anything, really, of Western films or music until after their capitulated. I have heard and owned at one time many LPs that had new recordings from 1945-47 with Italian artists of US & UK songs that were well passed their use by date in the West up to 5 years earlier. Germany had moviehouses after the war that showed US & British films for the occupation forces that had not been shown in that country due to the war. I have met Germans who saw them as they say they were allowed to enter those occupation moviehouses.

Warners could also restore the cut bits from Garbo's "Mata Hari" that turned up in Belgium in 2005.

Is that the scene of Garbo and Novarro in the dark with their cigarettes that was cut for a Code sanctioned reissue?

Greta

Apparently the opening musical number hasn't survived, which is the Big Kahuna of missing Marx footage.

But I'd still love to see it as restored as possible.

Warners could also restore the cut bits from Garbo's "Mata Hari" that turned up in Belgium in 2005.

Is that the scene of Garbo and Novarro in the dark with their cigarettes that was cut for a Code sanctioned reissue?

Greta

Details here-down the page a bit:
http://www.garboforever.com/Film-25.htm

Also, apparently the original cut of "Two Faced Woman" turned up at a Cukor retrospective in England a few years back.

WaverBoy wrote:

Apparently the opening musical number hasn't survived, which is the Big Kahuna of missing Marx footage.

Certainly that honor belongs to HUMORISK.

WaverBoy wrote:

Apparently the opening musical number hasn't survived, which is the Big Kahuna of missing Marx footage.

Certainly that honor belongs to HUMORISK.

You're right, I forgot about that one. As an added incentive for me, it's got my babe Jobyna in it.

And it's actually titled HUMOR RISK...

http://www.marx-brothers.org/marxology/humorisk.htm

WaverBoy wrote:

And it's actually titled HUMOR RISK

Hopefully a print will turn up and provide the definitive answer.

http://home.earthlink.net/~morewebspace6/humorisk.htm

From Moving Picture World April 16, 1921, page 738: "MARX BROTHERS IN NEW COMEDY SERIES"

"The Four Marx Brothers, Julius, Arthur, Leonard and Herbert, well-known to vaudeville audiences, have made their screen debut and will be featured in a series produced by the Caravel Comedy Company, known as 'Comedy Without Custard'.
The first is from a story by Jo Swerling of the New York American. It is titled 'Humor Risk' and was directed by Dick Smith with A.H. Vallet at the camera."

Was there another contemporary account of this film that spelled it HUMORISK?