At the time of original recording the vocalist would be in an isolated booth, listening to the orchestra with headphones. The result would be a separate track for the orchestra, completely isolated from the singing. In the case of background music, such as for VERTIGO, the music would be recorded af...

Along with revisiting several Academy Award winners (last week - "The Lost Weekend"), yesterday I saw the BluRay of THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. I doubt that the Blu is particularly better than a good regular DVD, but as to the movie, its almost 3 hours held my attention far better than one of the c...

THE LOST WEEKEND. This 1945 Oscar winner holds up marvelously, especially in the performances of Ray Milland in the lead, Howard DaSilva as the bartender, and notably but never noted, Frank Faylen as the male nurse in the hospital sequence.

Re Tony Martin: According to IMDB, he was born in San Francisco of Polish immigrant parents. Jewish isn't a nationality, but rather a religion. No question that he could have a dual heritage, but I'd think his nationality was U.S.

I differ with your supposition that SERVICE WITH A SMILE suffers from "shrunken matrix syndrome". The matrix film was used for dye transfer printing, and was never a preservation element. If any of the original elements were shrunken, we would see the fringing through an entire reel. The fringing in...

The first generally released live action three color seems to be the finale of Fox's HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD in 1933.
This has been shown on TV and is amazingly good.
Following this, there were a lot of short subjects prior to the first full length feature, BECKY SHARP, in 1935.

I can't be of much help on THE VIKING. When I got involved in the MGM library in 1986 almost everything in the library had been transferred to safety film. The color subjects, for the most part, were preserved with CRI negatives which were used extensively by the MGM Lab at that time. I first saw TH...

Not to be picky, but the 1934 (and the remake) of IMITATION OF LIFE was Universal, not Columbia.

I think I can add some clarification to the preservation of the 2-color Technicolor sections of HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929. After Turner Entertainment Co. took over the MGM library in 1986, I moved from working for the MGM film services department to Turner, and a position that evolved into VP of Film ...

Last summer, while in Ashland, Oregon, we saw a stage version of "The Cocoanuts" performed by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It was based on the movie more than the original stage version, and was terrifically entertaining. It ran 2 1/2 hours, including a short intermission. There was quite a bit ...

In the 1980s this was one of the prints in the MGM (later Turner) studio library that couldn't be circulated, almost certainly because the rights had moved along for the later Warner Bros. production. I was able to screen it in-house. My main interest was that it was a late James Whale picture, and ...

Having been involved with the MGM library for about 20 years, I thought it was appropriate to throw in a couple of coments. I was told by the late Roger Mayer, who at the time was president of the MetroColor Laboratory, that the Traveltalks were one of the things that initiated a breakthrough in the...

In SUN VALLEY SERENADE, the "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" number, with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Tex Beneke, the Nicolas Brothers with Dorothy Dandridge.

Early in THE BIG PARADE, we see the character played by John Gilbert in a car, tapping his foot to music.
Later, he is leaving with the troops, and Renee Adoree follows, grabbing his shoe. This predicts the loss of his leg in the battle.

The technical film preservation work on DAUGHTER OF DAWN was done by the now closed Film Technology Co. in Los Angeles. I had the pleasure of working with Bill Moore at the Oklahoma Historical Society during this period. He helped me find some resources to research some of my early family who lived ...

Trying to remember further about the "silent" footage in this print, I think these sections had a black sound track. This would tell me that where there was no dialog or obvious sound, like a gunshot, there was no recording and clear film just cut into the sound negative to line it up with the pictu...

I saw this picture several times when WB was working on preserving what existed at the Library of Congress. It seemed almost certainly a work or preview print. There is no title music, and whenever there is no dialog the sound track goes obviously missing. There is no background noise which was very...

There was nothing like Noel Coward's writing to take a seemingly ordinary talky scene, and end it with such a punch.
This remains probably the one sequence in CAVALCADE that people remember.
This picture received the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1933.

My beginnings of a lifetime of working in the motion picture industry were in neighborhood theaters in Oklahoma City. Kiddie shows were a regular thing. Several of the distributors, who had their exchanges there, had certain pictures designated for this purpose. Sometimes you would wonder why Warner...

During a trip to Ireland some years back, we noticed (especially in Dublin) the lack of Irish accents. When inquiring, the answer was that the younger generation either grew up watching American TV or had English schooling. The older people and those in small towns continued to have the classical Ir...

There is quite a bit about the production history of MYSTERIOUS ISLAND in the book THE DAWN OF TECHNICOLOR.

I first met Roger when he was president of MetroColor Laboratory in 1984. I had the good fortune of working under his leadership through the years when he was president of Turner Entertainment, and we kept in touch ever since. I couldn't have had a better leader and mentor. I'll miss our occasional ...

Your guess about changing the hand over heart position is correct. I was in early public schools during WWII, and eliminating holding the right arm out during the pledge was eliminated as being too close to the Nazi salute.
"Under God..." came along later, maybe a Cold War reaction.

I haven't seen this particular release, but am extremely familiar with the picture due to work on it during the Turner Entertainment days. At that time, I became acquainted with its director, the late George Sidney, and am happy to see his work continue to be appreciated. Just about all of his work ...

I had ordered from Amazon in early February, but a month later they showed a probable shipping date of March 20.
I cancelled it, and reordered from Barnes and Noble. It has shipped, and is due for delivery March 11.

I think I'm remembering this film correctly. In the late 1980s at Turner, this was one of the first 3-strip pictures which we preserved. There was a barroom scene where each of the drinks was of a different color, showing off the capabilities of Technicolor. It was pretty common in the 3-strip short...

Seeing pictures of these early Motiograph projectors, and others, I've always found it interesting that there seems
to be no fire protection. They all had open magazines and projection heads. I guess it wasn't until some theater fires that modifications were made.

I don't have any documentation for these pictures, but the usual method of preservation is to make (1) an answer print from the original material (2) an interpositive (for color) or fine grain positive (for B&W), and a subsequent dupe negative for future printing. Just making a print would not be co...

Regarding the Eastman House fire and MGM negatives: Everything that was sent to GEH was previously preserved at the MGM Laboratory. Even though the original negatives of about 1200 reels were destroyed, no movies were lost. Among the originals burnt was the 3-strip Technicolor of "Singin' in the Rai...

SIGN OF THE CROSS was DeMille.