NitrateVille.com

just going on a bit of info in wikipedia. MGM bought up Tiffany's silent library to set aflame during the burning of Atlanta scene in Gone With The Wind. Anybody know anymore on this?

It was producer David O. Selznick. Mayer only distributed the film. Nitrate films were burned for the fire, but I have not heard specifically that it was the Tiffany library.

silentfilm wrote:It was producer David O. Selznick. Mayer only distributed the film. Nitrate films were burned for the fire, but I have not heard specifically that it was the Tiffany library.

But it was on wikipedia, so it must be true.

I believe this is meme you were looking for, Freddie...

It was actually Thalberg, who had become a vampire. That's why he killed Lon Chaney, so he couldn't do Dracula.

Bob

According to Ronald Haver's David O. Selznick's Hollywood, it was the sets of King of Kings and King Kong, soaked in oil. He doesn't mention anything about nitrate films.

Nice urban myth, but nitrate film would be much less controllable and had valuable silver that could be reclaimed. Old sets soaked with oil were much more cost-efficient.

An even better urban myth would be that Louis B Mayer was seen dancing naked around a bonfire of theatrical prints of the uncut Greed, London After Midnight, Rogue Song and Hats Off.

Rob Farr wrote:An even better urban myth would be that Louis B Mayer was seen dancing naked around a bonfire of theatrical prints of the uncut Greed, London After Midnight, Rogue Song and Hats Off.

And Mayer wasn't alone, he was dancing with Erich von Stroheim.

LongRider wrote:

Rob Farr wrote:An even better urban myth would be that Louis B Mayer was seen dancing naked around a bonfire of theatrical prints of the uncut Greed, London After Midnight, Rogue Song and Hats Off.

And Mayer wasn't alone, he was dancing with Erich von Stroheim.

FG MacIntyre swore he saw this in the uncut GWTW workprint that a friend had squirreled away in an attic in Italy, he had to carry his Steenbeck up six flights of stairs to see it.

The sets burning was one story I had heard about the GWTW Atlanta burning for many years. Only here did I recently see mention of the Tiffany negatives & prints.

However, in Australia about 1926 they made a film called For the term of His Natural Life based on a novel by Marcus Clarke. There is a ship burning scene and it is said that they used old nitrate newsreels for this fire. Not a wise move if that was true from a historically point of view.

What really happened to the NYC vault of FBO Pictures when a deal with author/broadcaster Joe Franklin could not be agreed on? Did the guy there scrap the lot for the silver value and clear off?

I think it was Majestic Films of the 1930s whose elements were stored haphazardly in an old barn somewhere.

Frances Goldwyn having destroyed most of the Samuel Goldwyn silent negatives because she said they had no value. I would have thought her son would have had some input and with archives like UCLA & LOC hovering about why would they not be offered or sent to those places first? But then I could say the same about the BBC, particularly in the 1970s, when they wiped or destroyed countless programs or part thereof of series claiming space needs & fire hazards. The office of the national archives was just around the corner from BBC HQ.

moviepas wrote:But then I could say the same about the BBC, particularly in the 1970s, when they wiped or destroyed countless programs or part thereof of series claiming space needs & fire hazards. The office of the national archives was just around the corner from BBC HQ.

Much of the old BBC material that does survive does so because it was on film; it was the videotaped material that was 'junked' - wiped to reuse the videotape. But then the videotapes they were using were incredibly expensive; the tape for a one-hour programme was the price of a Mini Cooper. That's an immense chunk out of a production budget when you may not be contractually allowed to repeat the show, and home video formats were twenty years in the future......

sepiatone wrote:just going on a bit of info in wikipedia. MGM bought up Tiffany's silent library to set aflame during the burning of Atlanta scene in Gone With The Wind. Anybody know anymore on this?

No truth to this, and there are so many errors in that wikipedia piece it wasn't worth correcting all of them.

And remember that burning nitrate film gives off toxic fumes.

David Pierce
Media History Digital Library
http://mediahistoryproject.org/" target="_blank" target="_blank

author of "The Legion of the Condemned: Why American Silent Films Perished"
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3815289" target="_blank" target="_blank

LongRider wrote:

Rob Farr wrote:An even better urban myth would be that Louis B Mayer was seen dancing naked around a bonfire of theatrical prints of the uncut Greed, London After Midnight, Rogue Song and Hats Off.

And Mayer wasn't alone, he was dancing with Erich von Stroheim.

And off to the side the Marx Brothers were also naked and roasting potatoes in the fire.

augustinius wrote:

LongRider wrote:

Rob Farr wrote:An even better urban myth would be that Louis B Mayer was seen dancing naked around a bonfire of theatrical prints of the uncut Greed, London After Midnight, Rogue Song and Hats Off.

And Mayer wasn't alone, he was dancing with Erich von Stroheim.

And off to the side the Marx Brothers were also naked and roasting potatoes in the fire.

I just found the film of this in a box I bought at a flea market.