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About a decade ago I asked people on alt.movies.silent to name the ten silents they'd most like to be found. I thought it would be interesting to revisit those lists and see what I know of that's turned up in the (actually nine) years since:

Of mine:
Bardelys the Magnificent, as we all know
Miracle Man-- not found, one clip was known to exist, but there is a second clip from it in an early 30s documentary that screened a few years ago at Cinesation
Paths to Paradise-- though incomplete, this existed then minus its last reel

I didn't spot anything rediscovered since then, though my last comment, that #10 is "Whatever that movie is that we don't know about that's going to turn out to blow us away when it is found" has probably come true a few times...

I didn't catch any in the first two pages of posts that, to my knowledge, have turned up (other than BARDELYS, of course). If someone mentioned BEYOND THE ROCKS, I didn't notice it. My own #1 want-to-be-found is THE CASE OF LENA SMITH; a 3 minute clip did turn up in China a few years ago, but that's probably all we're going to get. There was a book published last year (German, IIRC) that reconstructs much of the film from stills. Nice to see, but it just makes me want to see the real thing all the more

The sound clip of Miracle Man was from the Paramount "novelty" short Movie Milestones and it has been around a while. I have it on a 16mm print from Blackhawk.

Her Wild Oat with Colleen Moore was a major discovery, although certainly not Colleen Moore's best. I think that Warners is restoring two other Colleen Moore films with the Vitaphone music discs.

There's an alternate version of a silent Buster Keaton feature premiering soon.

Better versions of Cat and the Canary and The Hunchback of Notre Dame have been found, and are now available on DVD. I guess Metropolis is coming soon.

From Frank Thompson's Lost Films book, Purity was discovered with Audrey Munson.

I made up my own list of most desired lost Silent films, some months ago, and will need to retrieve it from another site.

So what do you guys know about FORBIDDEN HOURS (1928) having been found? Silent era.com lists this films status as "Unknown", but that is wrong. It has had a few screenings in recent years, and I am not talking about the trailer either.

One movie that is not lost, but no one ever gets to see is A KISS FROM CINDERELLA (1925). William K. Everson listed this among the great Silent films ever made.

silentfilm wrote:Her Wild Oat with Colleen Moore was a major discovery, although certainly not Colleen Moore's best. I think that Warners is restoring two other Colleen Moore films with the Vitaphone music discs.

Yes, the other two are SYNTHETIC SIN and WHY BE GOOD. I can't imagine that TCM won't run these after work is completed...really looking forward to seeing those and HER WILD OAT.

It seems that the group of "young composer" silents on TCM would be a natural for a "TCM Archive" box set. I'm surprised that this hasn't been done before now, although now that the composer program has apparently ended, TCM no longer has a reason to promote it.

Gagman 66 wrote: I made up my own list of most desired lost Silent films, some months ago, and will need to retrieve it from another site.

So what do you guys know about FORBIDDEN HOURS (1928) having been found? Silent era.com lists this films status as "Unknown", but that is wrong. It has had a few screenings in recent years, and I am not talking about the trailer either.

One movie that is not lost, but no one ever gets to see is A KISS FROM CINDERELLA (1925). William K. Everson listed this among the great Silent films ever made.

I haven't heard anything about FORBIDDEN HOURS; all I've seen is the trailer.

A major problem with KISS FOR CINDERELLA is the condition of the surviving prints, as Everson noted. Decomp is very severe in a number of scenes, and while the beauty of the tinted and hand-colored prints must have been great, it's gone in the surviving prints. Plus, of course, it's owned by Paramount. A small consolation is that PETER PAN is a far better film IMO.

Danny,

I am very excited about SYNTHETIC SIN and WHY BE GOOD?, too. But I also have heard rumors of a restoration of LILAC TIME from a 35 millimeter European release print Warner's still owns. I sure hope that they are true? For decades this film has only circulated in truncated, and poorly processed 16 millimeter dupes, and minus the original title-card design. It's high time for a proper restoration to be undertaken.

It's my understanding that the Vita-phone projects for SYNTHETIC SIN, and WHY BE GOOD? were put off until next year? They didn't fit into the 2008 budget. Warner's was already committed to restoring some 50 plus short films instead. I have no idea what was so great about any of those shorts that they would take priority like that? One would hope though that the Moore features have at least been transferred to safety-stock by now? Though I haven't heard anything to indicate that they were? All I can say is I hope that they get to these before it is to late, and don't keep pushing back the project. Do you have additional details?

They may not have made the list's, but I personally consider the three Howard Hughes produced Silents TWO ARABIAN KNIGHTS, THE RACKET, and THE MATING CALL as major, major finds.

What about SEVEN FOOTPRINTS OF SATAN (1929)? Has anyone seen it? Then there is Henry King's THE SEVENTH DAY (1922), made just after TOL'ABLE DAVID. These are just for starters.

I've seen Seven Footprints to Satan in a lousy nth generation dupe with Italian subtitles. Even with lousy quality there are some jaw dropping sequences- we see a presumably nude girl run across the screen, pursued by a man on crutches, and a Gorilla- BUT..... we only see their legs! Once the plot gets moving the pace is fast. SPOILER ALERT....Warning- if you've read the A. Merritt novel this is based on the film dumps nearly all of the plot and winds up with a comic ending. Within the context of the film it's great, but a travesty of the novel.

My list of "most wanted" I made for a fairly recent thread on a.m.s. -

1/"Gold Diggers of Broadway"
2/"Three Sinners"
3/"Scarlet Seas"
4/"You Can't Fool Your Wife"
5/"We Moderns"
6/"Remodelling her Husband"
7/"4 Devils" (of course, this already has been "found" har har {cough})
8/"The Divine Woman"
9/"The City Gone Wild"
10/"The Single Track"

In the probably vain hope that any of these will show up.

I've been wondering about those 2 Colleen Moore titles ever since I read about them on the vitaphone project page.

A decade ago, I used to read about "White Gold" being a lost film in "Classics of the Silent Screen", and think about how terrible it was that "they" could lose an entire film just like that! Little did I know....

Danny Burk wrote: A major problem with KISS FOR CINDERELLA is the condition of the surviving prints, as Everson noted. Decomp is very severe in a number of scenes, and while the beauty of the tinted and hand-colored prints must have been great, it's gone in the surviving prints. Plus, of course, it's owned by Paramount. A small consolation is that PETER PAN is a far better film IMO.

Agree to disagree, I like KISS much better than PAN. There might be underlying rights issues with KISS since it's based on a Barrie property and Barrie left his estate tied up tighter than...a tied-up tight thing. (Oh man, I was about to type something REALLY rude.) Does anyone know details on rights to KISS?

Fred

Just how bad a state is "Kiss" in? It has one of the more intriguing descriptions in "Classics of the Silent Screen", even taking the writer's Betty Bronson fetish (which is of course completely understandable) into account...

KISS was shown at MoMA (their print) several years ago as part of a series of films released in 1925. The play itself (at one point adapted as a musical THE PENNY FRIEND in the 60's with a young Bernadette Peters in the lead) may be in the P.D. by now. Public screenings would probably involve fees for rights from Para as well as rental costs from MoMA (or whoever else has a print...GEH?).

Ben

N_Phay wrote:Just how bad a state is "Kiss" in? It has one of the more intriguing descriptions in "Classics of the Silent Screen", even taking the writer's Betty Bronson fetish (which is of course completely understandable) into account...

It's watchable for the gee...(cough)...film buff, but it's in pretty bad shape. I'll have to leave it to those who do restoration to advise us on probable costs for such a project.

Fred

N_Phay wrote:A decade ago, I used to read about "White Gold" being a lost film in "Classics of the Silent Screen", and think about how terrible it was that "they" could lose an entire film just like that! Little did I know....

Clyde Cook (second from left) and George Bancroft (right) in White Gold

White Gold survives in 16mm and 8mm versions. It is probably a truncated version of the feature. It is also on DVD-R from Grapevine, although I have not seen it so I don't know the quality of the disc.
http://www.grapevinevideo.com/white_gold.htm

I always thought that it was curious that William K. Everson (who ghostwrote Classics of the Silent Screen) would say that there was only one surviving still from this film, since I have one in my collection. It was unidentified when I found it though. I guess he meant there's only one in the MOMA and in his personal collection.

All of the copies of WHITE GOLD that I've seen are missing the first reel (other than main titles). That's the version that was first rediscovered. The missing reel was later found (from a different print, I assume); I don't know of any copies in private hands.

There was the reel from Battle Cry of Peace that turned up in Sweden, and there's enough to give a pretty good idea of the film. Here are my notes from my website on this:

This film had long been considered entirely lost, save for some battle sequences once used as stock footage, which Kevin Brownlow included in his Hollywood series. However, the Svenska Filminstitute turned out to have a reel of unknown sequences. I viewed this and found that it seemed to be a reel from a condensed version of the film--one possibly reedited to capitalize on Norma Talmadge's appearance, as it contains her most important scenes. It begins as the country is being invaded and the women of the Harrison family are being beseiged in their home by soldiers, who leave them dead. Then the spy and his accomplice reveal themselves to the Vandergriffs and prompt the arrest of the men by firing on the foreign soldiers. The spy makes advances to Norma, who pretends to acquiesce, grabs his gun, and shoots him. She forces his accomplice into a closet while firing squads execute people outside. They escape in a car and find one of their party has survived the firing quad. Soon they are captured by soldiers and the men are bayonetted. The mother and her two daughters are taken to a house and locked in a room while soldiers drink outside. The mother asks Norma for the gun. The soldiers hear shots and come in the room, to find the mother sitting on the floor with her two dead daughters. The film has the Swedish "Slut" (The End) at this point, so this version ended here, skipping the final allegorical reels. The dramatic situations far stronger than the frankly trivial plots of most of Talmadge's films and she rises to the occasion, giving an excellent performance. She certainly showed star quality here. One of the other actresses in the film (one of the Harrison family) very much resembles Constance Talmadge. Though she is not credited in any of the reviews, one of Norma's film reminiscences articles says that Constance was in the film.

greta de groat,

Wow, I would dearly love to see even a fragment of THE BATTLE CRY OF PEACE! This film sounded so awesome in Thames HOLLYWOOD. I have always wanted to see THE FIRE BRIGADE (1927) too. Not a lost feature, but rarely ever seen. I was hoping TCM would comission a score one of these days.

Gilbert's TWELVE MILES OUT I think has only about 3 reels surviving? THE COSSACKS was apparently considered a lost film at one time? I don't know how recently a print was uncovered? I can tell you that the print I have seen from France 3 is beautiful, and seems to be full-length. Warner's should definitely score this great movie.

One of the films high up on my list of most wanted lost Silent's is Corinne Griffith's THE LADY IN ERMINE (1927). Or really anything with Corinne like THE OUTCAST (1926). Still haven't found my list which contained 25 films, not just 10, but I am looking for it. I think I had James Cruze HOLLYWOOD, and Chaney's THE BLIND BARGAIN in the top 10. Along with Colleen Moore's FLAMING YOUTH, THE PERFECT FLAPPER, and THE DESERT FLOWER.

It sounds like the complete White Gold would be a good candidate for Cinecon. The short 16mm version was shown at Capitalfest in 2005, and apparently it was shown at Cinecon or Cinefest sometime before 1998 (according to alt.movies.silent). I've never seen a 16mm print on eBay, so prints are not easy to come by.

I saw White Gold at Capitolfest and was not aware that any footage was missing, so it plays quite well in its shorter form. The story is very very similar to The Wind and I'm not the only viewer who came away thinking it was a better film overall.

I saw "12 Miles Out" last year in Los Angeles. The print was pretty sharp and complete as far as I know -- it had the first couple of previously missing reels that give the backstory of the Gilbert and Ernest Torrance characters. The Grapevine dupe begins with the break-in at Crawford and her father's house, about 30 minutes into the film.

"A Kiss For Cinderella" was screened last year as part of a UCLA series, but I wasn't able to attend so not sure what shape the print was in.

FrankFay wrote:I saw White Gold at Capitolfest and was not aware that any footage was missing, so it plays quite well in its shorter form.

It DID play very well and, if anything was missing, it definately didn't show. I just looked it up in the Capitolfest program, and it's listed there as "approx. 66 minutes." This was shown at 24 f.p.s. and if this was accurate and if the release version was 6,108 ft. (which is what it's listed at in the AFI Guide), that would be about right.

Art Pierce

I used to have a print of WHITE GOLD back in my 16mm days, and I didn't realize until I'd had it for years that anything was missing! It had complete main titles, and the plotline didn't seem to begin abruptly. Apparently the first reel is a prologue, showing Jetta Goudal and Kenneth Thomson before their marriage.

If that's true I think I like it better without. As it is, Clyde Cook's little dance (indicating her former profession) comes as a funny surprise.

As previously noted, Silent Era.com still list's FORBIDDEN HOURS (MGM, 1928) with Ramon Novarro, and Renee Adoree, as lost, or at least "Status Unknown". However, I have seen a few sources that would appear to refute that Status. Here is one of them right here.

http://forums.tcm/jive/tcm/thread.jspa? ... 0&start=15

I sure hope this link works because URL's and me are old enemies! This thread eludes to a live screening of the film itself, not a trailer at a Theatre in Lincoln City Oregon, back in 2002. Qoute from my friend Karin to me:

I also found some interesting information of the other film you mentioned, Forbidden Hours. The film was apparently screened at a theatre in Lincoln City, Oregon, but that does not mean that it is available for purchase. I found this in an article from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel dated Sunday, January 13, 2002

Silent films making a lot of noise, thanks to cable TV, Web sites
By JOHN ENDERS
Associated Press
Sunday, January 13, 2002

Lincoln City, Ore--“standing in line at the Bijou Theater to see Ramon Novarro's 1928 "Forbidden Hours," the silent film's first public showing in 73 years.”

In addition, a friend of mine in Cananda who is currrently writing a book about MGM Silents, had this to say just this morning.

]FORBIDDEN HOURS apparently exists, all right. Andre Soares talks of having seen a rare print of it in his book Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro, and offers some brief critical opinion of it. (I'm still confused by that clip I saw once on TV from Novarro's supposedly lost A CERTAIN YOUNG MAN, unless it came from a surviving trailer...?)"

Mr. Gebert, are you saying that the last reel of Paths to Paradise has been found? I'm unaware of this, but it would be welcome news. I think Paths to Paradise is especially good because it's a witty parody of the endless Tod Browning crime dramas of the early 20s, including one that Raymond Griffith actually appeared in.

The clips of Miracle Man exist in two places:
1) Movie Milestones, a clip show produced by Fred "Cinerama" Waller about 1935-6.
2) The House that Shadows Built (1931), a "feature" made by Paramount, which has the Marx Bros. trailer for Monkey Business that contains no footage from the film, but rather an old vaudeville gag.

The bad news here is that these two clip overlap and about 90% of them are the same. I'd not call this a great rediscovery because it's been known for some years.

Eric (who hates to point out that The Ford in Your Future was the only film he ran at Cinesation that was really IB Technicolor.)

No, I meant that apparently I thought then that nothing existed on it, but of course we had the incomplete version all along. (I don't actually remember how I knew this was the Griffith film to see, but thought it was entirely lost, but evidently I did.)

So Fiesta de Santa Barbara wasn't an IB print? It was certainly a great-looking print, whatever it was.

La Fiesta and, I suspect, Jasper, were both printed by an expert lab technician (who shall remain nameless here). He is known as probably the world's expert at making modern Eastman-like processes look like Technicolor.

La Fiesta is actually an Agfacolor dupe from an nitrate Technicolor positive once owned by the late lamented Rusty Casselton, who would have shot me for using his name here. I mean nothing but credit to Mr. C, however, because he preserved this and got to it before it died of nitrate rot.

The provenance on Jasper is a little more unknown, but it's a dupe print from a reduction negative on modern stock. It has to be from a reduction negative from nitrate, as the Paramount negatives were all edited by NTA with new titles, and this one had the original titles on it.

The fact that a couple of dupe prints from nitrate can compare favorably with an original era Technicolor print is nothing short of miraculous. However, it must be admitted that The Ford in Your Future is suffering from Vinegar Syndrome, which has warped it to the point that it isn't as sharp as it should be.

You will all be happy to hear it is back in chemical storage to help flatten it out and perhaps someday it will be in focus completely from left to right again. It's already much better than it was, because last year it was too warped to project at all.

Eric (who was a little disappointed that they didn't run the cartoons or the Ernie Kovacs outtakes I brought... maybe next year)

Eric clears up a question that I was wondering about since I thought all of the Puppetoon's series was done in Eastman color.

Gary J.

The Puppetoons were shot in Technicolor, not Eastman color. The original era nitrate prints of these were all Technicolor. Eastman color was used a little during the war but was not really commercially available until 1948, which was after the Puppetoons were finished.

However, NTA bought the rights to all of the Paramount material somewhat later and then reprinted them for TV. ALL of these prints are Eastman color and 99.9% of them have faded. The only times you see good prints of a Puppetoon are when you see a nitrate print or something made from one.

The sad thing about a lot of this is that NTA ruined the original titles on most of these. Many of the original titles are themselves animated whereas the replaced NTA titles are just generic title slates that do nothing for the film and ruin some of the art that had been in there originally.

Eric (who needs to check back out of here, and could get going on the NTA replaced titles on the Mack Sennett Paramount films, too... ruff... ruff...)