Support Laurel & Hardy

[Paul Penna]

The UCLA Film & Television Archives has a convenient link for making donations in any amount to their L&H preservation project. Also, links to other articles by Richard Bann & Randy Skretvedt. I sent them my dough.

http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/support/laurel-and-hardy

[sethb]

I agree and intend to do the same, for the following reason:

The Universal L&H set that was issued in the UK several years ago was a vast improvement over the two garbage L&H DVD's that Hallmark previously issued in the U.S. Now, the latest RHI release in the US is a big improvement over the Universal set. Since this is really the first authorized U.S. DVD release of many of the L&H shorts, and the first U.S. re-release in about a decade of this material that was previously released on VHS, we really should be grateful that it is available at all.

However, good as the RHI set is, it still has a number of issues in my opinion. Several shorts, such as HOG WILD, don't look as though they received much of the touted "digital restoration," due to the large amounts of speckling and other visible artifacts. Other shorts look very grainy, dupe-y, and were obviously transferred from fairly worn elements (PERFECT DAY, among others). Maybe these elements are the best surviving materials. Maybe they did receive as much restoration as was possible. It was obviously a labor of love, and lots of care obviously went into locating Vitaphone discs, original titles, foreign language versions, etc. But the liner notes state that they were working from masters created in the 1990's.

Maybe UCLA might be able to work with better source materials, or use more or better technology, or might not be subject to the same financial considerations and limitations as a straight commercial release. Given that any type of film preservation is a race against time, I believe the UCLA project deserves a shot and your financial support, RIGHT NOW. SETH

[cjh5801]

According to this article: http://www.laurel-and-hardy.com/archive ... cla-1.html, the source prints are probably the best available at this time, however it doesn't appear that much, if any, actual digital clean-up was done. Apparently they are waiting for UCLA to handle the clean-up.

[Paul Penna]

I thought the print quality of Hog Wild was wonderful overall, much, much better than I've become used to over the past going-on 60 years. Allowed me to get into the film almost as if it were a new experience. There were a handful of brief patches of lower-quality elements, like a small dupe section one of the times Mr. Hardy is sitting in the fish pond. Those brought attention to themselves, but to be honest, any speckling, scratches or the like didn't register. It's not that I'm oblivious to things like that, but I think the fact that I grew up watching films that usually had scratches, spots, splices, reel-change marks and the like has tended to raise the threshold of intrusion for me.

[sethb]

As a former projectionist, I've also seen my share of speckled, spliced, worn and scratched prints -- some even with holes punched in the film where the changeover marks should have been!

Maybe I'm spoiled, but I remember better image quality from the 1960's and 70's Blackhawk 16mm prints of the L&H shorts than the stuff I saw in either the UK (Universal) or US (RHI) set. I guess I'm just irritated that although the new RHI set claims to be "digitally restored," there is precious little evidence that this is the case.

And I STILL see the little wiggly hair at the bottom of the main titles on "Sons of the Desert" -- somebody obviously forgot or neglected to clean out the film gate! (That darn hair was also visible on the previous awful Hallmark release of the same title, which was a video transfer to boot.) That artifact would have been a simple matter to clean up, but I guess they didn't have the time or the money to do it.

As you noted, hopefully UCLA will fix these issues. They did a very nice job on the Universal Sherlock Holmes 1940's features, which were also almost "loved" into oblivion by frequent reissues, reprintings, poor storage conditions and general neglect. SETH

[moviepas]

As Sethb says the Blackhawk 16mm prints were superior quality and I am thinking of the 16mm Perfect Day I bought, in particular. It was done then so it should be better today with all the new restoration tools. I remember clearly an MGM exec, still working there in the early 1970s, telling me that their negatives are the company's assets and as such had to be preserved at all costs. He did not mention the big fire of about 4-5 years earlier in the MGM vaults. Wonder what happened to that L&H set prior to the RHI set? Don't see any one talking about it or if they got it. I stayed clear as I had the UK set but keen on the UCLA(can the market stand more L&H sets regardless of the higher quality?).

[Jack Theakston]

And I STILL see the little wiggly hair at the bottom of the main titles on "Sons of the Desert" -- somebody obviously forgot or neglected to clean out the film gate! (That darn hair was also visible on the previous awful Hallmark release of the same title, which was a video transfer to boot.) That artifact would have been a simple matter to clean up, but I guess they didn't have the time or the money to do it.

Although it might be a simple fix, are you sure this artifact wasn't in the original optical? Those old opticals are notorious for being dirty.

[sethb]

Jack, you're right in that I don't know the origin of the "hair" in question. But somewhere along the line, it obviously got stuck in the film gate. Curiously, it's only in the main titles and not in the section of film that immediately follows, which lends some credence to the idea that it possibly occurred during optical processing of the titles. I just find it hard to believe that a studio would let something like that go out "as is," particularly on a feature film -- but I also know that anything is possible!

I also remember hearing somewhere that when Metro transferred its otherwise decent nitrate of Our Dancing Daughters to safety film in the 1950's, the same problem occurred, so that some dirt in the film gate became permanently "preserved" in the preservation copy of the film. Clearly, somebody wasn't "watching the road" before, during or after the transfer process! SETH

[Paul Penna]

Jack, you're right in that I don't know the origin of the "hair" in question. But somewhere along the line, it obviously got stuck in the film gate. Curiously, it's only in the main titles and not in the section of film that immediately follows, which lends some credence to the idea that it possibly occurred during optical processing of the titles. I just find it hard to believe that a studio would let something like that go out "as is," particularly on a feature film -- but I also know that anything is possible!

Au contraire. I wish I had a nickel for every anomaly like this I've seen in pictures big and small. Perception-wise I think there are two issues here. First, studios counted on people seeing films only once, and figured, rightly, that only a small percentage of the audience would notice things like that, and even then they would probably chalk it up to just another one of those things you see in films, which is the second issue. Audience perception of those things was different then. Think of all the films, again both big and small, that have used stock footage as of it was an integral part of the scenes into which it was inserted. And yet often it's blurrier, shakier, grainier, dirtier, scratchier, you name it, in comparison to the surrounding studio-shot film. Film makers assumed this wouldn't take the audience out of the film, and for the most part they were right. Not that there weren't more sophisticated viewers who could see what was going on, just as there were some who knew rear-projection process shots when they saw them. But in general, these things were much easier to slip past audiences then.

[sethb]

Agreed on the stock footage issue, although most of the time the stuff doesn't look too bad, at least in my opinion.

So let's assume for a moment that the hair IS original to the film, part of the original negative. Should a restorer leave it alone, on the theory that it was there to begin with? Or should it get fixed, on the theory that even if it was there orignally, either nobody actually intended it to be there, or that it obviously doesn't belong there?

I know the Disney folks have sometimes taken the latter argument to extremes, by fixing things that perhaps should have been fixed, but that the technology of the time did not permit. The problem with this is that while it may make the film "better," it no longer looks like the original film (I'm thinking of SNOW WHITE at the moment).

Anyway, my only point in this instance was that SOMEBODY should have gotten rid of the darn hair. SETH

[Derek Gee]

Agreed on the stock footage issue, although most of the time the stuff doesn't look too bad, at least in my opinion.

So let's assume for a moment that the hair IS original to the film, part of the original negative. Should a restorer leave it alone, on the theory that it was there to begin with? Or should it get fixed, on the theory that even if it was there orignally, either nobody actually intended it to be there, or that it obviously doesn't belong there?

I know the Disney folks have sometimes taken the latter argument to extremes, by fixing things that perhaps should have been fixed, but that the technology of the time did not permit. The problem with this is that while it may make the film "better," it no longer looks like the original film (I'm thinking of SNOW WHITE at the moment).

Anyway, my only point in this instance was that SOMEBODY should have gotten rid of the darn hair. SETH

My two cents - the hair was not part of the director's original intent, so it should be digitally removed as a defect.

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston criticized the original Cineon restoration of SNOW WHITE after it came out on laserdisc, stating that the colors were nice, but not the ones they originally used. The later DVD restorations, for which Frank & Ollie were consultants, look nearly identical colorwise. What am I supposed to conclude from that?

I don't have access to an original IB Tech print of SNOW WHITE to compare to, but supposedly Disney does, and they also use the original art for comparison. I admit that the restorations don't look like the last Eastmancolor theatrical prints I saw pre-restoration, but those were probably a few generations down from the original camera negative. I'd love to see some pictures from an original print to compare to the restoration.

Derek

[Robert W]

My understanding has always been that the Technicolor process had a personality all it's own, and was not the most accurate colour reproduction process ever created, however beautiful and pleasing it could be. Thus, Disney's cel colours were chosen because of how they reproduced in Technicolor and were NOT expected to look like they did on the cels.

Can any animation experts confirm or deny ?

[todmichel]

As many people I bought the 21-discs set of Universal in UK years ago. Some criticisms: the awful colorized versions are totally without interest - as any colorized films in my humble opinion - and could have been put to garbage box easily. Curiously, they put English subs on all of the talkies EXCEPTED for the ones spoken in Spanish or French. Did these Universal people really think that only Spanish-talking or French-talking fans of Stan & Babe are interested for these versions?
And they didn't include the Spanish versions of "Pardon Us". This version IS included, however, in a 12-disc set released in Spain by the same company, Universal. Unfortunately, contrarily to discs 1 to 10, discs 11 and 12 aren't sold individually, you must buy the entire set to have disc #12, that contains: "Pardon Us", the US version, with two soundtracks, in English and dubbed Spanish. This version is slightly different than the usual one. The same disc also contains two short L&H movies, and the immaculate print of "De bote en bote", the original Spanish-language version of "Pardon Us".
This feature (very different from its US counterpart) was released years ago on VHS by an American company, and followed by a DVD from the same company. Unfortunately, this DVD was made from the same master than the VHS, and consequently was only a mediocre release. The Universal/Spanish release is a splendor. It's too bad that, to my knowledge, it's the ONLY valuable DVD release of this movie to date. Let's hope it will be released some day in UK or USA, and - please - with (optional) English subtitles!

[Ed Watz]

With all due respect and thanks to UCLA for its current efforts to preserve any surviving elements of the sound films of Laurel & Hardy that were produced by Hal Roach, it angers one to think of the 70-plus years of profiteering by a succession of companies with no regard to proper preservation on these titles. And this does not take into account whatever happened to the camera negatives of L&H's silent films. When I look at the material out there I wonder if any 35mm elements survive on films like THE SECOND 100 YEARS and BACON GRABBERS...and I don't mean 16 to 35 blowups.

[Jack Theakston]

My understanding has always been that the Technicolor process had a personality all it's own, and was not the most accurate colour reproduction process ever created, however beautiful and pleasing it could be. Thus, Disney's cel colours were chosen because of how they reproduced in Technicolor and were NOT expected to look like they did on the cels.

Can any animation experts confirm or deny ?

Yes, and even moreso than that, the colors as printed changed with timing, too. I've seen an original 1937 print, and it looks NOTHING like any of the new incarnations, so if Disney has access to their own print, they're not really using it.

[sethb]

With all due respect and thanks to UCLA for its current efforts to preserve any surviving elements of the sound films of Laurel & Hardy that were produced by Hal Roach, it angers one to think of the 70-plus years of profiteering by a succession of companies with no regard to proper preservation on these titles. And this does not take into account whatever happened to the camera negatives of L&H's silent films. When I look at the material out there I wonder if any 35mm elements survive on films like THE SECOND 100 YEARS and BACON GRABBERS...and I don't mean 16 to 35 blowups.

I totally agree, and unfortunately, the original producing studio (Hal Roach), which owned the original film elements for at least 25 years, took little or no care to preserve them properly. Over the years, the original negative of Laughing Gravy was lost, and the third reel negative of The Music Box was also lost. The other original negatives were not properly protected against overprinting (by the use of fine grain lavender masters), and many are worn out.

Of course, as a small independent studio, Roach had even less resources or reasons to preserve the past, and Roach's attitude was not much different than that of most other major studios -- last year's films were history, and of no further use or concern. When the Roach studio went bankrupt, its assets were scattered to the winds and often became nothing more than unwanted orphans created by mergers and acquisitions. A good example is Hallmark Cards, which inheirited the L&H catalog in that fashion, and proceeded to ignore it and let it moulder (Hallmark almost threw away the foreign-language versions of several L&H shorts in an effort to save storage space).

Hopefully what now remains will be better cared for, properly restored and preserved, and actively marketed or distributed. SETH

[Bor Enots]

I can tell you where a number of the original camera negatives for the silent went.... into barrels of water to be incinerated. I know because I did it. Nothing is more sickening for a film fan (much less a big L&H lover) then to have to do that, but HABEAS CORPUS was a solid brick... completely beyond ANY chance for restoration. Why? because Michael Agee kept it, and many of the silent nitrate negatives he has in his trust, in his garage. His un-air conditioned, gets hotter than 100 degrees Yorba Linda, California garage!!!! He finally after it was too late for much of the material give it over to UCLA and we had to get rid of a good amount of it. If there had been a single frame we would have saved it... but in many cases the reel was a total loss.
Although Hallmark and/or RHI didn't do too much to preserve or make available the L&H sound films while the nitrate was in their care, they did do a fairly good job of conserving (that is keeping in good shape) the nitrate itself. When UCLA acquired the nitrate from Hallmark we didn't even have to move the material since it was already in the same facility where UCLA was holding its nitrate. The Roach vaults were actually a bit better than the other UCLA vaults. Hallmark should get credit where credit is due in that they were wise enough to consult Richard W. Bann about their intent to dispose of the Roach nitrate. Dick in turn contacted me and I was able to negotiate the acquisition for UCLA. They did have all the material in alphabetical order, that is all of BLOCKHEADS next to each other in the same vault. First thing I did was to separate the negatives from the fine grains from the prints and each into a different vault.... if you do have a fire or other incident you do lose everything on a particular title.
So while Michael Agee gets an "F- "in my book, Hallmark/RHI gets a passing grade "D" for at least doing the right thing in the end and, of course, Richard W. Bann gets an "A++". Laurel and Hardy and all the other greats that worked at that studio in Culver City have no better friend alive today than Dickie.

Rob

P.S. One other nitrate into a barrel of water story. A few years before we got the Roach material I was preparing some deteriorated nitrate for disposal and came across THE DADDY OF THEM ALL, an early Babe Hardy solo film. Well, if you know me you know how much I love the solo films. I picked up that print that was beyond use and dunked it into the water... but without too much sorrow. Why?, because UCLA had completed a beautiful preservation of the film and I knew we had a brand new negative and gorgeous print of the film. Someday the nitrate will go away... the difference is what you do with it while it is here. UCLA gets a pretty good grade itself when it comes to film preservation.

[Ed Watz]

Laurel and Hardy and all the other greats that worked at that studio in Culver City have no better friend alive today than Dickie.

I respectfully must disagree with this assessment. The Dickster comes after you, Rob Stone...after you!

[Harold Aherne]

I have a few questions that might open a can of nitrate:

--Did Agee acquire the rights to the L&H silents in perpetuity, or will his claims eventually expire?
--Does he hold any other Roach material?
--(rhetorically)Why did the powers-that-were at the time ever consent to such an arrangement? They likely couldn't have predicted how the nitrate would be treated--but nonetheless, there's an Anita Stewart film from 1921 whose title nicely sums up the Agee mess: Her Mad Bargain.

-HA

[Robert W]

I first heard about the silent negatives a few months ago and it made me sick.
Rob, did any of the silent negatives survive ?

[Bor Enots]

Yes, some did. You cam probably look up what UCLA has in their catalog. http://www.cinema.ucla.edu" target="_blank.

Rob

[Jim Reid]

I heard about this a couple of years ago while visiting with a UCLA archive guy during Cinecon. It really made me ill.

[Ed Watz]

I knew another collector in SoCal who stored 35mm nitrate in his garage using the argument that it wasn't going to blow up, since he didn't keep any inflammable auto supplies in the garage that might cause a conflagration. His Jaguar stayed outside, all his auto supplies were kept in the trunk.

The result on his garage-stored nitrate ended up similar to Rob's experience with the materials Michael Agee had tucked away.

The same collector friend also prided that his massive 16mm film collection, on safety stock, likewise fit in this huge garage. I remember him telling me over 30 years ago, "The films (i.e., his 16mms) are all fine out there. Some of them smell funny, but they project just fine."

[gjohnson]

I guess we shouldn't assume that just because someone is a collector they know what they are doing.

Which brings me back to the Michael Agee issue. These past couple of decades his long-winded missives would be circulated on the Web telling us how he alone was struggling to bring his Laurel & Hardy dream project to DVD. And then it turns out that he helped contribute to the demise of many of their negatives? I'm with Harold, I would like to hear more about Agee's arrangements with the rights to L&H's films. And did any in the film archive community at that time think this was a good idea for this material to be placed in that man's hands - or was he more of an unknown commodity to everyone?

[Darren Nemeth]

It would be great to see these silent shorts again. Some I haven't seen since the 1980s.

[Ed Watz]

I guess we shouldn't assume that just because someone is a collector they know what they are doing.

Which brings me back to the Michael Agee issue. These past couple of decades his long-winded missives would be circulated on the Web telling us how he alone was struggling to bring his Laurel & Hardy dream project to DVD. And then it turns out that he helped contribute to the demise of many of their negatives? I'm with Harold, I would like to hear more about Agee's arrangements with the rights to L&H's films. And did any in the film archive community at that time think this was a good idea for this material to be placed in that man's hands - or was he more of an unknown commodity to everyone?

I got the impression that Richard Feiner (a NYC attorney who controlled or continues to control video rights in the Western hemisphere on the L&H silents) had frightened off a lot of interested people with his hardball tactics back in the 1990s. Even Dick Bann eventually split with him. Michael Agee had his deal with Feiner to release the "Lost Films" series and there was a general perception (mostly promulgated by Agee himself) that he was the only one who cared enough about the original elements to properly take care of them, and that he did so with the full support of Richard Feiner.

[Jim Roots]

Oddly enough, I happen to have been watching my VHS one-movie versions of the Lost Films, one film per night for a couple of weeks.

Even though they are about 20 years old, they still play perfectly except for WRONG AGAIN, which won't play due to a gate problem that I can't seem to pinpoint.

Feiner's name is all over the boxes. Agee's, not.

In purchasing them years ago, I had targeted only the earliest L&H films because I hadn't seen many of them before. It's surprising how often the box text claims these were truly "lost films" until a nameless somebody discovered a single copy somewhere or other.

Jim

[Rob Farr]

If you search the Laurel and Hardy Forum site, you'll hear an audio recording of Agee addressing the Sons Convention in the mid or late 1980s. He's touting his upcoming releases made from the finest preservation elements, blah, blah. A wise film archivist recently told me that while we can regret the decisions of people who held original film elements 50-80 years ago, the highest contempt should be directed to our contemporaries who needlessly allow one-of-a-kind negatives to decay without proper preservation. I concur.

[todmichel]

Another serious risk of loss for the foreign-language "phonetic" versions of L&H movies is the fact that, after WW2, when the films were re-released in Europe, the new distributors asked for new prints of the American versions and simply dubbed them, and released these different versions under the same titles than the original, pre-war, "phonetic" ones.

So, for most of people, the pre-war "Sous les verrous" (phonetic French version of "Pardon Us", with Boris Karloff in a little role - but NOT The Tiger as often listed in reference books) and the post-war "Sous les verrous" (dubbed version of "Pardon Us", without Karloff) are just "the same movie". Well, just imagine somebody finding in his house's vault a print of the lost phonetic version, in boxes covered by dust, etc. what can he think? probably, "oh, "Sous les verrous", it's just a quite common title, no special value, anybody can find it in practically any video shop" - and just put in in the garbage box.

And of course the same tragic mistake can be made with the German and Italian phonetic versions of the same movie - and a lot of their shorts as well...

[Jim Roots]

Oddly enough, I happen to have been watching my VHS one-movie versions of the Lost Films, one film per night for a couple of weeks.

Even though they are about 20 years old, they still play perfectly except for WRONG AGAIN, which won't play due to a gate problem that I can't seem to pinpoint.

Feiner's name is all over the boxes. Agee's, not.

In purchasing them years ago, I had targeted only the earliest L&H films because I hadn't seen many of them before. It's surprising how often the box text claims these were truly "lost films" until a nameless somebody discovered a single copy somewhere or other.

Jim

Self-correction: I had it almost completely reversed. Agee's name is the one all over the boxes. In the tiniest print, there is a single "thanks" to Feiner and David Shepard.

Jim