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by Jack Theakston » Tue Mar 19, 2013 5:55 pm
Gagman, you're jumping to too many conclusions based on not enough, or flat out erroneous information.
I've got no idea what this rumored British print consists of, but I doubt it was Mr. Lawton's (Bruce is a collector and film historian). Foreign negatives often contained alternate or longer footage, so just because there is an overseas print with different footage doesn't mean that it was necessarily in the American prints. LoC isn't working on this title at all—Mr. Willeman simply posted pictures as the reel came to him through his usual archival duties.
According to Harrison's Reports and Film Daily, LILAC TIME's general release footage count was 8,967 ft (99 min, 38 sec @ 24fps.) The above photos at Library of Congress show about one 1,000-ft reel, typical of sound-on-disc releases from that period, although the mounting of 2,000-ft reels had become common for silent and sound-on-film shows.
LILAC TIME's scoring is the point of some confusion on several websites, so here is what happened: When LILAC TIME was being cut, the studio head was Clifford Hawley, who struck a deal with Western Electric and Victor to release the film's soundtrack on the same Western Electric Sound-on-Disc process as used on Vitaphone (originally going to be released under the trade name "FirNaTone"). Music was recorded at Victor studios, Nat Shilkret conducting. Despite claims by a number of sources, the film didn't have talking sequences, but it's possible that there was a part-talk trailer made for the film.
Joseph P. Kennedy, at the time a major player with FBO (and its subsidiary, the Keith-Albee-Orpheum chain) & RCA, briefly replaced Hawley as president of the company, and scrapped the WE/Victor deal for a previous deal he brought with him from RCA (ie. Photophone, sound-on-film). RCA was sent the film from Victor, and I'm going to throw in an assumption at this point that RCA simply dubbed the discs to optical track.
Kennedy got the boot pretty fast, but despite FN's deal with Western Electric, the RCA track stuck, even to its premiere at Carthay Circle on July 16, 1928, where it was presented with a Photophone track. The press panned the quality of the track (again, I assume because it was a low-quality dub). When the film opened August 3 at the Central Theater in New York, the initial run was with a live orchestra because of union disputes over the sound equipment. Judging from the reviews, they used Shilkret's score. When the dispute was compromised, the Central played it with a Western Electric track starting August 16. My guess is that in the interim of the RCA debacle, FN worked out a deal to do a Western Electric sound-on-disc release, which is apparently the way it was seen in many places. Warner Bros. officially bought First National in January 1929 while the film was still in general release, so it's possible that later pressings of the discs were on the Vitaphone label.
That being said, there are still a number of LILAC TIME discs out there, and my guess is that if there was an organized search, all of the discs would turn up. I know of at least two collectors with discs on this title. Re-recording the Shilkret score would be a licensing nightmare, and not likely to ever happen.
As I mentioned to Mr. Willeman, the extant 35mm show prints of LILAC TIME are missing the original intertitles and are replaced with generic ones—I assume because it came from some source that only had flash titles, or one that was of foreign nature. As Bruce mentioned, WB seems to have been made aware of this.
Last edited by
Jack Theakston on Tue Mar 19, 2013 7:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
J. Theakston
"You get more out of life when you go out to a movie!"
Bruce Calvert posted some shockingly disturbing pics in December on Facebook. I don't know why he didn't put them up here? They show an 35 millimeter Nitrate print presumably from the Library of Congress of the first reel of LILAC TIME in dire straights of being lost forever! This was an original print struck from the foreign (British?) negative. There it is, badly warping, turning to powder and decomposing into goo! I sure hope this has been copied elsewhere? I was under the impression that several archives had prints of this picture. I mean the film was just screened by the Silent Treatment in L.A. barely over a year ago. And that print came from the LOC. However, it was also incomplete. I'm suure they didn't run Nitrate. The photos appear to show only the first reel. Who knows what sort of shape the rest of the picture is in? Can we get some word on this very serious situation? 
My mistake, it looks like the first two reels of the movie were on that reel, based on the stills? Correct? I figured that this was probably the same mysterious British release print that I first heard about back in 2006? It was supposed to have alternate scenes, and extended Ariel footage not found in the surviving domestic version. Were they able to save that potion of the print at all? Although your telling me that this was just a single reel, so maybe it was not the print I heard about 7 years ago? Incidentally, Who is Bruce Lawton? 
Was this Main-title design in the print that you saw? Thanks?
