Complete version of A STAR IS BORN (1954) probably exists

[silentfilm]

http://www.thejudyroom.com/asib/asib-article.html

[Jack Theakston]

Bad form to out a collector in that manner. Now it's really never going to get released.

[colbyco82]

Fascinating Article. Makes the mind race as to what other "lost" classics could be out there.

[Danny Burk]

Bad form to out a collector in that manner. Now it's really never going to get released.

My thought exactly. Hasn't this guy ever heard of keeping things in confidence?

[SFBOB]

I believe Mr. Brogan is honestly and sincerely recounting the story as he heard it, but the story itself sounds, well, just too good to be true.

[Nick_M]

Makes the mind race as to what other "lost" classics could be out there.

I find it helps to not even think about that, and just keep those thoughts to fleeting wistfulness. There're lots of other things to do than mull over "what-ifs."

[drednm]

Fascinating... thanks for posting this!!

The story of "lost footage" and "vault fires" makes a lot of sense. It rings true for corporate culture, especially if there is no immediate big-money value for vaulted footage.

[Jack Theakston]

There are lots of things on the Internet that sound like they could be true, but aren't. The thought of vault fires being faked is so bombastically ignorant that it's almost offensive. You think studio VIPs are arsonists? Gimme a break.

[drednm]

There are no literal fires, the way I read it.

[Jack Theakston]

And what I'm saying is that you can tell that to the Los Angeles fire department.

Studios get back loans against their assets. If they threw out all of their elements, there'd be nothing to use as collateral. If they didn't care, they wouldn't be preserving things on nitrate, spending millions on restorations, et cetera.

[drednm]

And what the article says is that outtakes, snippets, and decades-old films are not always considered assets.....

[Jack Theakston]

In the day and age of DVD and special features, everything is considered an asset.

[drednm]

OH? Is that why so many restored films and perfectly good films sit in archives unreleased on DVD?

[Jack Theakston]

Apples and oranges. Many classic films are worth more sitting on the shelf than losing money in the floundering home video market. But that doesn't mean they're not worth anything to the studio.

[drednm]

Many classic films are worth more sitting on the shelf than losing money in the floundering home video market.

Sorry, but that makes no sense to me.... They are totally worthless sitting on a shelf.

[Jack Theakston]

As I mentioned, sitting on the shelf, they can be used as collateral for bank loans (and are). Or, if you are lucky, they can be transferred for television broadcast and make back the money of the transfer cost with enough airings.

But the production costs for many of these films completely outweigh the number of people who would actually buy them, and as we all saw in the last ten years, a glut of them on the market decreases the value of itself.

[drednm]

Yes Jack, but films were made to shown shown, not act as collateral

[Jack Theakston]

No argument here. But that's just the way the world works sometimes.

[Rob Farr]

Reportedly that was the fate of the Roach Laurel & Hardy shorts and features. They were counted as assets of the Hallmark company without actually being leased to television or any significant DVD release. That's all...just assets without generating any significant revenue. Go figure.

[moviepas]

I had lunch in about 1972 at MGM's famed commissary with an executive at the time(William Golden?) who had an office upstairs in the Thalberg building on what was a wind and rain swept summer day in Southern California. The lunch included(it had to be paid for by Golden) JJ(Joe) Cohn & A Arnold Gillespie(known as Buddy). I later spoke by phone with Wm Tuttle when he came out to Australia to lecture on color for the soon to start Australian color TV broadcasts. Golden answered my question about something that must have been film holdings and he exclaimed that they were the companies assets and had to be cared for. Well... Gillespie had recently been lout to Asia etc and had a heart attack there but had prepared a book on his craft that was coffee table designed size. No one would touch as they said that size was out of favor at then. I believe it was posthumously published some years later but I never saw it. He was hoping that I could help, he had the idea my family was in publishing but in fact I was writing about MGM films as kind of thesis at the time hence the visit being offered to me. Gillespie took me towards his Beverly Hills Home and we passed by the gated housing on the old MGM backlot with their film star street names. He told me how he saved his home in the recent LA bush fires where it was in a valley below the main road and he trained a hose on it, the same fire that lost Joe E Brown his home. In this house he had a pool room in which he had framed photos of the miniatures(models in Australia) used for special effects in Ben-Hur(1935) etc and also a large collection of smoking pipes he had accumulated. One wonders what happened to his collection. He took to his club, the Beverly Hills Country Club for a drink. He had started at Goldwyn Pictures at the lot after WW1 when he and a friend were looking for something to earn a living after war service and decided to give films ago and signed with Mayer's mob when they tookover the assets and, naturally, his tenure, like Cohn's was longer than LBM.

A classic film reviewer I correspond with from LA worked at MGM/UA and edited shorts, did featurettes for DVDs like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang etc and has done at least one film commentary for a classic film for Warners. He tells of the Orion vault been junked before a takeover with the said stereo tracks, outtakes, longer versions for Europe etc. he says that there is a different attitude today but, for us, it is too late for some great material. Many will remember the Cut! lps series that ran to at least 3 volumes that had soundtracks from cut songs from the 1930s & 40s including a track of Bing with Frances Farmer from the 30s. What happened to the visual footage. Never knew and currently don't have those lps due to fire(yes, mine was real and probably deliberate but no one was charged or found for that matter). Many prints that MCA got with their pre-1948 Paramount sound film purchase had cut from the original releases(some done just before they got them), roughly made prints etc done down the road somewhere from Paramount(so it is said) and release titles after 1935 where they had to censor certain films and lost the footage later(or destroyed when censored) such as Love Me Tonight(1932). Some titles faired better when a re-release was canceled due to too much hassle in the number of cuts demanded thus survived moreorless intact later. Mae West's Klondike Annie film was banned along with King Kong outright in Australia until more recent years. Annie is missing a gross scene, I believe, something about a scene with a dead body shown or whatever.

As for executives, a new executive decades ago at CBS Radio cleaned out or had cleaned out a lot of radio show acetates, etc which included some sort after Jolson early radio. NBC Hollywood let a lot go to road metal for LA freeways and this happened in Sydney, Australia also.

I am told by a Jolson collector here(has stuff, he says, that he can't allow copies to be made by agreement because he does not have the copyright!!!!) that when Columbia shifted to share the Warner lot, dumpers were stuck outside the old studio and heaps went west but I only have his word for it. I do know that Columbia bundled a lot of film to LOC in Washington DC and borrow back when they need for any reason and they did store stuff in the Kansas salt mines where they blame leaking roofs for damage to other people's negatives of film they are distributing. And the AFI did have a huge fire in their Virginia storage vaults which they say destroyed a lot of March of Time footage and that that Universal gave them of All Quiet on the Western Front outtakes(supposedly millions of feet).

If you talk about people holding on to film and not listening to overtures from the original producers there is one in the Hollywood backyard-Wade Williams who had a print of the lost Fox 365 Nights in Hollywood which Alice Faye appears in. he wouldn't let them have it and produce a VHS & DVD in so-so quality. Whether or not this is a good film, it is still history.

The Frankenstein(1930) DVD has a reissue trailer because Universal say a guy with a copy of the original won't let it go.

In the 1970s the story was that two guys in California had complete material from The Goddiggers on Broadway(1929). One with the visuals and one with the discs but they refused to get together to marry the material for a composite print. Could well be an Urban Myth and I have never read anything about this in any articles I have read.

But there is still the attitude of letting lying dogs lie. A fact that often confronts people who want to reissue a record or a film. The companies can't be bothered researching their archives and arranging the use of the material by individuals. Often telling you they never did it, never heard of it, etc but if you go ahead and do it anyway they are right there demanding everything. Or they tell you that you could not get the quality like they can or sell enough to make it pay and so on. Benn there and done that.

Space and moving office are the two main fatal aspects to archives of commercial companies or it's if the public want it let them save it, why should we. And the old Technicolor company was none too archive conscious.

Unfortunately, this story has no real end but at least I can say I have saved material that is now in my country's national sound & film archives(Screen Australia).

[drednm]

Sad stories... I guess that's the BIZ end of SHOW BIZ

[Jack Theakston]

The Frankenstein(1930) DVD has a reissue trailer because Universal say a guy with a copy of the original won't let it go.

Actually, that's not quite the story. He OFFERED it to them for a reasonable price, but they opted NOT to pay what he was asking.

[moviepas]

Actually, that's not quite the story. He OFFERED it to them for a reasonable price, but they opted NOT to pay what he was asking.

I believe that is right because that is what Universal was actually trying to say in their notes on the release, if I remember correctly. The discs are not hand in my collection at this time-too many there!!!

My view would be something different & I would offer an item, and I have to others, but I would expect, a least a copy of the finished copy and probably a credit somewhere like seen in books. I would rather see an item preserved for everyone than rotting in my house and my huge fire(at a shop premises) proved this no doubt.

There are many people, though, that complain that they did not get a guernsey in a book's credits and I know one case where a guy directed an author to a large file of local jazz information on a particular jazz musician of the 1930s-40s and if he did not do so the virtuoso would have not appeared in the book as the author never heard of the guy and did not do right research. I don't think my friend even got a copy of the book for this information and much other help he gave.

Many here say they won't work with our NFSA and would rather see their archives burnt on their death. One such guy said this to me in 1978 and he had already had a large nitrate fire in one house which he says was deliberately lit whilst he was at work(cameraman). He later started another collection which is why I was there to see some local rarities late at night. He did not want the youth of the day to have access to his collection later. He was in his 50s and soon had a heart attack and died and I immediately called the powers that be and his then wife handed the collection over to that very archive and they have it saved under his name in the vaults. I have had no trouble with them and given them material they did not have of local TV or films(they don't have funds for overseas film now and ship it to those countries if they take it in). I have always gotten a VHS tape back that I can use soon after is better than raw condition. I never see cash registers when I have found something. Not the way to go. Cash demanded, rights of this one of that one do not interest me when something important is suddenly found and needs to be preserved and seen by everyone who wants to see it.

[Jack Theakston]

Since the trailer was in the public domain, was never prepared by the studio, and since this particular person was in the business of selling stock footage, do you then think asking a reasonable rate for footage that you have no idea what is to be done with is unreasonable?

[wildhoney66]

i don't think he meant that to be honest, i don't think it's unreasonable, i do wonder how much he was asking for though? i think they Should have just paid the guy. i mean if he asked for a HUGE Bundle of Cash than ok. buut


i think it depends on how much was offered, & plus it's not like Universal is broke ya know? or going broke. they should have just paid him either way. & given him credit. & be done with it. buut this is just one guy's opinion.

[Nick_M]

Don't some studios have policies against collectors? If that's the case, then even one cent would be too much.