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'Lost film' is a term used to describe any feature film that no longer exists in either studio archives or private collections. Lost film is also used in a literal sense for instances where footage of deleted scenes, unedited and alternate versions of feature films, and recordings of early television programming are known to have been created but are now missing and possibly destroyed.
Sometimes a copy of a "lost film" is rediscovered; these have been referred to as "Lazarus" films. A film that has not been recovered in its entirety is called a "partially lost film".
Most lost films are from the silent film and early talkie era, from the 1890s to 1930. Some estimates suggest that most of the films from this era are lost.
Many early motion pictures are lost because the nitrate film used in that era was extremely unstable and flammable. Fires have destroyed entire archives of films. For example, a storage vault fire in 1937 destroyed the original negatives of pre-1935 movies from Fox Pictures.[1] In addition, film can deteriorate rapidly if not preserved in temperature and humidity controlled storage.
Many early talkies from Warner Bros. and First National were lost because they used a sound-on-disk process which utilized separate soundtracks on special phonograph records. These records were often lost or misplaced, thereby making a mute print virtually worthless and consequently they were often thrown away. This all changed by 1930, when those studios converted to a sound-on-film process.
Before the eras of home video and television, films were viewed as having little value after their theatrical run ended. Thus, many films were deliberately destroyed, either by the studios as a space-saving maneuver, or in some cases by the cast and crew themselves. Many films were recycled for their silver content or ignited to create explosion special effects in other films.
In order to preserve films with a nitrate base, they can be copied to safety film or digitized, although the former is preferred over the latter in the archival community because of its proven longevity and approximation of original format.
Particularly striking is the case of Theda Bara: of the 40 films she made, only three and a half survive. More typical is the case of Clara Bow; of her 57 movies, 20 are completely lost and five more are incomplete.[2] There are occasional exceptions: save for one film that he destroyed himself, A Woman of the Sea, and one of his early Keystone films, Her Friend The Bandit, all of Charlie Chaplin's films (from his entire career) have survived as well as extensive amounts of unused footage dating back to 1914 (see ''Unknown Chaplin'').
35mm safety film was introduced in 1949; it was much more stable than early nitrate film and as a result, there are comparatively few lost films from after about 1950. However, color fading of certain color stocks and vinegar syndrome threaten the preservation of films made since about 1950. In the mid-1950s, many old Technicolor prints were thrown out, when the studios refused to reclaim prints of their films still being held by Technicolor in its vaults.
Most mainstream movies from the 1950s and beyond survive today, but several early pornographic films and some B-Movies are lost. In most cases these obscure films go unnoticed and unknown, but some films by noted cult directors have been lost as well:
★ Cult favorite Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1972 film ''Black Love'' has disappeared, as have two of his 1969 films, ''Ecstasies of Women'' and ''Linda and Abilene''. The latter of these is notorious for being filmed at the Spahn Ranch shortly before the arrival of the Manson Family.
★ Ed Wood, Jr.'s ''The Undergraduate'' (1972) has been lost and his 1970 film ''Take It Out In Trade'' exists only in fragments without sound. Wood's 1971 film ''Necromania'' was believed lost for years until an edited version resurfaced at a yard sale in 1992, followed by a complete unedited print in 2001.[3]
★ Most of Andy Milligan's early films are considered lost.
★ Many classroom educational, training, and religious short films of the 1940s through 1970s are also lost as they were thought of as "disposable" or upgradeable.
Some aspects of recent films may be lost, too. Early color films such as ''The Mysterious Island'' and ''The Show of Shows'' exist only partially or not at all in color because the copies that were made of the film that exist were done so on black and white stock. The 3-D films ''Top Banana'' and ''Southwest Passage'' both exist only in their flat form because only one print made for either the left or right eye to see exists.
Many important silent-era films, and films which involve important actors, directors, and creative talent, exist in single prints in museums, archives, and private collections — single prints which have not been copied, digitized, or preserved in any way. The possibility of losing these films forever is very real, unless they are preserved.
Some films produced in sound-on-disc systems such as Vitaphone, where the sound disc is separate from the film element, are now considered lost because they were damaged or destroyed, while the picture element was not. Some surviving Vitaphone films exist in picture only, while the soundtracks, which were played from a disc, are lost. Conversely, some Vitaphone films survive only in the disc, with the film missing.
Many stereophonic soundtracks from the early-to-mid 1950s that were either played in interlock on a 35mm fullcoat magnetic reel or single-strip magnetic film (such as Fox's four-track magnetic, which became the standard of mag stereophonic sound) are now lost. Films such as ''House of Wax'', ''The Caddy'', ''The War of the Worlds'', ''The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T'', and ''From Here to Eternity'' that were originally available with 3-track, magnetic sound are now available only with a monophonic optical soundtrack. The chemistry behind adhering magnetic particles to the tri-acetate film base eventually caused the autocatalytic breakdown of the film, in what is now known as vinegar syndrome. As long as studios had a monaural optical negative that could be printed, studio executives felt no need to preserve the stereophonic versions of the soundtracks.
The term "lost films" has also been applied erroneously to films that do survive in their entirety, but have never been made available to the public in consumer formats such as VHS and DVD and in some cases have never been broadcast on television. A few of these do circulate on bootleg copies of varying quality.
★ The John Wayne film ''The High and the Mighty'' from 1954 was one famous example, until it was finally issued on DVD in 2005.
★ Disney's ''Song of the South'', which is not available in North America, supposedly due to concerns over its use stereotypes and depiction of the reconstruction period after the American civil war. It is available in some degree in Europe and Asia.
★ The made-for-television movie ''The Star Wars Holiday Special'' is one of the most widespread bootleg films of all time, yet has never been released on video due to George Lucas's desire for it to be forgotten.
★ American Hot Wax was released into theaters, but was never sold on VHS or DVD. Although many remember seeing it when it was played in theaters, it is unavailable to own except for bootleg copies of the movie, which stars many Doo-Wop stars such as Alan Freed, The Planotones, Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers, and much more. Including Fran Drescher and Jay Leno.
★ The 1982 film ''Inchon'' has never been released on any consumer format after its initial, disastrous run at movie theaters.
★ ''The Day the Clown Cried'', a 1972 film featuring Jerry Lewis as a clown entertaining children in a concentration camp, finished principal photography, but has been in legal limbo with the author of the book the film is based on.
★ A low-budget 1994 feature film version of ''The Fantastic Four'' was made solely to retain legal rights to the characters and was never intended to be shown.
:''See also: wiping''.
★ Many early television series episodes were lost because they were aired live and no recording ever was made, because kinescopes that were made are now lost, or because the highly expensive early videotape was erased and re-used by the network. Most episodes of important, popular shows like ''Captain Video'' and ''Your Show of Shows'' are presumed lost. Episodes of TV shows from the DuMont network are particularly difficult to find since DuMont went out of business in 1955 and its kinescope recordings of programming were supposedly dumped into Upper New York Bay.
★ This practice of re-using video tape continued well into the 1970s: many episodes of the pioneering Australian prime time soap opera ''Number 96'' are lost.
★ Over 100 early episodes of the cult BBC sci-fi show ''Doctor Who'' do not exist in the BBC's archives, though they have an ongoing appeal for help from viewers who may have recorded the shows during their original airings. Audio recordings exist for all of the lost episodes, however, many of which have been released commercially by the BBC, and two episodes of the serial ''The Invasion'' which survive only in audio form were reconstructed using animation for the serial's DVD release in 2006[4].
★ Many other BBC shows are missing from the archives, including the BBC studio footage from the Apollo 11 moon landings. Many series are missing in their entirety, while others only survive in fragments, such as ''A for Andromeda'' a science fiction series that was Julie Christie's first major role and The Vampira Show, the first television horror movie show. Also missing are episodes of ''The Avengers'', ''Dad's Army'', ''Hancock's Half Hour'', ''Doomwatch'', ''Out of the Unknown'', ''Dixon of Dock Green'', ''Z Cars'', and many others.
★ Almost all of NBC's ''The Tonight Show'' with Jack Paar and the first ten years (1962-1972) hosted by Johnny Carson were taped over by the network and no longer exist. This is why Carson's ''The Tonight Show'' picture looked muddy during broadcast in the late 60s: the videotape was being used repeatedly. A single episode from Carson's first year on ''The Tonight Show'' turned up in a closet a few years ago. Selected sequences from Carson's 1962-72 era do survive and were often replayed by Carson himself (particularly in the months preceding his retirement in 1992) and have been released to home video. Some Paar episodes also survive and have been released to DVD.
★ With home VCRs being uncommon until the mid-1980s, it is unlikely that lost television episodes exist in the collections of individuals, though this occasionally happens. One well-known example is a clip of John Lennon visiting the announcers booth during a 1974 ''Monday Night Football'' broadcast. ABC lost the footage of this event, but a private collector's copy of the event appears in the ''Beatles Anthology''.
★ Many of the original master tapes of the controversial and anarchic British children's Saturday morning television series Tiswas were wiped after the series was canceled in 1983. This was apparently due to a television executive's (some would say misguided) belief that the series was an embarrassment to the network. When a series of Tiswas highlight compilation tapes were released on video in the early 1990s (followed in 2006 by a DVD), much of the footage appeared to have been culled from the off-air recordings of private archivists.
★ Also lost is the broadcast of Super Bowl I, even though NBC and CBS both originally broadcast the game.
★ Many soap operas such as ''Search for Tomorrow'' and ''The Edge of Night'' have lost episodes. Due to archiving policies, episodes of ''All My Children'' produced between 1970 and 1975 exist only as black-and-white kinescopes although all episodes were originally produced in color.
★ NASA has admitted losing the original videotapes of the first manned moon landing in 1969. It is unknown if the original footage still exists today. What exists today is a considerably lower-quality image made by a television camera aimed at a live monitor.[5]
★ The original black & white first episode of series one of the British series ''Upstairs, Downstairs'' does not exist in any form with the possible exception of a few stills. It was reportedly wiped and the script of the first episode was re-shot in colour when the show was being prepared to be broadcast in the United States on PBS's Masterpiece Theater. All of the other five black & white episodes from series one survive.
★ ''Age for Love'' (1931), starring Billie Dove
★ ''The Air Circus'' (1928), directed by Howard Hawks
★ ''Anna Karenina'' (1915)
★ ''Anne of Green Gables'' (1919), directed by William Desmond Taylor and starring Mary Miles Minter
★ ''Arirang'' (1926), Korean film starring and directed by Na Woon-gyu
★ ''The Aryan'' (1916), directed by Thomas H. Ince and starring William S. Hart and Bessie Love
★ ''Babe Comes Home'' (1927), starring Anna Q Nilsson
★ ''The Battle of Gettysburg'' (1913), directed by Thomas H. Ince
★ ''Battle of the Sexes'' (1914), directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish
★ ''The Betrayal'' (1948), directed by Oscar Micheaux
★ ''Bound in Morocco'' (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks
★ ''Bride of the Regiment'' (1930), a Technicolor film starring Vivienne Segal
★ ''Camille'' (1917), starring Theda Bara
★ ''The Case of Lena Smith'' (1929), directed by Josef von Sternberg (a few minutes exist)
★ ''The Cat's Pajamas'' (1926), directed by William Wellman
★ ''The Cavalier'' (1929), a Technicolor film starring Richard Talmadge
★ ''Clarence'' (1922), starring Wallace Reid and Adolphe Menjou
★ ''Charlie Chan Carries On'' (1931)
★ ''The City Gone Wild'' (1927), starring Louise Brooks
★ ''Convention City'' (1933), a pre-Code Warner Brothers drama starring Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, and Guy Kibbee
★ ''The Couple in Name'' (1927), starring Ruan Lingyu.
★ ''A Country Hero'' (1917), starring Roscoe Arbuckle (aka Fatty Arbuckle) and Buster Keaton
★ ''The Daring Years'' (1923), starring Mildred Harris, Charles Emmett Mack and Clara Bow
★ ''The Devil's Passkey'' (1920), directed by Erich von Stroheim
★ ''The Dragnet'' (1928), directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring William Powell and Evelyn Brent
★ ''Dry Martini'' (1928), starring Mary Astor
★ ''El Apostol'' (1917), Argentine production; believed to be the world's first animated feature film
★ ''The Escape'' (1914), directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Donald Crisp
★ ''Evening Clothes'' (1927), starring Adolphe Menjou and Louise Brooks
★ ''Fanny Foley Herself'' (1931), a Technicolor film starring Edna May Oliver
★ ''The Fighting Heart'' (1925), directed by John Ford and starring Billie Dove
★ ''Flaming Youth'' (1923), starring Colleen Moore and Milton Sills
★ ''Four Devils'' (1928), directed by F.W. Murnau and starring Janet Gaynor
★ ''The Freeze Out'' (1921), directed by John Ford (credited as Jack Ford)
★ ''General Crack'' (1930), starring John Barrymore
★ ''Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'' (1928), the first version of the Anita Loos story starring Alice White and Ruth Taylor
★ ''The Great Gatsby'' (1926) starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, and William Powell
★ ''The Great Love'' (1918), directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish
★ ''The Greatest Thing in Life'' (1918), directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish
★ ''The Gulf Between'' (1917), starring Grace Darmond and Niles Welch; this was the first Technicolor film, a few frames of which survive
★ ''Hats Off'' (1927), Laurel & Hardy comedy
★ ''Hollywood'' (1923), which contained cameos of many silent film stars playing themselves
★ ''Her Friend the Bandit'' (1914), directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand
★ ''Heartbeat in the Brain'' (1970s) infamous trepanation film with Amanda Feilding drilling a hole in her own head. Filmed by Joey Mellen.
★ ''Hello Pop!'' (1933), starring The Three Stooges
★ ''Him'' (1974), X-rated film made for gay audiences about a young man's erotic fixation with the life of Jesus.
★ ''Hit the Deck'' (1930), starring Jack Oakie and Polly Walker
★ ''Hold Everything'' (1930), a Technicolor film starring Winnie Lightner and Joe E. Brown
★ ''The Homesteader'' (1919), directed by Oscar Micheaux, starring Evelyn Preer
★ ''The Honor of the Family'' (1912), starring Lon Chaney, Sr.
★ ''Honor of the Family'' (1931), starring Warren Williams and Bebe Daniels
★ ''Hoodman Blind'' (1923), directed by John Ford
★ ''Humor Risk'' (1926), starring the Marx Brothers
★ ''Is Everybody Happy?'' (1929), starring Ted Lewis; complete soundtrack survives plus one reel of picture
★ ''Just Another Blonde'' (1926), starring Louise Brooks
★ ''The Kaiser, Beast of Berlin'' (1918), early World War I propaganda film with '' (1968). After the original premiere, director Stanley Kubrick cut 24 minutes out of the film (also adding title cards and a small insertion at the "Dawn of Men" sequence). These trims are considered lost, albeit rumors of the cut sequences being in possession of Kubrick's family.
★ ''Cleopatra'' (1917), starring Theda Bara. Approximately 40 seconds exist at George Eastman House.
★ ''The Ghost of Slumber Mountain'' (1918 or 1919). Only 11 minutes of the original 90 minute film by Willis O'Brien remain, though it was later restored to 19 minutes.
★ ''Devil Dog Dawson'', 38 seconds of footage from this 1921 Jack Hoxie Western, found in a mislabeled tin, were the subject of an investigation in a 2006 episode of the PBS series ''History Detectives''. [2]
★ ''The Divine Woman'' (1928), directed by Victor Sjöström and starring Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Johnny Mack Brown, Lowell Sherman, and Polly Moran; one reel was found in a Russian film archive and shown on TCM
★ ''The Secret Man'' (1917) directed by John Ford
★ ''The Scarlet Drop'' (1918) directed by John Ford
★ ''The Miracle Man'' (1919), cast includes Lon Chaney, Sr.. Two clips exist as part of compilation films.
★ ''Greed'' (1924) directed by Erich von Stroheim. Initially running ten hours, the film was cut by Von Stroheim to four hours, and then trimmed by the studio to 140 minutes of surviving footage.
★ ''The Magic Flame'' (1927), starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky. The first five reels out of nine are preserved at the George Eastman House.
★ ''Metropolis'' (1927) Fritz Lang. The German premiere cut no longer survives. When the film was sent to the US, it was truncated greatly by Paramount. Subsequently, UFA re-cut the film after the financial success of Paramount's version. Both of these latter versions, as well as international versions and incomplete elements survive. Existing prints are cobbled together from these various sources, most notably a restoration from the early 2000s released by Kino Video which added captions to explain the action of scenes that no longer survive from the original edit; documentation included on the DVD specifically refers to the as-yet unlocated footage as lost.
★ ''Beau Sabreur'' (1928), cast included Gary Cooper. A trailer exists with footage from the film.
★ ''The Patriot'' (1928), directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Emil Jannings and Lewis Stone. A few fragments and a trailer survive (at UCLA).
★ ''The Terror'' (1928) starring Edward Everett Horton. Soundtrack exists.
★ ''Gold Diggers of Broadway'' (1929), directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Winnie Lightner, Nick Lucas, Ann Pennington, and Lilyan Tashman; last 20 minutes survive, but are missing a bridging sequence and the last minute of the film.
★ ''Fox Movietone Follies of 1929'' (1929), with an All-Star cast — partial soundtrack survives
★ ''Honky Tonk'' (1929) starring Sophie Tucker — complete soundtrack survives
★ ''Married In Hollywood'' (1929), starring J. Harold Murray. The final reel survives (in color) at UCLA.
★ ''My Man'' (1928) starring Fanny Brice — almost complete set of soundtrack discs plus soundtrack trailer survive
★ ''On With the Show'' (1929) First All-Technicolor All-Talking Feature. Survives only in black and white. (a very brief clip of color footage was recently found in a toy projector)
★ ''Paris'' (1929), starring Irene Bordoni and Jack Buchanan — soundtrack discs survive
★ ''No, No Nanette'' (1930), starring Bernice Claire and Alexander Gray - soundtrack discs survive
★ ''The Rogue Song'' (1930), a Technicolor film directed by Lionel Barrymore and starring Lawrence Tibbett. Soundtrack, 2 reels and several clips survive.
★ ''Thunder'' (1929), directed by William Nigh, and starring Lon Chaney, Sr. (his last silent film). Several clips exist.
★ ''Lost Horizon'' (1937) directed by Frank Capra. Capra's initial 210 minute version was cut down to 131 minutes after a preview screening of the film went badly. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have personally destroyed the first two reels. In many currently used versions, still photos and individuals frames are used to replace missing footage that accompanies the soundtrack.
★ ''The Wizard of Oz'' (1939) originally contained a musical number called "The Jitterbug", which was included in test showings of the film. The musical number was edited out of the film for general release, and the footage of this scene has been lost. The soundtrack recording, however, survives, as does behind-the-scenes home movies showing the cast either rehearsing or actually filming the sequence. This footage, edited together with stills, has been edited together to recreate the sequence and this has been included on numerous retrospectives and DVD releases of the film.
★ ''The Magnificent Ambersons'' (1942) Directed by Orson Welles. Fifty minutes was cut by RKO Pictures from Welles' version after an unsuccessful preview.
★ ''Sanshiro Sugata'' (1943) Akira Kurosawa's first film is missing 17 minutes of its running time.
★ ''Top Banana'' (1954) with Phil Silvers. Originally shot and edited in 3-D, the film was released flat. The film only exists in 16mm, and does not exist in 3-D at all.
★ ''Southwest Passage'' (1954) with Joanne Dru and John Ireland. Initially released in 3-D, this feature only survives in its flat form.
★ ''A Star Is Born'' (1954) starring Judy Garland and James Mason. Originally premiered at 181 minutes, Warner Bros. cut the film down by about 27 minutes for general release. The 1983 restoration included soundtrack from this cut and a few establishing shots, with stills filling in the rest.
★ ''The Wicker Man'' (1973) starring Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward. All original elements to the film (camera negative, etc) are thought to be lost after being destroyed in the late 1970s.
★ ''Once Upon a Time in America'' (1984) directed by Sergio Leone and starring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, Danny Aiello, Jennifer Connelly, and Tuesday Weld; originally was six hours in length, Leone was forced to cut it down to four. Though some footage has been restored, Leone's full-length version has never surfaced.
The following films were once thought to be lost but have now been recovered.
★ ''Beyond the Rocks'' (1922) starring Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino.
★ ''Bucking Broadway'' (1917) by John Ford, found in 2002 in a French archive.
★ ''Cleopatra'' (1899) directed by George Melies, which was thought lost until a copy surfaced in 2005 in Paris.
★ ''The Cook'' (1918) film starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, which was found in Norway.
★ ''Daughter of the Night[6]'' (1921) starring Bela Lugosi.
★ ''Duck Soup'' (1927) starring Laurel & Hardy, which was thought lost until a copy surfaced in the 1980s.
★ ''Frankenstein'' (1910) starring Charles Ogle. A print was bought by a film collector in the 1950s, who was not aware of its rarity until decades later.
★ ''The Ghoul'' (1933) starring Boris Karloff and Ernest Thesiger. A damaged, incomplete print was found in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, and was thought to be the only surviving copy until a nearly pristine one was found in the archives of the British Film Institute.
★ ''Karadjordje'' (1911) the first Serbian feature film directed by Ilija Stanojevic-Cica, thought lost for a long time, since 1927. Material from this movie was found in Austrian Film Archives in 2003.
★ ''Incubus'' (1965) starring William Shatner.
★ ''In Nacht Und Eis'' (1912), the first Titanic movie, was presumed lost around 1914 but found in a private film library in Germany in 1998.
★ ''Kampf um Norwegen - Feldzug 1940'', recovered 2005.
★ ''Love And Duty'' (1930) Starring Ruan Lingyu. Rediscovered in Uruguay in the 1990s.
★ ''Mare Nostrum'' (1926) starring Antonio Moreno and Alice Terry, directed by Rex Ingram.
★ ''Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors'' (1945) Japan's first feature-length animated film. For a long time presumed to have been confiscated and burnt by the American occupation, but a negative copy was found in Shochiku's depot in 1984.
★ ''The Most Dangerous Game'' (1932), a horror movie filmed on the same set as ''King Kong'', and starring the same actress, Fay Wray.
★ ''Napoléon'' (1927) directed by Abel Gance. Never totally lost, but existing prints were once only half as long as the current restoration.
★ ''A Page of Madness'' (1926), directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. Found by the director in his garden shed in the 1970s -- he had buried it during World War II and forgotten it.
★ ''The Passion of Joan of Arc'' (1928), directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Although inferior prints existed, a nearly pristine print was found in the janitor's closet of a Norwegian mental asylum.
★ Lost work
★ Lost artworks
★ Social guidance film
★ Sponsored film
★ Wiping
★ ''Forgotten Silver''
1. Little Ferry, New Jersey, July 18, 1937.
2. Clara Bow.net
3. New Yorker:In the Vault
4. List of missing Doctor Who episodes at the BBC
5. The Saga Of the Lost Space Tapes
6. Sinister Cinema
★ Subterranean Cinema a website about the search for lost and rare cinema
★ List of lost silent films at www.silentera.com
★ List of lost sound films (highlighted in red) at www.vitaphone.org
★ List of lost films of the 1970s at The Weird World of 70s Cinema
★ Blog describing many missing UK Television programmes
★ The Museum of Television and Radio: "Lost" programs
★ Josef von Sternberg. The Case of Lena Smith Book on Josef von Sternberg's last silent movie - one of the legendary lost masterpieces of the American cinema; Published by the Austrian Film Museum
Sometimes a copy of a "lost film" is rediscovered; these have been referred to as "Lazarus" films. A film that has not been recovered in its entirety is called a "partially lost film".
Reasons for film loss
Most lost films are from the silent film and early talkie era, from the 1890s to 1930. Some estimates suggest that most of the films from this era are lost.
Many early motion pictures are lost because the nitrate film used in that era was extremely unstable and flammable. Fires have destroyed entire archives of films. For example, a storage vault fire in 1937 destroyed the original negatives of pre-1935 movies from Fox Pictures.[1] In addition, film can deteriorate rapidly if not preserved in temperature and humidity controlled storage.
Many early talkies from Warner Bros. and First National were lost because they used a sound-on-disk process which utilized separate soundtracks on special phonograph records. These records were often lost or misplaced, thereby making a mute print virtually worthless and consequently they were often thrown away. This all changed by 1930, when those studios converted to a sound-on-film process.
Before the eras of home video and television, films were viewed as having little value after their theatrical run ended. Thus, many films were deliberately destroyed, either by the studios as a space-saving maneuver, or in some cases by the cast and crew themselves. Many films were recycled for their silver content or ignited to create explosion special effects in other films.
In order to preserve films with a nitrate base, they can be copied to safety film or digitized, although the former is preferred over the latter in the archival community because of its proven longevity and approximation of original format.
Particularly striking is the case of Theda Bara: of the 40 films she made, only three and a half survive. More typical is the case of Clara Bow; of her 57 movies, 20 are completely lost and five more are incomplete.[2] There are occasional exceptions: save for one film that he destroyed himself, A Woman of the Sea, and one of his early Keystone films, Her Friend The Bandit, all of Charlie Chaplin's films (from his entire career) have survived as well as extensive amounts of unused footage dating back to 1914 (see ''Unknown Chaplin'').
Later lost films
35mm safety film was introduced in 1949; it was much more stable than early nitrate film and as a result, there are comparatively few lost films from after about 1950. However, color fading of certain color stocks and vinegar syndrome threaten the preservation of films made since about 1950. In the mid-1950s, many old Technicolor prints were thrown out, when the studios refused to reclaim prints of their films still being held by Technicolor in its vaults.
Most mainstream movies from the 1950s and beyond survive today, but several early pornographic films and some B-Movies are lost. In most cases these obscure films go unnoticed and unknown, but some films by noted cult directors have been lost as well:
★ Cult favorite Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1972 film ''Black Love'' has disappeared, as have two of his 1969 films, ''Ecstasies of Women'' and ''Linda and Abilene''. The latter of these is notorious for being filmed at the Spahn Ranch shortly before the arrival of the Manson Family.
★ Ed Wood, Jr.'s ''The Undergraduate'' (1972) has been lost and his 1970 film ''Take It Out In Trade'' exists only in fragments without sound. Wood's 1971 film ''Necromania'' was believed lost for years until an edited version resurfaced at a yard sale in 1992, followed by a complete unedited print in 2001.[3]
★ Most of Andy Milligan's early films are considered lost.
★ Many classroom educational, training, and religious short films of the 1940s through 1970s are also lost as they were thought of as "disposable" or upgradeable.
Some aspects of recent films may be lost, too. Early color films such as ''The Mysterious Island'' and ''The Show of Shows'' exist only partially or not at all in color because the copies that were made of the film that exist were done so on black and white stock. The 3-D films ''Top Banana'' and ''Southwest Passage'' both exist only in their flat form because only one print made for either the left or right eye to see exists.
Almost lost films
Many important silent-era films, and films which involve important actors, directors, and creative talent, exist in single prints in museums, archives, and private collections — single prints which have not been copied, digitized, or preserved in any way. The possibility of losing these films forever is very real, unless they are preserved.
Lost film soundtracks
Some films produced in sound-on-disc systems such as Vitaphone, where the sound disc is separate from the film element, are now considered lost because they were damaged or destroyed, while the picture element was not. Some surviving Vitaphone films exist in picture only, while the soundtracks, which were played from a disc, are lost. Conversely, some Vitaphone films survive only in the disc, with the film missing.
Many stereophonic soundtracks from the early-to-mid 1950s that were either played in interlock on a 35mm fullcoat magnetic reel or single-strip magnetic film (such as Fox's four-track magnetic, which became the standard of mag stereophonic sound) are now lost. Films such as ''House of Wax'', ''The Caddy'', ''The War of the Worlds'', ''The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T'', and ''From Here to Eternity'' that were originally available with 3-track, magnetic sound are now available only with a monophonic optical soundtrack. The chemistry behind adhering magnetic particles to the tri-acetate film base eventually caused the autocatalytic breakdown of the film, in what is now known as vinegar syndrome. As long as studios had a monaural optical negative that could be printed, studio executives felt no need to preserve the stereophonic versions of the soundtracks.
Commercially unavailable films
The term "lost films" has also been applied erroneously to films that do survive in their entirety, but have never been made available to the public in consumer formats such as VHS and DVD and in some cases have never been broadcast on television. A few of these do circulate on bootleg copies of varying quality.
★ The John Wayne film ''The High and the Mighty'' from 1954 was one famous example, until it was finally issued on DVD in 2005.
★ Disney's ''Song of the South'', which is not available in North America, supposedly due to concerns over its use stereotypes and depiction of the reconstruction period after the American civil war. It is available in some degree in Europe and Asia.
★ The made-for-television movie ''The Star Wars Holiday Special'' is one of the most widespread bootleg films of all time, yet has never been released on video due to George Lucas's desire for it to be forgotten.
★ American Hot Wax was released into theaters, but was never sold on VHS or DVD. Although many remember seeing it when it was played in theaters, it is unavailable to own except for bootleg copies of the movie, which stars many Doo-Wop stars such as Alan Freed, The Planotones, Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers, and much more. Including Fran Drescher and Jay Leno.
★ The 1982 film ''Inchon'' has never been released on any consumer format after its initial, disastrous run at movie theaters.
★ ''The Day the Clown Cried'', a 1972 film featuring Jerry Lewis as a clown entertaining children in a concentration camp, finished principal photography, but has been in legal limbo with the author of the book the film is based on.
★ A low-budget 1994 feature film version of ''The Fantastic Four'' was made solely to retain legal rights to the characters and was never intended to be shown.
Lost television broadcasts
:''See also: wiping''.
★ Many early television series episodes were lost because they were aired live and no recording ever was made, because kinescopes that were made are now lost, or because the highly expensive early videotape was erased and re-used by the network. Most episodes of important, popular shows like ''Captain Video'' and ''Your Show of Shows'' are presumed lost. Episodes of TV shows from the DuMont network are particularly difficult to find since DuMont went out of business in 1955 and its kinescope recordings of programming were supposedly dumped into Upper New York Bay.
★ This practice of re-using video tape continued well into the 1970s: many episodes of the pioneering Australian prime time soap opera ''Number 96'' are lost.
★ Over 100 early episodes of the cult BBC sci-fi show ''Doctor Who'' do not exist in the BBC's archives, though they have an ongoing appeal for help from viewers who may have recorded the shows during their original airings. Audio recordings exist for all of the lost episodes, however, many of which have been released commercially by the BBC, and two episodes of the serial ''The Invasion'' which survive only in audio form were reconstructed using animation for the serial's DVD release in 2006[4].
★ Many other BBC shows are missing from the archives, including the BBC studio footage from the Apollo 11 moon landings. Many series are missing in their entirety, while others only survive in fragments, such as ''A for Andromeda'' a science fiction series that was Julie Christie's first major role and The Vampira Show, the first television horror movie show. Also missing are episodes of ''The Avengers'', ''Dad's Army'', ''Hancock's Half Hour'', ''Doomwatch'', ''Out of the Unknown'', ''Dixon of Dock Green'', ''Z Cars'', and many others.
★ Almost all of NBC's ''The Tonight Show'' with Jack Paar and the first ten years (1962-1972) hosted by Johnny Carson were taped over by the network and no longer exist. This is why Carson's ''The Tonight Show'' picture looked muddy during broadcast in the late 60s: the videotape was being used repeatedly. A single episode from Carson's first year on ''The Tonight Show'' turned up in a closet a few years ago. Selected sequences from Carson's 1962-72 era do survive and were often replayed by Carson himself (particularly in the months preceding his retirement in 1992) and have been released to home video. Some Paar episodes also survive and have been released to DVD.
★ With home VCRs being uncommon until the mid-1980s, it is unlikely that lost television episodes exist in the collections of individuals, though this occasionally happens. One well-known example is a clip of John Lennon visiting the announcers booth during a 1974 ''Monday Night Football'' broadcast. ABC lost the footage of this event, but a private collector's copy of the event appears in the ''Beatles Anthology''.
★ Many of the original master tapes of the controversial and anarchic British children's Saturday morning television series Tiswas were wiped after the series was canceled in 1983. This was apparently due to a television executive's (some would say misguided) belief that the series was an embarrassment to the network. When a series of Tiswas highlight compilation tapes were released on video in the early 1990s (followed in 2006 by a DVD), much of the footage appeared to have been culled from the off-air recordings of private archivists.
★ Also lost is the broadcast of Super Bowl I, even though NBC and CBS both originally broadcast the game.
★ Many soap operas such as ''Search for Tomorrow'' and ''The Edge of Night'' have lost episodes. Due to archiving policies, episodes of ''All My Children'' produced between 1970 and 1975 exist only as black-and-white kinescopes although all episodes were originally produced in color.
★ NASA has admitted losing the original videotapes of the first manned moon landing in 1969. It is unknown if the original footage still exists today. What exists today is a considerably lower-quality image made by a television camera aimed at a live monitor.[5]
★ The original black & white first episode of series one of the British series ''Upstairs, Downstairs'' does not exist in any form with the possible exception of a few stills. It was reportedly wiped and the script of the first episode was re-shot in colour when the show was being prepared to be broadcast in the United States on PBS's Masterpiece Theater. All of the other five black & white episodes from series one survive.
List of selected lost films
★ ''Age for Love'' (1931), starring Billie Dove
★ ''The Air Circus'' (1928), directed by Howard Hawks
★ ''Anna Karenina'' (1915)
★ ''Anne of Green Gables'' (1919), directed by William Desmond Taylor and starring Mary Miles Minter
★ ''Arirang'' (1926), Korean film starring and directed by Na Woon-gyu
★ ''The Aryan'' (1916), directed by Thomas H. Ince and starring William S. Hart and Bessie Love
★ ''Babe Comes Home'' (1927), starring Anna Q Nilsson
★ ''The Battle of Gettysburg'' (1913), directed by Thomas H. Ince
★ ''Battle of the Sexes'' (1914), directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish
★ ''The Betrayal'' (1948), directed by Oscar Micheaux
★ ''Bound in Morocco'' (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks
★ ''Bride of the Regiment'' (1930), a Technicolor film starring Vivienne Segal
★ ''Camille'' (1917), starring Theda Bara
★ ''The Case of Lena Smith'' (1929), directed by Josef von Sternberg (a few minutes exist)
★ ''The Cat's Pajamas'' (1926), directed by William Wellman
★ ''The Cavalier'' (1929), a Technicolor film starring Richard Talmadge
★ ''Clarence'' (1922), starring Wallace Reid and Adolphe Menjou
★ ''Charlie Chan Carries On'' (1931)
★ ''The City Gone Wild'' (1927), starring Louise Brooks
★ ''Convention City'' (1933), a pre-Code Warner Brothers drama starring Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, and Guy Kibbee
★ ''The Couple in Name'' (1927), starring Ruan Lingyu.
★ ''A Country Hero'' (1917), starring Roscoe Arbuckle (aka Fatty Arbuckle) and Buster Keaton
★ ''The Daring Years'' (1923), starring Mildred Harris, Charles Emmett Mack and Clara Bow
★ ''The Devil's Passkey'' (1920), directed by Erich von Stroheim
★ ''The Dragnet'' (1928), directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring William Powell and Evelyn Brent
★ ''Dry Martini'' (1928), starring Mary Astor
★ ''El Apostol'' (1917), Argentine production; believed to be the world's first animated feature film
★ ''The Escape'' (1914), directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Donald Crisp
★ ''Evening Clothes'' (1927), starring Adolphe Menjou and Louise Brooks
★ ''Fanny Foley Herself'' (1931), a Technicolor film starring Edna May Oliver
★ ''The Fighting Heart'' (1925), directed by John Ford and starring Billie Dove
★ ''Flaming Youth'' (1923), starring Colleen Moore and Milton Sills
★ ''Four Devils'' (1928), directed by F.W. Murnau and starring Janet Gaynor
★ ''The Freeze Out'' (1921), directed by John Ford (credited as Jack Ford)
★ ''General Crack'' (1930), starring John Barrymore
★ ''Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'' (1928), the first version of the Anita Loos story starring Alice White and Ruth Taylor
★ ''The Great Gatsby'' (1926) starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, and William Powell
★ ''The Great Love'' (1918), directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish
★ ''The Greatest Thing in Life'' (1918), directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish
★ ''The Gulf Between'' (1917), starring Grace Darmond and Niles Welch; this was the first Technicolor film, a few frames of which survive
★ ''Hats Off'' (1927), Laurel & Hardy comedy
★ ''Hollywood'' (1923), which contained cameos of many silent film stars playing themselves
★ ''Her Friend the Bandit'' (1914), directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand
★ ''Heartbeat in the Brain'' (1970s) infamous trepanation film with Amanda Feilding drilling a hole in her own head. Filmed by Joey Mellen.
★ ''Hello Pop!'' (1933), starring The Three Stooges
★ ''Him'' (1974), X-rated film made for gay audiences about a young man's erotic fixation with the life of Jesus.
★ ''Hit the Deck'' (1930), starring Jack Oakie and Polly Walker
★ ''Hold Everything'' (1930), a Technicolor film starring Winnie Lightner and Joe E. Brown
★ ''The Homesteader'' (1919), directed by Oscar Micheaux, starring Evelyn Preer
★ ''The Honor of the Family'' (1912), starring Lon Chaney, Sr.
★ ''Honor of the Family'' (1931), starring Warren Williams and Bebe Daniels
★ ''Hoodman Blind'' (1923), directed by John Ford
★ ''Humor Risk'' (1926), starring the Marx Brothers
★ ''Is Everybody Happy?'' (1929), starring Ted Lewis; complete soundtrack survives plus one reel of picture
★ ''Just Another Blonde'' (1926), starring Louise Brooks
★ ''The Kaiser, Beast of Berlin'' (1918), early World War I propaganda film with '' (1968). After the original premiere, director Stanley Kubrick cut 24 minutes out of the film (also adding title cards and a small insertion at the "Dawn of Men" sequence). These trims are considered lost, albeit rumors of the cut sequences being in possession of Kubrick's family.
★ ''Cleopatra'' (1917), starring Theda Bara. Approximately 40 seconds exist at George Eastman House.
★ ''The Ghost of Slumber Mountain'' (1918 or 1919). Only 11 minutes of the original 90 minute film by Willis O'Brien remain, though it was later restored to 19 minutes.
★ ''Devil Dog Dawson'', 38 seconds of footage from this 1921 Jack Hoxie Western, found in a mislabeled tin, were the subject of an investigation in a 2006 episode of the PBS series ''History Detectives''. [2]
★ ''The Divine Woman'' (1928), directed by Victor Sjöström and starring Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Johnny Mack Brown, Lowell Sherman, and Polly Moran; one reel was found in a Russian film archive and shown on TCM
★ ''The Secret Man'' (1917) directed by John Ford
★ ''The Scarlet Drop'' (1918) directed by John Ford
★ ''The Miracle Man'' (1919), cast includes Lon Chaney, Sr.. Two clips exist as part of compilation films.
★ ''Greed'' (1924) directed by Erich von Stroheim. Initially running ten hours, the film was cut by Von Stroheim to four hours, and then trimmed by the studio to 140 minutes of surviving footage.
★ ''The Magic Flame'' (1927), starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky. The first five reels out of nine are preserved at the George Eastman House.
★ ''Metropolis'' (1927) Fritz Lang. The German premiere cut no longer survives. When the film was sent to the US, it was truncated greatly by Paramount. Subsequently, UFA re-cut the film after the financial success of Paramount's version. Both of these latter versions, as well as international versions and incomplete elements survive. Existing prints are cobbled together from these various sources, most notably a restoration from the early 2000s released by Kino Video which added captions to explain the action of scenes that no longer survive from the original edit; documentation included on the DVD specifically refers to the as-yet unlocated footage as lost.
★ ''Beau Sabreur'' (1928), cast included Gary Cooper. A trailer exists with footage from the film.
★ ''The Patriot'' (1928), directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Emil Jannings and Lewis Stone. A few fragments and a trailer survive (at UCLA).
★ ''The Terror'' (1928) starring Edward Everett Horton. Soundtrack exists.
★ ''Gold Diggers of Broadway'' (1929), directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Winnie Lightner, Nick Lucas, Ann Pennington, and Lilyan Tashman; last 20 minutes survive, but are missing a bridging sequence and the last minute of the film.
★ ''Fox Movietone Follies of 1929'' (1929), with an All-Star cast — partial soundtrack survives
★ ''Honky Tonk'' (1929) starring Sophie Tucker — complete soundtrack survives
★ ''Married In Hollywood'' (1929), starring J. Harold Murray. The final reel survives (in color) at UCLA.
★ ''My Man'' (1928) starring Fanny Brice — almost complete set of soundtrack discs plus soundtrack trailer survive
★ ''On With the Show'' (1929) First All-Technicolor All-Talking Feature. Survives only in black and white. (a very brief clip of color footage was recently found in a toy projector)
★ ''Paris'' (1929), starring Irene Bordoni and Jack Buchanan — soundtrack discs survive
★ ''No, No Nanette'' (1930), starring Bernice Claire and Alexander Gray - soundtrack discs survive
★ ''The Rogue Song'' (1930), a Technicolor film directed by Lionel Barrymore and starring Lawrence Tibbett. Soundtrack, 2 reels and several clips survive.
★ ''Thunder'' (1929), directed by William Nigh, and starring Lon Chaney, Sr. (his last silent film). Several clips exist.
★ ''Lost Horizon'' (1937) directed by Frank Capra. Capra's initial 210 minute version was cut down to 131 minutes after a preview screening of the film went badly. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have personally destroyed the first two reels. In many currently used versions, still photos and individuals frames are used to replace missing footage that accompanies the soundtrack.
★ ''The Wizard of Oz'' (1939) originally contained a musical number called "The Jitterbug", which was included in test showings of the film. The musical number was edited out of the film for general release, and the footage of this scene has been lost. The soundtrack recording, however, survives, as does behind-the-scenes home movies showing the cast either rehearsing or actually filming the sequence. This footage, edited together with stills, has been edited together to recreate the sequence and this has been included on numerous retrospectives and DVD releases of the film.
★ ''The Magnificent Ambersons'' (1942) Directed by Orson Welles. Fifty minutes was cut by RKO Pictures from Welles' version after an unsuccessful preview.
★ ''Sanshiro Sugata'' (1943) Akira Kurosawa's first film is missing 17 minutes of its running time.
★ ''Top Banana'' (1954) with Phil Silvers. Originally shot and edited in 3-D, the film was released flat. The film only exists in 16mm, and does not exist in 3-D at all.
★ ''Southwest Passage'' (1954) with Joanne Dru and John Ireland. Initially released in 3-D, this feature only survives in its flat form.
★ ''A Star Is Born'' (1954) starring Judy Garland and James Mason. Originally premiered at 181 minutes, Warner Bros. cut the film down by about 27 minutes for general release. The 1983 restoration included soundtrack from this cut and a few establishing shots, with stills filling in the rest.
★ ''The Wicker Man'' (1973) starring Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward. All original elements to the film (camera negative, etc) are thought to be lost after being destroyed in the late 1970s.
★ ''Once Upon a Time in America'' (1984) directed by Sergio Leone and starring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, Danny Aiello, Jennifer Connelly, and Tuesday Weld; originally was six hours in length, Leone was forced to cut it down to four. Though some footage has been restored, Leone's full-length version has never surfaced.
Select list of rediscovered films
The following films were once thought to be lost but have now been recovered.
★ ''Beyond the Rocks'' (1922) starring Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino.
★ ''Bucking Broadway'' (1917) by John Ford, found in 2002 in a French archive.
★ ''Cleopatra'' (1899) directed by George Melies, which was thought lost until a copy surfaced in 2005 in Paris.
★ ''The Cook'' (1918) film starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, which was found in Norway.
★ ''Daughter of the Night[6]'' (1921) starring Bela Lugosi.
★ ''Duck Soup'' (1927) starring Laurel & Hardy, which was thought lost until a copy surfaced in the 1980s.
★ ''Frankenstein'' (1910) starring Charles Ogle. A print was bought by a film collector in the 1950s, who was not aware of its rarity until decades later.
★ ''The Ghoul'' (1933) starring Boris Karloff and Ernest Thesiger. A damaged, incomplete print was found in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, and was thought to be the only surviving copy until a nearly pristine one was found in the archives of the British Film Institute.
★ ''Karadjordje'' (1911) the first Serbian feature film directed by Ilija Stanojevic-Cica, thought lost for a long time, since 1927. Material from this movie was found in Austrian Film Archives in 2003.
★ ''Incubus'' (1965) starring William Shatner.
★ ''In Nacht Und Eis'' (1912), the first Titanic movie, was presumed lost around 1914 but found in a private film library in Germany in 1998.
★ ''Kampf um Norwegen - Feldzug 1940'', recovered 2005.
★ ''Love And Duty'' (1930) Starring Ruan Lingyu. Rediscovered in Uruguay in the 1990s.
★ ''Mare Nostrum'' (1926) starring Antonio Moreno and Alice Terry, directed by Rex Ingram.
★ ''Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors'' (1945) Japan's first feature-length animated film. For a long time presumed to have been confiscated and burnt by the American occupation, but a negative copy was found in Shochiku's depot in 1984.
★ ''The Most Dangerous Game'' (1932), a horror movie filmed on the same set as ''King Kong'', and starring the same actress, Fay Wray.
★ ''Napoléon'' (1927) directed by Abel Gance. Never totally lost, but existing prints were once only half as long as the current restoration.
★ ''A Page of Madness'' (1926), directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. Found by the director in his garden shed in the 1970s -- he had buried it during World War II and forgotten it.
★ ''The Passion of Joan of Arc'' (1928), directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Although inferior prints existed, a nearly pristine print was found in the janitor's closet of a Norwegian mental asylum.
See also
★ Lost work
★ Lost artworks
★ Social guidance film
★ Sponsored film
★ Wiping
★ ''Forgotten Silver''
References
1. Little Ferry, New Jersey, July 18, 1937.
2. Clara Bow.net
3. New Yorker:In the Vault
4. List of missing Doctor Who episodes at the BBC
5. The Saga Of the Lost Space Tapes
6. Sinister Cinema
External links
★ Subterranean Cinema a website about the search for lost and rare cinema
★ List of lost silent films at www.silentera.com
★ List of lost sound films (highlighted in red) at www.vitaphone.org
★ List of lost films of the 1970s at The Weird World of 70s Cinema
★ Blog describing many missing UK Television programmes
★ The Museum of Television and Radio: "Lost" programs
★ Josef von Sternberg. The Case of Lena Smith Book on Josef von Sternberg's last silent movie - one of the legendary lost masterpieces of the American cinema; Published by the Austrian Film Museum
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