43
The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912–1929
P
aramount Pictures and its corporate antecedents
were the dominant studio/distributor/exhibi-
tor until the rise of MGM in the second half of the
1920s. When the company sold its 1929–1948 sound fea-
tures to a television distributor in 1958, the silent lms
were excluded because they had no value for television.
Paramount Pictures did not have a preservation program
until the 1980s, although they did make new negatives on
occasion when it was a necessary step to create a print.
For example, Old Ironsides (1926) was preserved in 1959
when the studio was preparing a theatrical rerelease with
narration. By 1970, the studio had preserved 37 of its si-
lent lms, including a few major productions, but mostly
minor Wallace Beery comedies and Zane Grey westerns.
i
Hazel Marshall of Paramount’s editorial department told
the AFI that “these particular lms were special favorites
of Mr. Zukor’s which were kept available in exhibition
condition in case Mr. Zukor decided he wanted to see
them or have them shown to somebody.”
ii
Although Paramount was not actively preserving its
heritage, the company had always been willing to work
with archives on a title-by-title basis. The Museum of
Modern Art requested its rst prints from Paramount in
1935. Curator Iris Barry thought highly of director Josef
von Sternberg, writing “in every lm that he has made,
von Sternberg’s highly personal feeling for atmosphere
and for texture can be detected.” The rst six silent fea-
tures requested by the museum included the director’s
Underworld (1927) and The Last Command (1928). Indi-
vidual requests continued for decades; D. W. Grith’s
The Sorrows of Satan (1927) was acquired in 1962. George
Eastman House established a similar relationship with
Paramount. Curator James Card’s requests in 1950 in-
cluded von Sternberg’s The Docks of New York (1928) and
Beggars of Life (1928), with Louise Brooks. In 1965, Card
inquired about lms starring Gloria Swanson and was
told that of the 27 silent features she had made at Para-
mount, 3 remained. Of these, he was able to acquire two:
Her Husband’s Trademark (1922) and Stage Struck (1925). By
1971, Paramount had donated 37 silent and sound lms
to Eastman House.
iii
Soon after its founding in 1967, the AFI approached the
studio to donate its remaining silent-era nitrate to the Li-
brary of Congress (predominantly studio reference prints
rather than negatives). UCLA had already received au-
thorization to acquire the studio’s prints of its 1929–1948
lms, and Richard Simonton, Jr., arranged for the transfer
of those copies from Paramount’s vaults to commercial
storage. “There were about two hundred titles not on
Paramount’s inventory,” Simonton recalled, “including
CASE STUDY
Paramount Pictures
silents from 1914 on and sound lms not in the MCA
package, either expired properties, independent produc-
tions, or otherwise abandoned prints. We began to real-
ize we were uncovering buried treasure.”
iv
That treasure,
acquired by the American Film Institute (AFI) between
1968 and 1970, included nitrate prints of The Vanishing
American (1926) and Redskin (1929), two of the few Hol-
lywood lms to seriously examine the plight of Native
Americans. This acquisition was just in time. “In the
four years preceding Paramount’s [rst] gift of about 90
feature lms,” AFI archivist David Shepard noted at the
time, “they had scrapped about 70 silent pictures—in
many cases the last copies.” And “between November
1968 and the following April when the lms were nally
shipped, 13 of them had deteriorated.”
v
In 1970, the studio discovered 11 additional negatives
and ne-grain masters in a vault in New Jersey. These
were titles to which the studio’s rights had expired or
silent-release versions of sound lms. These included
the foreign-release versions of For Heaven’s Sake (1926)
and The Kid Brother (1927), with Harold Lloyd; two Clara
Bow features, Children of Divorce and Get Your Man (both
1927); and silent-release versions of early talkies: Ernst
Lubitsch’s Monte Carlo (1930) and True to the Navy (1930),
which is, according to archivist James Cozart, the only
Clara Bow silent lm of which the original negative sur-
vives.
vi
With this last shipment, the studio noted, “Par-
amount now has no silent lm material whatsoever in
Hollywood. After we ship the pictures [in New Jersey]
to you, Paramount will have no silent lm print material
whatsoever.”
vii
The UCLA Film & Television Archive worked with Para-
mount in 1991 on a joint preservation project on the stu-
dio’s newly discovered nitrate print of Tess of the Storm
Country (1914). Sometimes studios and archives shuttled
lms on a two-way street; the studio borrowed back ma-
terial from archives to create its own preservation materi-
als on The Covered Wagon (1923), the Josef von Sternberg
lms, and The Wedding March (1928), among others.
Beyond the 163 Paramount titles in archives that originat-
ed from the studio, another 25 lms survived only in the
collection of director Cecil B. DeMille, who acquired cop-
ies of most of his lms. Five other titles exist as copyright
paper prints, and 11 more titles survive only in 16mm
prints distributed by the Kodascope Libraries.
Finally, 160 Paramount features came to domestic and
foreign archives from other sources, usually private col-
lectors. The 1916 Snow White, which made such an im-
pression on the young Walt Disney that he cited the lm