While restoring a 1906 Cameragraph projector, I found lodged deep in the back of the shutter guard a few fragments of old nitrate film. It’s very, very badly deteriorated, but what I have that’s recognizable is one nearly full frame, one half of a frame, and a corner of another frame.
The first two are contiguous. They’re intertitles, both toned green, that read: “THE DENTIST W… RUBBER SHOES” (There’s another word beginning with a W after “dentist”, but I can’t make it out. It’s probably “wore” or “wears”.)
The second fragment is from another part of the film. It’s an untoned image, but it’s too small a piece to be able to tell what of. I have a rather lengthly piece of of nothing but perforations (the rest of the film seems to have been ripped off) that is toned green on one end with the remainder straight black-and-white, so I’m reasonably sure the two fragments are from the same film.
As a fan of silent film, I’ve seen a fair share of intertitles before and these are decidedly teens in style–they’re not from the twenties.
I know it’s frightfully little information to go on, but does anyone have any idea what movie/newsreel these fragments might be from and if it still exists?
(Nearly a century ago, this projector was installed in a theater in New York City, that might be of some significance if it’s frames of a newsreel I’m looking at.)
I hate to suggest this since you’ve specified that you think it’s pre-1920, but, given the “shady” connotations that rubber-soled shoes had in the early twentieth century, I’m immediately reminded of the thieving, unlicensed dentist in Eric Von Stroheim’s Greed.
It’s been at least ten years since I’ve seen it, though, and I don’t remember if rubber shoes are mentioned in any of the intertitles.
Hmmm. Unless I could see a recognizable face, or even a logo (studios before 1915 or so often put their logo on the set to avoid piracy), I’m stumped. There were hundreds of thousands of films made prior to 1915, and most of them were (like today’s) forgettable, low-budget programmers.
Yeah, when I found it a studio name or monogram was the first thing I looked for, but the bottom center of the border is one of the areas that has unfortunately disintegrated. Most of the half frame’s bottom is gone, but what is there is better preserved. In the border on it, I can make out: “1 GNFC 967”, with the first “1” in slightly larger print.
As I said, I know there’s not much to work with here, unless someone recognizes the somewhat strange line quoted.
It’s be nice if it were from McTeague or Greed, although it’s probably not possible to be sure. McTeague is lost, isn’t it? Most of Greed is, too.
The George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, has experts on motion picture film. They’re the Kodak people — if anybody can translate those edge codes, they can, they probably manufactured it.
