Blind Rage
In work we valets pass around possibly the only known VHS copy of this film because our supervisor, Joe Meyers, was IN the movie!
:dubious:
Not from the commercial newsreel services, but there were many motion picture cameramen in uniform. From London’s Imperial War Museum:
Hollywood director John Ford was there as head of the Photographic Department of the Office of Strategic Services. Unfortunately for the U.S. Armed Forces cameramen, much of their footage of the first day was lost. The exposed film magazines were collected at the end of June 6 to be sent back to England for processing, when the entire collection accidentally dropped into the sea as it was being transferred.
To get back to the original question, the last features from the major Hollywood studios to be lost are:
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
The Rogue Song (1930), with Metropolitan Opera star Lawrence Tibbett, who received an Oscar nomination as Best Actor. The entire soundtrack exists from this Technicolor picture, as does an advertising trailer, and one badly preserved clip of a comedy scene with Laurel and Hardy.
Paramount
Leave It to Lester (1930), starring minor comic Lester Allen. Besides being lost today, there is no evidence that it was ever released, which is really another category of film — the never released.
Jealousy (1929), one of only two talkies made by legendary stage actress Jeanne Eagels. Her co-star was screen newcomer Fredric March.
Warner Bros.-First National
Convention City (1933), starring Joan Blondell, Adolph Menjou, Dick Powell, and Mary Astor.
Children of Dreams (1931), from a musical by Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II. Musicals from 1929-1931 have a bad survival record. Early musicals look more creaky than other films from that period, and my theory is that so many were lost to decay because no television prints were struck in the 1950s that might have preserved them.
Fox
[Charlie Chan’s Courage](Charlie Chan’s Courage) (1934). Most of the original negatives of Fox’s pre-1935 output were destroyed in a storage facility fire in 1937. Exhibition prints were then called in from film exchanges to serve as replacement masters, but this and two other Charlie Chan features were among those for which no print was found.
RKO Radio
Freckles (1935), starring Tom Brown and Virginia Weidler. One of several versions of Gene Stratton Porter’s novel; as often happens when a film is remade, the earlier version is allowed to languish.
Universal
Fast Companions (1932), starring Tom Brown, James Gleason, and Maureen O’Sullivan. Was Tom Brown the kiss of death for film preservation?
Columbia
Speed Demon (1932), starring William Collier, Jr.
In addition to these, many if not most of the foreign-language versions of Hollywood features, shot with alternate casts, that were made in 1929-1933 do not survive.
Moved to CS.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
And those, folks, are just the highlights. Before the beginning of Kinescope recording in 1948, we have less than 10 minutes of surviving TV broadcasting. Most of these were done by a videodisc process so primitive that it was 60+ years before they could be played back.
Five of those ten minutes of surviving pre-1948 television are from a 1939 NBC broadcast of the play The Streets of New York, which exists as a silent, 16mm film.
For those curious about how kinescope films were made, here is a 1953 photo of the RCA Kinephoto machine. The kinescope (picture tube) is on the left; the 16mm camera is on the right. At the bottom left is the kinescope with its housing taken off.
Although videotape recorders were introduced in 1956, the first few broadcast-quality models were enormously expensive: $50,000, or $345,000 in today’s dollars, and a 90-minute reel of videotape cost $307 ($2,118). And so kinescope films continued to be made by the networks as late as 1969 for the smaller affiliated stations that didn’t have broadcast-quality videotape equipment but wished to time-shift a program from the network showing.
Correction to my last post: a 35-minute reel of 2-inch videotape cost $875.
Correction to my correction: A 35-minute reel of 2-inch videotape cost $307. (It was 875 yards long.)
There’s a second clip known to exist of a dance routine from the film.
The original, full-length cut of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is lost.
I was referring to the former. The latter are not lost, just sitting in someone’s vault (like the “lost” Honeymooners episodes of the 50s)
Zev Steinhardt
Dinah East (1970) isn’t commercially available and prints may or may not exist. It’s about an Hollywood actress who’s actually a man. Mae West sued (she thought it was about her) and the film was pulled from theatres and she tried to have all prints destroyed. I’ve seen clips so at least some footage exists.
Does that 10 minutes of pre-1948 TV include Hitler’s Olympic broadcast from '36?
I was considering putting it in CS, but since it was a question that had a factual answer, rather than asking for an opinion or review of the movies. Therefore, I decided to put it in GQ. I see, however, that xash overruled me. 
Zev Steinhardt
The original widescreen print of Transformers The Movie (1986) is lost. I don’t know if that counts.
Supposedly someone owns a pieced together copy from various prints though.
In keeping with just talking about lost films instead of very recent but lost films as the OP asked for, I have to mention Murnau’s 4 Devils. There’s a really neat reconstruction on the Sunrise DVD, with stills and storyboards and text and all that, but the film no longer exists in any form.
I guess I’d like to see the lost ‘spider sequence’ from the original **King Kong **. But I guess that’s gone forever, huh?
Thus far and no mention of Colin McKenzie, the pioneering NZ director whose entire oeuvre {apart from a few fragments of Salome} has been lost to posterity? For shame!
Although there are several hours of film footage of the 1936 Summer Olympics (notably, Leni Riefenstahl’s two-part documentary Olympia), I have never heard that any recording of the television broadcasts exists. With only 180 lines of resolution, it was reportedly difficult to discern what was going on.
More on television at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
Popular Wireless article.
Awhile back some German academic did find film programs made to be shown on the Berlin TV station in the mid '30s (some Olympic related, too, IIRC). He used them as part of a typical media-theory paper, unique only in that it was about programming in a pre-mass medium era.
Not sure why you would consider game shows to be a big loss.
I’ll add to your list:
The pilot episode of Sgt Bilko.
The first 2 seasons of Callan
Most of season 1 of The Avengers
A large chunk of Not Only But Also
Some important lost movies:
The piefight in Doctor Strangelove
The original end to The Magnificent Ambersons
Hitchcocks first few movies are either lost or only part survive.
- Number Thirteen
- The Mountain Eagle
- Always tell your wife
Pretty much everything done by silent film comedian Raymond Griffith has been lost due to neglect. I did manage to see his film Hands Up![/COLOR]](http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=21385[COLOR=Navy) in a film class.