# What lost film would you most like to see recovered? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 21, 2013, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975 "2013-02-21T15:54:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2013, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/61 "2013-02-26T09:56:25Z")
Sadly, most of[Theda Bara’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theda_Bara#Filmography) starring roles have been lost. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2013, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/62 "2013-02-26T19:52:16Z")
_Beau Sabreur_. Not technically a sequel to _Beau Geste_, but it was another French Foreign Legion movie starring Gary Cooper, based on another French Foreign Legion novel by P.C. Wren. I would like to see the early episodes of _The Avengers_, back when John Steed was the sidekick. And, of course, _Greed_ and _London After Midnight_, already mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/63 "2013-02-27T07:35:48Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > Pssst… [Check post #46…](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16039206&postcount=46) 🙂 Dammit… I did a search for “Pancho” and when nothing turned up, figured I was in the clear. Evidently not. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/64 "2013-02-27T13:36:39Z")
Edison’s first “talky” film. I only saw a few seconds of it-the sound track was on an Edison wax cylinder. The film and cylinder were found in the archives of the Swedish National Radio system. Does the full length version exist? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/65 "2013-02-27T14:07:39Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Edison’s first “talky” film. I only saw a few seconds of it-the sound track was on an Edison wax cylinder. The film and cylinder were found in the archives of the Swedish National Radio system. Does the full length version exist? If you mean the Dickinson Sound Film, the one with one guy [playing a violin into an oversized bell microphone while two guys dance\*,it exists in its centirety, and the sound cylinder has been synched to it: > **[The Dickson Experimental Sound Film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickson_Experimental_Sound_Film)** > > The Dickson Experimental Sound Film is a film made by William Dickson in late 1894 or early 1895. It is the first known film with live-recorded sound and appears to be the first motion picture made for the Kinetophone, the proto-sound-film system developed by Dickson and Thomas Edison. (The Kinetophone, consisting of a Kinetoscope accompanied by a cylinder-playing phonograph, was not a true sound-film system, for there was no attempt to synchronize picture and sound throughout playback.) The f... - Because it’s one of the first films, and shows two guys dancing, it was used as the opening image for the film _The Celluloid Closet_, the history of gays in movies. It’s a pretty shaky premise, based on the idea that two _guys_ dancing connotes gayness – the kind of stereotype you’d think the film would deplore. But it’s undoubtedly a striking image, and film thrives on those, so I can’t complain. ---
**Author:** ![Rubixcube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Rubixcube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubixcube)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/66 "2013-02-27T14:13:47Z")
Are you talking about the Dickson Experimental Sound Film? ([Youtube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6b0wpBTR1s)) eta: ninja’d ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/67 "2013-02-27T14:49:27Z")
No. The film clip I saw was of men wearing American Civil War Union Army uniforms, with a firing squad. The Voice said something like “are you dead”. I saw this on TV many years ago. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/68 "2013-02-27T15:15:29Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > No. The film clip I saw was of men wearing American Civil War Union Army uniforms, with a firing squad. The Voice said something like “are you dead”. I saw this on TV many years ago. Never heard of anything like this. Do you have any further details? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/69 "2013-02-27T15:23:01Z")
the Wikipedia site on the Dickson film calls it the only surviving example of a Edison film with sound. This site talks about Edison’s efforts to market a kinetoscope with bsynchronized sound, and says a lot of them were “march and dance films”. It doesn’t mention any Civil War dramas: > **[The Pre-History of Sound Cinema: Thomas Edison and W.K.L. Dickson](https://spencersundell.com/writing/pre-history_of_sound_cinema_part_1.html)** > > An article about Edison's earliest experiments with sound movies, including the Kinetophone. If such a film does, it seems the authors of both these sites don’t know about it. Perhaps it has only recently been found. ---
**Author:** ![Rubixcube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Rubixcube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubixcube)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/70 "2013-02-27T15:30:34Z")
Is it possible that what you saw was a film where somebody added voices to the score? I’ve seen a few silents where this was done, for what reason I truly can’t fathom. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/71 "2013-02-27T15:38:09Z")
This site claims the first Civil War film was D.W,. Griffith’s \*The House with Closed Shutters". No Edison involvement, or sound. > **[Film's first American Civil War film - 1910 - The House with Closed Shutters...](http://filmabinitio.blogspot.com/2010/11/films-first-american-civil-war-film.html)** > >              One of the unique characteristics of the great directors of the early silent era is the sheer breadth of material that their... There were films of Civil War reunions, including one reportedly made by Edison’s studio. Did you see one of these? (I know there’s a silent film of one such re-union) This article covers some of these: [http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2009/02/rare-motion-pictures-show-civil-war-veterans-75th-gettysburg-battle-anniversary-reunion](http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2009/02/rare-motion-pictures-show-civil-war-veterans-75th-gettysburg-battle-anniversary-reunion) ---
**Author:** ![SpyOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@SpyOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpyOne)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2013, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/72 "2013-03-01T08:13:51Z")
The Goldstone recordings of the moon landings. Quick synopsis: it turns out that the lousy picture quality of the images of Apollo 11 on the moon was an artifact of translating the signal sent from space to a format and frequency compatible with broadcast television, and the picture received at the Goldstone sites was MUCH clearer. As each site received the broadcast, it recorded it as well as converting it for rebroadcast. Recordings of the rebroadcast version were recognized as historically significant and were preserved, the originals were not. A few years back, some enthusiasts noted that in photos of celebration at Goldstone facilities, the images on the monitors were much clearer than the recordings of the landings, and this prompted discussions where many Goldstone veterans commented that the video they had watched live on the monitors was much clearer than what went out on television. So folks started to try to find what had become of those recordings. NASA has no record of what happened to those tapes. The fear is that they were recorded over, as they were not regarded as important. The hope is that some former NASA employee has them in his garage somewhere, having taken them home because they were cluttering up his office. Just in case, NASA is preserving the last machine that could play those tapes, which originally was to be sold for scrap. I want ALL lost movies to be recovered, but if I had to pick one not already mentioned, that would be it. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2013, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/73 "2013-03-01T10:38:12Z")
> [@NitroPress](#): > > Hoarders. Hate 'em. It was my great pleasure to demolish a largish and very self-satisfied group of such, a decade or so back. What-cha do? And then what did the world get to see? 🙂 Thanks for the thread, it’s fun reading all of these and thinking “oh yeah, there’s another I really want to see!” Getting a clearer picture of _Metropolis_ was really cool, and seeing anything with a live orchestra is always such a kick. My SO makes fun of me, because for some reason it always makes me tear up right at the start. But there is something so overwhelming to the senses about seeing beautiful film with a live orchestra. So if I have to pick something it’s anything discovered with the original score so that we can have the live music with the screening. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2013, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/74 "2013-03-01T12:52:14Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Never heard of anything like this. Do you have any further details? Sorry-I just remember seeing this on TV , around 1986. As I remember, the film was in the Swedish National Radio Archives..and a researcher found a wax cylinder that matched the film-played together, they were of a Union Army firing squad-yo saw and heard the rifles discharge, then the commander spoke..“are you dead”. that’s all I remember seeing. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2013, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/75 "2013-03-01T14:30:20Z")
My personal lost film- in the late '50s or early '60s I went to an airshow and someone was playing old movies, one of which (iirc) was a silent film of a bunch of stuntmen forming a human chain under a bi-plane. One slipped and the chain fell. That image has stayed with me since, but now that I think about it, it could have just been a Keystone comedy scene with dummys. I guess I’ll never know… ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2013, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/76 "2013-03-04T11:28:39Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > something even the prrevious resstoration , masterful as it was, didn’t fully succeed in doing. I haven’t seen that, the last version I had the misfortune to see was the 1984 version. Which was marred by being projected at the wrong frame rate. There seems to be some uncertainty about the original frame rate, but to my untutored eye the 1984 version looked like they’d simply taken an 18 fps film and projected at 24 fps, as was common in the 1980’s. Whatever they did, it had the effect of turning the trudging workers into a quick-step dance troup, and made a farce of the worker struggling to keep up with the ‘clock’ hands. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2013, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/77 "2013-03-06T01:36:11Z")
If I really had to pick, I’d join the London After Midnight crowd, but that throng is thick already. Ergo, I’ll put in a good word for [Der Januskopf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Januskopf). Conrad Veidt as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Murnau, with Bela Lugosi in a small part. Oh yeah, baby. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2013, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/78 "2013-03-06T16:10:55Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > I would like to see the missing Spider Footage form the original King Kong. I know Peter Jackson and WETA tried to recreate it but I would have loved to see the original. This was the first one that came to mind for me as well. One of the stories as to why it was cut was that in the original test screening it was so horrifying to audiences that ended up on the cutting room floor permanently. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2013, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/79 "2013-03-06T18:20:55Z")
> [@pravnik](#): > > This was the first one that came to mind for me as well. One of the stories as to why it was cut was that in the original test screening it was so horrifying to audiences that ended up on the cutting room floor permanently. That, and Cooper claimed it “stopped the story dead”. Cooper didn’t mind cutting things out if necessary. The Spider Pit sequence isn’t the old stop-motion footage to be snipped from the vfimal film. Just the most famous. ---
**Author:** ![vislor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vislor/32/5933_2.png) [@vislor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vislor)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2013, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975/80 "2013-03-06T18:40:12Z")
> [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](#): > > The missing First and Second Doctor episodes of Doctor Who. > [@Kepler1571](#): > > This. I’m also on board with this as my first choice. I haven’t seen tons of older stuff and am worried that I wouldn’t like them because they were pioneers and I have seen the copiers work and enjoy how it was improved. Having said that, there are some older films that I enjoy but I would still worry I wouldn’t like some. But the Dr Who stuff? Yeah, I would love to see the all of the first and second Doctor! vislor [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-lost-film-would-you-most-like-to-see-recovered/650975.md?page=5)