1916 William Gillette Sherlock Holmes film found

Sorry if this is old news.... I came across this in another forum. Apparently the film was found recently and is in the process of being restored. Apparently this is the definitive Holmes, being the inspiration for all subsequent portrayals.

http://www.silentfilm.org/homepage/whats-new/lost-and-found

 

Love how more lost films are being found at an alarming rate. Who knows what will be next on the rediscovered list.

 

Serious question.

How to they discover these lost films? Do people go through old storage facilities and systematically watch every marked and unmarked reel. is that their job? It must take a long time.

 

Good news, the 1914 British "A Study In Scarlet" is still missing and top of the BFI most wanted list, I guess this shows there's hope of it turning up.

 

I think usually it's a question of a big warehouse where there's some unidentified material on a back shelf way up there at the top, and either it was never marked or it wasn't entered into the computer. Or it was entered into the system wrong. There's also cases where actors or estates kept their own prints and they just turned up after many years. As one example of that, there was an unaired 1951 pilot to I Love Lucy shot on TV cameras and captured to kinescope, lost to time, and 30 years later somebody found a 16mm copy under the bed of one of the guest stars in the show. Weird stuff happens.

After Buster Keaton's death in the 1960s, somebody was going through his Beverly Hills estate and found Keaton's personal film vault on his property (!). Those silent films were long thought lost. It's said that the value of the silent films was greater than that of the house!

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2012/...ons_oncelost_film_vault_and_lovely_estate.php

 

See, goes to show us that stuff does turn up, but worried that stuff done today may never survive in 80 years time. What would it be playable on then.....

 

A few years ago they found a complete print to Metropolis in (I think) an Argentinian mine. Unfortunately, they destroyed the original and after they made a 16mm dub.

Chad

 

I went to look at a record collection a few months ago, the owner had moved into a care home and his son had put the records in the garage, anyway apart from the records there were piles of 16mm film cans, some large, some small, but probably a few dozen, also possibly some 35mm. In this particular case the guy had worked for a major company and I suspect they were industrial films from the past 80 years, but who knows what was there, unfortunately I have no idea what happened to my 16mm projector and the son probably thought they had a value greater than I would have paid for some random films, plus the records took a lot of going through so I left them, but films do turn up, maybe not old nitrate stock, but it's not just 100 year old films that are lost. By total coincidence a couple of weeks after that I was walking home and somebody had stacked dozens of film cans outside their house and covered them in polythene, again I've no idea what they were, but a couple of days later they'd gone, maybe it was a spring clean and they ended up at the dump.

 

I also heard of private collectors simply ldonating their films with major film archives, sometimes anonymously.

 

No. The print discovered in 2008 was a 16mm dub of some alternate takes that weren't used in the original movie. Interesting discovery, but hardly a preservation disaster.

Here's an LA Times story on the discovery and restoration from 2010:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/25/entertainment/la-ca-metropolis-20100425

It was in very rough shape. Here's a side-by-side comparison of the raw images next to the restored clips.


dan c

 

According to this article, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/movies/05metropolis.html it's the original print, although it was transferred in the 70s.

Chad

 

+1
lost movies and lost records.!

 

Doug Sulpy pointed me to this link:
http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2014/10/breaking-long-lost-william-gillette.html#.VC1_DvldUUc
There's a little bit more info there...........
It sounds like what they've found is in remarkably good condition and I'd love to know more about the restoration process. I'm looking forward to seeing this.

 

The 1916 Sherlock Holmes starring William Gillette will be shown on TCM tonight, Sunday Oct 18, 2015, at 9:30pm. The TCM night is called "Lost and Found" and will also show other newly found silents.

 

"Quick, Watson, the TiVo!"

 

There also appears to be a Blu Ray release of this on 11/10.

http://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holm...45202392&sr=8-1&keywords=1916+sherlock+holmes

 

Than the value of the Los Angeles!

I visited William Gillette's home in Massachusetts (It's either there or New York, I forget). It's on a river so it must be New York and the Hudson. He has a rideable train that runs around the perimeter of the property. You can't ride it anymore because some of the cliff along the river where it runs has eroded away. The house is a beautiful wooden home filled with magnificent items. A place of clean nooks and crannies filled with brilliant books. Our tour guide was obviously in love with the home. A grand thespian who assured us it is pronouced "Mr. Sherlock Home." For some reason he insisted the "S" is silent in "Holmes." My brother and I got a chuckle out of that. But the guy was an eccentric and a wonderful tour guide.

 

There is also Gillette Castle State Park in the home that Gillette built in East Haddam Connecticut along the Connecticut River. It's a great place to visit if you are in the area.

 

Crap, I wish I'd seen this post earlier. I live in the neighborhood he founded, and which bears his name, Gillette Woods. His vacation home (?) sits atop a hill overlooking my house.