Annie Malone is mostly unknown today, but during the first quarter of the 20th century she had a profound impact on the empowerment of African-American women. Malone was a business tycoon, style trend setter, educator, philanthropist and role model. A documentary film made in 1927 presented an in-depth celebration of her extraordinary career – but the film’s disappearance mirrors Malone’s absence from most historical texts.
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MGM’s 1930 film “The Rogue Song,” an adaptation of the Robert Bodansky-A. M. Willner operetta “Gypsy Love,” was the only sound-era production included on the American Film Institute’s 1980 list of the ten most wanted lost films. The inclusion of this title on the list was peculiar at many levels. For starters, its presence as the sole post-silent era entry, it inadvertently gave the wrong impression that few sound-era films were lost.
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For many years, the 1910 version of “Frankenstein” was the subject of endless speculation when the film was believed to be irretrievably lost. The agitation over its absence was understandable, since it represented an early foray into the horror genre and it was the first film adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel.
Strangely, much less interest has been generated by the second film version of the Mary Shelley novel. This 1915 production, titled “Life Without Soul,” was somewhat closer to its source material than the 1910 film, and it was later at the center of one of the most unusual intellectual property legal cases to emerge in the 1930s.
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The return of Smash-Mouth following the events of End Zone, this time he’s out for revenge against the cheerleaders involved in the death of his mother.
BOOTLEG FILES 794: “Der Januskopf” (1920 unauthorized version of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” directed by F.W. Murnau).
LAST SEEN: When it was theatrically released.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Murnau did not clear the rights to the Robert Louis Stevenson source material.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Excellent, provided that someone finds a print of the film.
In the early 1920s, the great German director F.W. Murnau made back-to-back horror films based on popular books from his era: “Der Januskopf,” based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and “Nosferatu,” based on Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” There was just one problem: Murnau never bothered to secure the rights to these books and tried to get circumvent copyright laws by making slight adjustments to their respective stories and changing the names of the characters.
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Tod Browning’s 1927 “London After Midnight” starring Lon Chaney is the most famous lost film of all time. In this episode of “The Online Movie Show,” film historian Daniel Titley, author of the upcoming book “London After Midnight: The Lost Film,” discusses the film’s complex history and whether it will ever seen again.
BOOTLEG FILES 608: “Spree for All” (1946 animated short featuring Snuffy Smith).
LAST SEEN: A French black-and-white print can be found on YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It was lost for decades due to intentional destruction of all copies.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Unlikely.
When considering the subject of lost films, most people fixate on productions made during the silent movie era. However, a surprisingly large volume of sound era films is considered lost, including Hollywood films made as late as the 1940s.