Preservation: Recent AFI Collection Acquisitions

The following titles—listed in chronological order—have been rediscovered and acquired in recent months by the AFI's National Center for Film and Video Preservation. They are now part of the AFI Collection, a growing body of nearly 30,000 films and television programs maintained and preserved at the Library of Congress and other archives across the country. Donations to the AFI Collection continue to be received from individuals and corporations throughout the United States, as well as through international repatriations coordinated with archives in other countries.

Before their rediscovery, many of these rare titles were considered "lost" films, and were among the many thousands of American moving image treasures that are still not known to exist anywhere in the world. Leads? Contact the AFI Preservation Center at (202) 252-3120 or (213) 856-7637.

The National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute has recently acquired three "lost" feature films made in Finland in the 1930s. The films are a part of a collection of thirteen Finnish films (eleven features and two shorts) made between 1932 and 1938, donated to AFI by Robert and Dennis Pairolero, of Watersmeet, Michigan. The highly flammable nitrate prints were originally acquired by the donors' father, Peter Pairolero, to be shown to the Finnish immigrant population of the town of Ramsay, a mining community on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where Mr. Pairolero owned and operated a film theater from the mid 1920s to the early 1950s. Peter Pairolero purchased the films from Carl H. Salminen, the "American Representative of The Finnish Film Industry", with headquarters in Duluth, Minnesota. The prints remained in the Pairolero family for more than fifty years. In 1996, Robert Pairolero offered to donate them to the American Film Institute. The logistics of shipping the films from Michigan to AFI vault in suburban Maryland, complicated not only by the classification of nitrate film stock as hazardous material, but also by the remoteness of the area in question, were resolved with the assistance of U.S. Congressman Bart Stupak, who kindly agreed to transport the prints from Watersmeet to Menominee, on the southern tip of the Michigan peninsula. The second leg of the journey, from Menominee to Washington DC, was handled by Charlie Tennessen, an AFI donor and a former theater owner with substantial experience in working with nitrate film. All 13 films have been repatriated to Finland, where the preservation work on the three "lost" titles is being carried out by the Finnish Film Archive in Helsinki. The importance of this find is enormous for Finland, since of the one thousand features ever having been produced there, only 5% are still considered missing.

New Acquisitions

WHITEWASHING WILLIAM.
In 1915, Kalem Co., once a major player in the independent field, was struggling in a production environment markedly different from the one encountered by its founders in 1907. Turning to slapstick comedies, an unusual product for a company which in the past specialized in adaptations of well known literary works, Kalem decided to pair comedians Bud Duncan and Lloyd Hamilton in a series of one-reelers entitled "Ham and Bud". WHITEWASHING WILLIAM, released in October, 1915, features Bud Duncan (without "Ham") in a fast-paced comedy about two rivals vying for the hand of a rich man's daughter. The nitrate print acquired by AFI is the only surviving material on this title.

THE GOLDEN THOUGHT.
Directed by and starring Tom Mix, possibly the most popular cowboy star of all times, this two- reel western has long been considered "lost". Released in 1916, it is one of more than two hundred films Mix made for "Colonel" William N. Selig, beginning in 1909 with RANCH LIFE IN THE GREAT SOUTHWEST. In 1917, the demand for feature length films with higher production values, prompted the actor's move to Fox. Unfortunately, today only a fraction of Mix's impressive output is available for reevaluation in the U.S. Most of the Selig shorts are still lost, while a number of unique copies of his Fox features are held by European archives.

PERILS OF OUR GIRL REPORTERS.
Two chapters, one acquired from a Wisconsin collector, the other repatriated from Australia, are all that is left of this 15 episode serial, produced in 1917 by Niagara Film Studios and released by Mutual Film Corp. Unlike most serials, each chapter was complete in itself, recounting a story from the life of a female reporter, alternatively played by Zena Keefe and Helen Greene.

HUMDRUM BROWN.
Although incomplete, the nitrate material acquired by AFI through the efforts of the Idaho Film Collection at Boise State University is an important find, since it represents the only surviving material from a 1918 feature directed by Rex Ingram. Born in Dublin as the son of a clergyman, Ingram emigrated to the U.S. in 1911, entered films after a chance encounter with Thomas Edison's son, and achieved fame at Metro in 1921 with the first film version of the Blasco-Ibanez novel THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, starring the young Rudolph Valentino. HUMDRUM BROWN is one of the two films Ingram directed for the Paralta company. It features Henry B. Walthall in the title role of a meek bank clerk exploited by his brother-in-law.

PAHS AND PAPAS.
A travelogue produced in 1921 by C. L. Chester for his "Chester Screenics" series, the film depicts a visit to a Maori village ("pah") on the banks of New Zealand's Wanganui River. Acquired by AFI from a Monterey, CA, distributor and collector, the tinted and toned nitrate print will be transferred to the Human Studies Film Archives, a fascinating collection of ethnographic and anthropological footage housed at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

A PARIS HOUND.
The only existing copy of this animated short from the British cartoon series "Bonzo the Dog", released twice a month from 1924 to 1926, was acquired from an Oregon collector. Another example of the importance of international cooperation in film preservation, the film will be repatriated back to England and incorporated into the collection of the National Film and TV Archive in London.

NOTORIOUS BUT NICE.
This lurid 1933 drama about a poor clerk (played by Marian Marsh) on trial for the murder of a notorious racketeer, was placed on the Catholic Church's "condemned" list. It was directed by Richard Thorpe, a prolific filmmaker whose directing career spanned forty years, from silent westerns starring Buddy Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill, Jr., to widescreen historical adventures in the 1950s. The nitrate print donated to AFI by a private collector, will be compared with material already in the Institute's collection at the Library of Congress.

THE MAN FROM NEW MEXICO (1932) and THE SILVER BULLET (1934).
Rare nitrate prints of two westerns featuring Tom Tyler. Born Vincent Markowski in Port Henry, NY, Tyler entered films in the mid-1920s as a champion weight-lifter. Quickly becoming a cowboy star in his own right, he made a painless transition to sound, and continued his successful career well into the 1940s. THE MAN FROM MEXICO was produced by Monogram, a company founded by W. Ray Johnston in 1930, later to become well-known for its steady output of efficiently made "B" movies. THE SILVER BULLET was one of the eighteen films Tyler made for Reliable Pictures Corp., an outfit set up by Bernard B. Ray and Harry S. Webb in 1934, whose biggest star was the dog Rin-Tin-Tin, Jr.

MAPANTSULA.
This fascinating work, an anti-apartheid gangster film made by Black filmmakers in South Africa in 1988, embraces a very different perspective from the well-meaning but simplified view of the South African crisis in films like CRY FREEDOM and A WORLD APART. Its director, Oliver Schmitz, studied film at the University of Cape Town. After graduating, he trained as a cameraman in Johannesburg, and later edited documentaries for West German television. Returning to South Africa at the urging of a British producer, he made MAPANTSULA in collaboration with Thomas Mogotlane, who also plays the lead role of gangster Panic. The 35mm exhibition print was donated to AFI by producer David Hannay.

Click here for a list of some past acquisitions.