Lost Movies Found Again

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I love movies. Silent movies, sound movies, horror films, musicals and so on. I live in a town that has one of the few remaining 20's style movie palaces, and I have a floor to ceiling shelf full of VHS tapes and DVDs. I am especially excited when a long lost film is found, or when once lost scenes are restored to a film. Watching the restored silent Napoleon in the aforementioned movie palace was one of the greatest cinema thrills of my life.  Restored prints of such films as A Star is Born and Lawrence of Arabia are among my prized purchases.

So recently I was excited to learn about the rediscovery of two great moments on film. One is the recovery of a great moment in sports history,  while the other captures a legendary actor in his most famous role.

The first film footage was located by the Library of Congress and shows the seventh game of the 1924 World Series. This Series was special. It featured the New York Giants (yes kids, Giants baseball used to be in New York, just like the football team) against the worst team in the history of everything, the Washington Senators (yes kids, the DC team wasn't always the Nationals). It used to be said of the Senators that they were "First in War, First in Peace, and Last in the American League." But for many year the Senators had one great player, legendary fastballer Walter Johnson.  Johnson managed to win over 400 games while pitching for the Bad News Bears of  professional baseball..  But in 1924 the stars aligned in some unique way and Washington, and Walter Johnson, got a chance at the World Series.

Johnson failed to win either start, but gamely came on in relief when the last game went into extra innings, and was thus the winning picture when the Senators pulled things out in the 12th inning. Walter Johnson was not only one of the greatest pitchers of all time, but one of the classiest people ever to play the game, and for anyone who wasn't a Giant's fan, it was a matter of great satisfaction that he finally got the World Series win.

And now we have film of it.

The other news is , for silent film fans, even more exciting.  One of the joys of film (and audio recordings) is that they allow is to experience the great performers of the past.  Long gone, they still live on film and record.  I discovered this for myself while doing research in college on the actor Edwin Booth.  Booth died in 1893, but several cylinder recordings were made, and I got the chance to hear him read a speech from "Othello". It brought him to life in a way no mere photo could do.

Recently it was announced that the 1916 silent film Sherlock Holmes has been found in France. Along with London after Midnight, the original cut of Greed, and a few others, this film, which starred actor William Gillette, has long been sought by film fans.  Gillette was the stage Holmes of his time, and set many of the Sherlockian conventions we see to this day.  Conan Doyle himself approved of the production, so it's also a good chance to see how the Author felt his character should be portrayed. Moreover this was the only film Gillette ever made, so much like those audio recordings of Edwin Booth, it will bring a performer to life again.

Soon we will have more than a few audio recordings and stills, as seen here. Exhibitions of the film will begin next year.

Film gets lost in many ways.  The originals were on highly flammable nitrate stock, and whole warehouses of classics have been lost that way.  Sometimes people didn't realize the importance of what they were watching at the time (there is no complete recording of the first Super Bowl, for instance. No one knew yet that it was the Super Bowl.) Occasionally a film executive so hates a film that he makes sure that the film or at least what was left after they hacked it up, was destroyed. (Legend has it that the complete print of the original Wicker Man is in a landfill or under a highway somewhere in England.) Early films were melted down for their silver content and early video tapes were often reused, leaving early TV shows, especially, incomplete. (Ask any Doctor Who fan.) But every once in a while film turns up in a closet, under a bed, mislabeled on a shelf.

I can't tell you how excited I get when something like this happens. Every time one of these films or audio recordings are found I feel like we are made part of a tiny miracle. It's a reminder too, that we have a chance to pass on so many treasures of the past to future generations,  but only if we take care of them.

Photo by Pintanscue / CC BY 

Trivial Pursuits

All my life I have been obsessed with trivia. My pursuit of trivia has taken two routes, accumulating random facts, and obsessively learning everything I can about any subject I am interested in. Books, articles, Internet searches, I check it all out. A long time ago my relatives refused to play Trivial Pursuit or any other trivia game with me. (The kids play trivia games, but the prefer specific topics sets  like Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit.  My daughter beat the pants of me at Twilight Trivia ) 

It probably started when I was a kid, watching  baseball. No other sport is as obsessed with trivia. Plus my dad was absolutely fascinated with trivia also, especially sports and history. I was able to easily learn things like the 12 Olympians and their attributes, the order of the Presidents of the United States, various Oscar winners,the line of descent of the Queen of England.

Really good trivia is more than just obscure facts.  The best trivia relies on a twist, or an unexpected outcome, some foreshadowing of the future or an interesting sychronicity.

Here are 5 of my favorite pieces of trivia:

In the US and around the world today there are a number of  memorials  to fictional characters. Among the most famous are the statue of the Little Mermaid in Denmark, and the statues of Peter Pan in children's parks all over the world. One of the most adorable is the statues of Mrs Mallard and her children marching into the Boston Public Garden just as they did in the book Make Way for Ducklings. (Theres Jack, and Kack, and Lack, and Mack, and Nack, and Ouack, and Pack and Quack) All over England, and at the Reichanbach Falls in Switzerland there are markers honoring events in the life of Sherlock Holmes. And in front of the Port Authority Transit Center in  New York city there is a statue of Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden, TV's most famous bus driver.


The most famous of all sled dogs, Balto, was sold to a circus after his sledding days were over and was being kept along with some of his fellow dogs in poor conditions in California when they were found by a Cleveland businessman. He went home and organized a fundraising drive to bring the dogs to Cleveland. It was successful and Balto and six of his sled mates were brought to Cleveland where they lived out their lives in comfort at the Cleveland Zoo. There is a statue of him, at the Zoo, in addition to the more famous statue in Central Park, and Balto himself can be seen, mounted,  at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where he is one of the favorite exhibits.


The career of the great 19th actor Edwin Booth was overshadowed forever by his younger brother, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Also forgotten in the shuffle was an act of heroism by Edwin, rescuing a young man who had fallen on the railroad tracks in Jersey City, NJ. The young man turned out to be Robert Todd Lincoln,  Abraham Lincoln's eldest son.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was a college professor who volunteered for the Civil War and received a commission as a Captain, was a General by the end of the war, and received the Medal of Honor for holding the Union line on Little Round Top at Gettysburg. He was also wounded 6 times during the war, most seriously at the siege of Petersburg when he was shot through both hip, the bullet damaging just about everything in between. He not only survived, but got back to his troops in time to figure in several more major battles and to receive the Southern Troops surrender at Appomattox. The Petersburg wound never really healed though, and he dealt with it for the rest of his life, while serving as governor of Maine, President of Bowdoin College, and head of the Maine Militia (putting down a major riot trying to take over the Statehouse), He died as a direct cause of the Petersburg wound in 1914...50 years after he was wounded. He was the last known veteran to die of a Civil War wound.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were friends, rivals, and at the end of their lives friends again. Both were greatly involved in the process of getting the Declaration of Independence approved by Congress, Jefferson as its chief author and Adams as its chief advocate. They were also the 2nd and 3rd Presidents of the United States. Both men died on the same day, July 4th, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence. (and by the way, the President at the time was John Quincy Adams,  John Adams' son.)

I could go on and on with this (and no doubt will in some other post some time) but for now, tell me: Do you have a favorite piece of trivia? Some interesting coincidence that just seems to good to be true?  I would love to hear about it.

Desert Island Reading

As I have previously noted, there are  a lot of books around the house, and I am always looking for more.  And although I do intend to downsize at some point, it certainly wont be to the radical point of this sort of exercise. And yet its a good thing with any possession to stop and think, occasionally, what objects do I treasure the most and just would not do without.

Exercises of this sort are usually proposed upon the lines of: you're moving to a desert island (or going into space on a long term journey) and packing room is limited. Which 5 books do you choose to take with you? More generous versions (such as the one in the Book of Lists) allow for a small group library with an encyclopedia, a Bible or other religious book, and the complete works of Shakespeare. So will I, if only cause it gives me more flexibility. Series books count as one if they are available in a single volume.

After considerable agonizing I whittled the list down:

1) The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. Simply the most important book I have ever read. Why we need myths, what we can learn from them, why diverse cultures throughout history have told the same tales over and over, and so much more is in this book. The interview style makes it more accessible for many people than some of Campbell's work can be, plus its a good one volume summary of most of his writings. For me the book has given my life structure and meaning beyond mundania. The road map of my soul.

2) I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves. Thank goodness there is an omnibus edition of  so I didn't have to use 2 choices up on one writer's work. It was hard enough narrowing down from to these 2 from Graves many works of poetry and fiction. But I can't go to the desert island without my dear friend Claudius, which is exactly how one feels about him when these books are finished. Few works of fiction ever brought a time  period and its people more to life.This is one of the works I read at least once a year. For me one of the signs of a good book is that I leave wanting more, and I never finish these books without wishing Graves had more to say about the Imperial Caesars.

3) The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was rough choosing from my many favorite detective writers, but only with Holmes can I get so much: 56 short stories and 4 novels.  Besides being the basic founding work of the genre, Doyle was a great creator of characters and atmosphere. The chemistry between Holmes and Watson has been bettered only once in detective fiction, by Rex Stout. (I couldn't decide on a single book  by him though.) I read Holmes most years too, and he's great company, though I will miss Wolfe and Goodwin and Queen and Alleyn and Father Brown when I get to that island.

4) The Lord of the Rings J R R Tolkien. Although this is available in a single volume (And Tolkien intended it too be a single book, it was the publishers who broke it up) I haven't found a single volume edition that includes The Hobbit so someone needs to get on the ball. I first read this in high school, and spent a pleasant summer reading it aloud to my little sister, and have returned to Middle Earth many times since. Like Harry Potter this is a work I have shared with my children as well, both the books, and the superb films. For all the times I have read it, I always find new things. Like most great epics its actually better once you know how it ends and can relax and observe the journey.

5) This of course is the hardest choice, a 10 way tie at least. The choice is so hard. My favorite work of the last 10 years is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but can I really take just one book from a set without the others? Can I take The Killer Angels without the volumes that bookend it? Trying to narrow down to just one book by David McCullough or William Manchester leaves me longing for the others. Finally I decide to take the mammoth coffee table size The Civil War, the companion volume to the Ken Burns series (not without a pang for Baseball) The text is excellent and the photos extraordinary. Like any great history work, it puts the reader in the time and place of the narrative, but it also raises important questions about what we became out of those events.

So what about you? What books would you take. And for all you Kindle/Nook users out there who are about to say that the infinite capacity of your device renders this little debate meaningless, lets present it this way: What if you could only afford to put 5 books on your device? What would you choose and why?