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Weekly Round-Up – 25/04/10

EACH WEEK Wiped will be bringing you the best of the rest: smaller stories that might have passed you by, but are worth checking out all the same.

So to begin…

OPRHANED OUT OF THE UNKNOWN CLIPS ON YOUTUBE

The only remaining clips from an otherwise-missing episode of 1960s’ BBC sci-fi anthology series Out of the Unknown have been uploaded to YouTube for our viewing pleasure:

Clips from ‘LIAR!’ (tx 14/01/69) TX.14 14th January 1969TX. 14th January 1969

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFJAMiJCQkg

Also posted are the few remaining clips from ‘The Caves of Steel’ (tx 4/5/64), a BBC adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s novel of the same name. Broadcast as part of BBC2’s anthology strand Story Parade, this 75-minute production was adapted by Terry Nation and starred Peter Cushing. It’s success led story editor Irene Shubik to devise Out of the Unknown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nleL8IJxyUU

For a full list of surviving OOTU material, visit this highly informative Out of the Unknown Clips Guide.

RARE TV PLAY FEATURING JAMES DEAN AND RONALD REAGAN ‘DISCOVERED’

Last week, news sites were awash with a story concerning the ‘discovery’ of a 1950s’ American TV show featuring tragic Hollywood icon James Dean and future American president Ronald Reagan.

To cut to the chase, this is a non-news story. The “newly discovered” 23-minute drama ‘The Dark, Dark Hours (broadcast on CBS network’s General Electric Theatre on Dec 12, 1954 is already available on DVD! (see this post on excellent forum Britmovie.co.uk).

I guess it boils down to the same old story of semantics and strong headlines getting in the way of the facts. Still, if you bear that in mind, it is a good yarn.

You can read The Telegraph news story (22/4/10) here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/7620342/Tape-of-James-Dean-and-Ronald-Reagan-brawling-found.html

…and see a condensed (six-minute) version of ‘The Dark, Dark Hour’ over at The Huffington Post here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/21/the-dark-dark-hours-rare_n_546170.html

WEBSITE FOR THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS GOES LIVE

Kino International has launched a website for The Complete Metropolis, which is coming to theatres in the US this summer ahead of home release.

The newly extended version of Fritz Lang’s seminal 1927 sci-fi film follows the discovery, in 2008, of 25 minutes’ worth of lost footage in a film museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Kino’s comprehensive site includes restoration clips and trailers for The Complete Metropolis along with articles on the long journey to reconstruct the silent masterpiece.

You can find the site here: http://www.kino.com/metropolis/

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Guys And Dolls Clip Discovery

A MISSING performance from Top Of The Pops has been returned to the BBC after being spotted on the internet.

Guys n’ Dolls performance of ‘If Only For The Good Times’ hails from a wiped 1976 edition of the BBC chart show.

Guys n' Dolls

The three-minute clip, from the 12.08.76 edition, came to light after being posted on video sharing site YouTube by band member Paul Griggs.

Missing episodes enthusiast Ray Langstone contacted Griggs after seeing the video, uploaded from a domestic recording made at the time.

Ray said: “I saw the clip on YouTube, and realized it was from a wiped episode, and after a lot of research, managed to find the Poster’s email address.

“We regularly exchanged emails, and he sent me a copy. It had been taped onto a VHS, and just contains the three or so minutes of the performance you see on YouTube.”

Artist	Track
THE EQUALS	Funky Like A Train
DOCTOR HOOK	A Little Bit More (promo)
STARLAND VOCAL BAND	Afternoon Delight (Ruby Flipper)
STATUS QUO	Mystery Song (promo)
GUYS ‘N’ DOLLS	If Only For The Good Times
THE CHI-LITES	You Don’t Have To Go (promo)
JIMMY JAMES & THE VAGABONDS	Now Is The Time
TAVARES	Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel (promo)
THE BEE GEES	You Should Be Dancing (Ruby Flipper)
JAMES & BOBBY PURIFY	Morning Glory (promo)
CLIFF RICHARD	I Can’t Ask For Anything More Than You
ELTON JOHN & KIKI DEE	Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (promo)

Guys ‘n Dolls formed in 1974. The pop group  went straight in at number two in the UK charts with first single ‘There’s A Whole Lot Of Loving’ and followed with a string of other hits in the UK and Netherlands. The group disbanded in 1985.

‘If Only For The Good Times’ is unusual for a Top Of The Pops performance in that it didn’t chart in the Top 40. The recovered clip (viewable below) includes a brief introduction by that week’s host Tony Blackburn and the whole of the song.

The performance features David Van Day and Thereza Bazar, who left Guys n’ Dolls in 1977  and went on to form Dollar.

Ray received a DVD copy of the VHS clip in mid April. He has now returned the orphaned clip to BBC Archive’s Andrew Martin, in Brentford.

Ray said: “I spend several hours a week looking for missing episodes, although my methods are that of an enthusiastic amateur. Hopefully my contacts and skills will improve as time goes on.

“I mainly look for missing rock and pop TV, but anything I can find that’s been wiped or is missing is excellent.”

Singer Paul Griggs has recently released a book looking back at his days in the music industry, entitled Diary of a Musician.

BSB Appeal

FOR A BRIEF but brilliant moment at the dawn of the 1990s, a new broadcaster emerged with the promise of high quality, high brow and high fidelity programming beamed down direct from the skies.

BSB offered UK viewers original content across five homegrown channels, providing an important TV platform for future household names such as Alistair MacGowan, Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci, Steve Coogan and Chris Evans.

Sadly, as TV historian Ian Greaves has discovered, precious little remains of the BSB archives. Together with the assistance of classic TV research organisation Kaleidoscope, Ian is slowly piecing together the fate of BSB material, seeking to recover as much of it as possible.

WIPED recently caught up with Ian to talk about his project. You can read the feature here.

If you have any recordings of BSB material then Ian would like to hear from you. You can email him at: bsb@kaleidoscopepublishing.co.uk

Long-Lost Lincoln Film Gets Premiere

A LONG-LOST silent movie about President Lincoln is to get its first screening in over 90 years after being discovered in a clear out.

When Lincoln Paid was among seven fragile reels of nitrate film found by a contractor cleaning out an old barn in Nelson, New Hampshire, destined for demolition.

The 30-minute movie is particularly notable for starring and being directed by Francis Ford – older brother of celebrated film director John Ford.

Movie buff Peter Massie, who discovered the reels alongside a 35mm Monarch projector, said:

“I was up in the attic space, and shoved away over in a corner was the film and a silent movie projector, as well. I thought it was really cool.”

Massie found the film canisters in summer 2006 and temporarily stored them in his basement, before contacting a film society at nearby Keene State College.

The George Eastman House film preservation museum in Rochester, N.Y., became involved after Keene State Film professor Larry Benaquist recognised the historical and cultural significance of the material.

The college determined that the film did not exist in film archives and furthermore was the only one of eight silent films starring Ford as Lincoln to survive.

“The vast majority of silent films, particularly from the early period — the first decade of the 20th century — are gone,” said Caroline Frick Page, curator of motion pictures at George Eastman House.

“That’s what makes these stories so incredibly special.”

With a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation, the college was able to restore the two-reel film in a Colorado lab – a delicate process which took a year to complete.

The images themselves were well-preserved, likely due to cold New Hampshire winters and the sheltered location of the barn, said Benaquist.

But the 35mm nitrate film, phased out of Hollywood during the 1950s due to its volatile, flammable nature, was shrunken, brittle and damaged, with the sprocket holes (used on projectors) shredded.

“What the laboratory had to do was remanufacture the sprocket holes to a new dimension, make it in strips, adhere it to the image, and then run it through a printing process where they would print it, frame by frame,” Benaquist said.

When Lincoln Paid – about the mother of a dead Union soldier asking President Lincoln to pardon a Confederate soldier she had turned in — stars the brother of John Ford, the legendary director of classics such as The Searchers, The Grapes of Wrath and The Quiet Man.

Benaquist thinks the film was discovered in Nelson because the town is on Granite Lake, the site of many past summer camps. He explained that a boys’ camp was in the area of the barn and that he believes the films were once shown to entertain the children before being shelved and forgotten.

Helping the restoration was Mark Reinhart, author of Abraham Lincoln on Screen. He had a poor video copy of the film made from an 8mm copy that included a few scenes missing from the 35mm print.

The college combined a DVD of the restored film with another of Reinhart’s film to make its final version, to be screened on April 20th.

Released in 1913, the film was praised by Moving Picture World – a weekly trade publication for film distributors – as “a great war drama” with vivid battle scenes.

Director and main star Francis Ford, who died in 1953, aged 72, is better known for minor, mostly comic roles in at least 30 of his younger brother’s films, “often playing a coonskin drunk who can spit across the room,” said Tag Gallagher, author of the book John Ford.

“If you’re into these things, you quickly recognize him and it becomes a kind of cult thing to finding him, and he’s quite delightful,” said Gallagher.

“But if you go back to the teens, he was a very big and important director.”

According to Gallagher, Francis Ford had an important influence on John, whose fame soon overshadowed his.

During the silent-era, Francis Ford was one of many actors who portrayed Lincoln on film.

“He’s not a particularly good Lincoln, he’s kind of short and stocky,” said Reinhart, who prefers the portrayals of Ford’s contemporaries, Frank McGlynn and Benjamin Chapin.