What Kingdom Is This Anyway?

An interesting 1935 film came my way this week -- Thine is the Kingdom, Story of the Bible in Pictures.  The main interest is that no information can be found about it.  It is not listed at IMDB, nor is Centaur Productions or producer Pierre Arnaud, nor is there any info anywhere on the Internet or in J. Stephen Lang's book "The Bible on the Big Screen."  None of the actors are recognizable, so they are all amateurs or perhaps foreigners.  The hairstyles and make up of the women suggest 1920s.  It could well be a silent film re-purposed for sound since it is narrated with music but the illustrated scenes have no sound effects.  Research so far has not found any silent film from any country with scenes from the Old and New Testament.

Mr. Lang's book only covers Hollywood or foreign studio productions of films based on bible stories.  He states that no major bible films were made during the 1930s and 40s.  Thine is certainly not a major studio film.  It is mainly a curiosity.  Stories covered include Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark, (not Moses), Lot and Abraham, Elisha raising a dead child, Good Samaritan, many more, and of course the life of Christ.  It is rather cheaply produced with a small cast and many settings being outdoors or in huts.  The main design is costumes, as shown in the picture below.

This boring, lackluster poster was auctioned last year for a whopping $11.  Adam and Eve might have sold more tickets.  What, if anything, will cover their nudity?  It is a standard 28"x40" theatrical poster, which implies the film was run in movie theaters.  The auction house, emovieposter.com, has an unusual request attached: "Thine is the Kingdom, the circa 1930s religious melodrama ("All - Thrilling - Singing - Music"). If anyone knows more about this movie, please e-mail us and we will post it here."  So they never heard of it before either.

Thine is the Kingdom might have been distributed in the manner that exploitation films were taken town to town by enterprising distributors, heavily advertised for a week in advance via posters, then shown for single nights to packed houses either in a movie theater or exhibition hall.  Wikipedia: Exploitation film is an informal label which may be applied to any film which is generally considered to be both low budget and of low moral or artistic merit, and therefore apparently attempting to gain financial success by "exploiting" a current trend or a niche genre or a base desire for lurid subject matter.   Except for this film the attraction would be the highest moral value.  The "Bible belt" might have jumped at any chance to see the Bible brought to life.  Showings might well have been presented on 16mm film.

Costumes & beards abound!

The film might have been produced by a religious group and distributed at a minimal cost to churches.  A number of independent companies specialized in such films, particularly in the 1950s for TV.  Cathedral Films produced the trend-setting The Great Commandment in 1939 and I Beheld His Glory in 1953 for TV, among many other projects.  Church-sponsored films are often in the public domain because the producers dedicated them to the public and hoped for as much exposure as possible around the world.  More info can be found at Christian Film Industry entry at Wikipedia, which notes that the industry only took root and took off in the 1940s.

So what exactly is Thine is the Kingdom, Story of the Bible in Pictures and where did it come from and does anyone want to see it today?  If anyone knows or hazards a guess, please contact me.  We can include it in a future Lost & Rare release, as it has been truly lost and rare, but first will give some thought on how to find an audience. Meanwhile, here are the opening scenes!

Visit my websites at Lost & Rare and Festival Films.

Felix the Cat & Me!

First TV image broadcast!

After Charlie Chaplin, Felix the Cat was the most famous icon in the entire world through the 1920s, and may still be the most famous cat in history.  Alas, Felix did not make the transition to sound.  He never found his voice and faded from the big screen in the 1930s.  It's a complicated story about Felix' owner, Pat Sullivan, becoming an alcoholic and dying in 1933 while Felix' creator and animator, Otto Messmer, went on to other projects.  Read all about it at Wikipedia or in John Canemaker's excellent 1997 book "Felix: The Twisted Tale of the World's Most Famous Cat."

Felix holds a unique spot in the invention of television.  Wikipedia: "Felix was one of the first images ever broadcast by television when RCA chose a papier-mache Felix doll for a 1928 experiment via W2XBS New York in Van Cortlandt Park. The doll was chosen for its tonal contrast and its ability to withstand the intense lights needed. It was placed on a rotating phonorgaph turntable and photographed for approximately two hours each day. After a one-time payoff to Sullivan, the doll remained on the turntable for nearly a decade as RCA fine-tuned the picture's definition."

The broadcast image is shown above and the studio set-up on the right.

The silent Felix the Cat cartoons flooded into TV stations in the early 1950s on 16mm prints along with Edgar Kennedy and Leon Errol shorts, Soundies, B-westerns, syndicated series of live shows on kinescopes and anything else distributors could lease cheaply from defunct studios like Mascot, PRC and Monogram.  Outside of the network feeds still in their infancy, 16mm was the only format that local stations could use to expand their daily programming.

In 1953, Official Films purchased the Sullivan-Messmer shorts, added soundtracks to them, and distributed to the home movie and television markets. The films do not seem to have been sitting in some vault well preserved for re-release like at Disney or Warners.  More likely Official got whatever they could wherever they could from old exchanges, resulting in a great many Felix titles not being released to TV and many are still lost today.

As a young film collector in the mid-1970s, one of the rare deals I stumbled into was acquiring over 400 Felix prints that had been sitting in an Official Films warehouse in New Jersey.  There were many multiple copies of the same title and only around 40 different ones.  I put every one in a projector to check the quality and made a curious discovery.  Some were quite nice quality with sharp focus and good contrast; while others were dupes with lesser quality and a third generation were dupes of the dupes with poor, muddy quality.  I conclude that Official quickly wore out their original negatives and copied the positive prints they had.  They must have churned out thousands of them!

Many of the vintage Felix the Cats are in the public domain because their copyrights were not renewed or they were never registered in the first place.  However, a great many were renewed and are still owned by someone, though I am not sure who.  The original © was by Pat Sullivan.  Some good cartoons I once had but could not release are Felix Hits the Deck where he gets mixed up with a deck of playing cards come to life, a Halloween themed Felix Switches Witches where he gets chased by a witch who removes her costume at the end to reveal she's a hot number, and Felix in Romeow.

I did put 16 public domain cartoons from this collection into my first VHS exclusive release called Felix the Cat Frolics, Vol. 1 & 2.  My VHS box cover is shown above.  I do sell one collection of silent Felix today on DVD in my public domain cartoons.

From "Felix the Cat's Greatest Comic Book
Tails" by Craig Yoe at Amazon.com

Lest I forget to say it, most of the silent Felix the Cats personally animated by Otto Messmer are inventive surrealist gems that entertain as much today as the silent comedies of Buster Keaton.  My favorite public domain one is Felix in Comicalamities where the animator's hand helps Felix in a hopeless pursuit of a cute girl cat.  When she spurns him after he gives her a fur coat and necklace, Felix simply rips her off the sketch pad and tears her up.  Another great one is Felix Woos Whoopee, a 1930 sound one with a music track and mumbled voices but the style is exactly like the silent ones.  Felix gets drunk on New Year's Eve and is pursued by monsters on his trek home to wifey.  In Sure-Locked Homes Felix gets trapped in a spooky house pursued by monstrous shadows.

Because the original Felix holds a place in both the invention of TV and in 1950s TV programming, we plan to include one in the upcoming Lost & Rare Primeval Television DVD currently in preparation.  We are fortunate to have one that has been lost in its complete form for many years -- Felix in the Bone Age (1922).  At least it has not surfaced in any DVD collections to date.  IMDB only reviews a 3-minute excerpt: "Felix comes upon a caveman and his girlfriend. The girlfriend is crying, and when the caveman asks her what she wants, she points to Felix. The caveman chases Felix, who escapes by using the tails of some friendly monkeys to make his way down a steep cliff. Later he makes friends with a baby monkey, but winds up getting in a fight with a huge gorilla."  Here is a brief clip of The Bone Age that few have ever seen, followed by Comicalamities (1928).

16 mm film was introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1923 as an inexpensive amateur alternative to 35mm film format.  Initially directed toward the amateur market, Kodak hired Willard Beech Cook from his 28mm Pathescope of America company to create the new 16 mm Kodascope Library. In addition to making home movies on 16mm, one could buy or rent films from this library, one of the key selling aspects of the format.  Many silent films only survive today because the Kodascope versions found their way into collections. Felix in the Bone Age is one such happy print that still runs after 80 years!


Visit my websites at fesfilms.com and lostandrare.com.

Testing! One! Two! Three!

Dear Friends, Fans and Readers,

I recently discovered that Google Analytics was keeping track of visitors to this blog on a handy graph and - surprise - I have a lot more readers than I knew about!  Thank you for checking back weekly!  I will endeavor to post something of interest every weekend, which won't be hard with all the rare films coming along.

My focus continues to be on the Lost and Rare series as discussed in recent blog entries, but there is always more to discover.  I now have DVDs of Lost TV Pilots and Sports Immortals in stock from our duplicator for immediate delivery.  These are not only authored DVDs with menus and introductions before the films, but they have bar codes and are shrink wrapped.  In short, professional in every sense.  They are for sale at Movies Unlimited, Amazon.com, my lostandrare website and will shortly be offered by Alpha Video.  We are looking for a sports retailer to sell Sports Immortals online.

I have a new Festival Films logo as shown above, designed by Pete Bedell, that is animated at the head of each DVD before the introduction continues into Lost and Rare Film & Video Treasures.  You can view this opening at beginning of the film clip below.  In fact, and I believe it's unusual, we have brief prevue films at the website of all 10 films on the first 2 DVDs.

Complete!

So far we are mainly collecting short subjects -- cartoons, TV shows, Industrial films, vintage documentaries, advertising films, theatrical shorts and commercials.  Collections of vintage shorts are relatively scarce on DVD.  "We" refers to me (Ron Hall), Bob Campbell and Derek Myers.  Upcoming films are so fascinating we feel putting them together in thematic releases will find a large and growing audience.

Lost and Rare are the key words.  We will include a few films each time that most fans have never seen or heard of before, like episodes of Top Secret (1954) that feature the first computer to play a role on TV.  Other criteria for inclusion are TV episodes that are not out on DVD, films with better quality or more complete versions of films presumed lost for years.  An example of rare TV is The Drug Pushers episode of Martin Kane Private Eye.  An example of better quality is a rare Kodachrome print of a Judge Roy Bean and a more complete film is Felix in The Bone Age.

While filling early orders for Volumes 1 and 2, we are conducting a beta test to answer many questions about where we are and what comes next.  We are asking questions such as...

● determine suitable amount of content for future volumes ­­ 5 films, 10 films, more? 

● decide if future volumes should remain single disc, 2 discs, more?  

● determine ideal price points? 

● decide the ideal release pattern – 2 volumes released monthly ­­ quarterly?  

● find wisdom and guidance how best to tailor the series for educational markets. 

● develop creative partnerships with existing archives that share a similar mission. 

● explore potential sponsorship branding opportunities.

● explore potential for grants or in­kind help with film restoration work. 

● explore how the DVD series might be adapted for a TV and/or Webcast market. 

● explore potential theatrical venues for some of the collections. 

● explore on demand and streaming video platforms. 

● develop distributor partnerships beyond Movies Unlimited and Amazon.com. 

Lloyd Nolan as Martin Kane
"The Dope Pushers"

In short, we are sharing the website, the Lost & Rare concept and video clips with all interested parties, asking them these kinds of questions and getting valuable feedback.  If you have any answers, ideas or guidance, please email me at fesfilms@aol.com.

One discovery last week was the need to change the name of an upcoming release.  While one can't copyright a title, I had overlooked that Bruce Simon at KineVideo already had an established series called "Prehistoric TV."  After ruminating a spell, Prehistoric transformed into Primeval Television, and primeval is actually a better word since it is more mysterious and does not conjure up dinosaurs or cavemen. Primeval: "...of or relating to the earliest ages."

Last week I added to the website descriptions and film clips for Primeval Television.  This page is a work in progress -- Coming Soon.  We have the films that we show excerpts of, but are working to secure others equally as exciting and rare.  Changes and additions will show up on that web page right up until release in the fall.

Enjoy this opening from Top Secret that we bet you have never seen.  These 12 minute stories (!) starring Gena Rowlands and Paul Stewart were designed so two could run in a half-hour segment.  Here is how the computer - AMIC - is used in a typical story - The Lost Child.  A grieving scientist who has recently lost her son disappears.  A BSI agent phones headquarters to ask AMIC where to look.  Later they ask AMIC how to restore her sanity so she can report to a conference.  The answers are surprising and the resolution is quick (remember, 12 minute shows).

Many pages at the website announce "If you have a lost or rare cartoon, short, newsreel, TV show, war documentary or movie on film (except 8mm), please contact us.  We may be interested in licensing your content for our series."  So if you do, then please do that!  Email me at fesfilms@aol.com.

Visit my websites at Lost & Rare and Festival Films.

Reviews of Round 1!

A few weeks ago Festival Films released the first two DVDs in our Lost & Rare series -- Lost and Rare TV Pilots and Sports Immortals.  Four specific new releases are in the active planning stage, to be discussed in the weeks ahead, but we are now in a "beta test" phase to determine how best to promote, price and improve the current format prior to beginning a monthly release pattern in the Fall. 


Here are Victoria's opening comments:


As a writer, it’s always fun to discover something new. In this case, what’s new is actually old but that makes it even more fun. A new series has been released on DVD called Lost & Rare Film and TV Treasures. The first from the series to be released is Lost & Rare Vol. 1: Television Pilots—five half-hour shows featuring some serious Hollywood talent from the 1950s golden age of television. For those who don’t know, a pilot is a sample episode shown to a potential sponsor or aired on a network to test audience response.


It’s hard to say which pilot is the biggest treasure—Maggie, featuring a 23-year-old Margret O’Brien in her fourth appearance with Leon Ames as her fictional father? Meet McGraw, with Frank Lovejoy delivering a snappy film noir tight enough to be a movie? The shaggy and bumbling Munroe is utterly unlike the suave Lassie and is a foretaste of other military/buddy sitcoms. Ed Wynn is also a bit shaggy and bumbling, which is what makes The Ed Wynn Show so appealing.

I can't recommend enough the fascinating film articles and lively discussions found weekly at Movies Unlimited's Movie FanFare.  This is basically a blog section written by an army of informed film fans and enthusiasts.  My Facebook friends often post a link to their latest article that has appeared at Movie Fanfare.  A week ago Victoria Balloon wrote a review of Lost TV Pilots for Movie FanFare that has received 32 comments so far.  One of the odd comments was that the writer could not find the DVD for sale on Amazon.com.  It is for sale at Amazon, but of course they read about the release at the Movies Unlimited website, and might have thought to look for it there!  Movies Unlimited does not use their FanFare section to blatantly promote videos they sell, but common sense says to check with them first.


Lost and Rare TV Pilots is also for sale at Amazon.com where it has received a favorable review especially for Munroe:  All of the shows were really good, but the standout for me was the episode of a show called 'Munroe'. Munroe is the name of a dog in the K9 corps, and I was totally impressed with this show. Why it was not picked up, I do not have any idea. If it were picked up, I think I would have preferred it to Gomer Pyle. 

A major review just appeared by Editor Jef Burnham at the highly recommended Film Monthly.  Please follow that link for the complete review.  I reprint here Jef's comments about 1936 Olympics Highlights:


Although I’m sure those four pieces will greatly appeal to serious sports enthusiasts, the final piece in the collection, 1936 Olympic Highlights (1936), is in fact a significant historical text outside of any athletic context and, in my eyes, fully worth the price of admission. If you don’t already know, the Nazi Party in fact hosted the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, a mere three years before the Invasion of Poland. Thus, this piece constitutes a significant historical record. 1936 Olympic Highlightsincludes footage from the opening ceremony, in which the German National Anthem played over the march of the United States’ athletes and the Hindenburg flew overhead, as well the games themselves, which prove to be quite amusing in context. For although the Nazis obviously intended the event to serve as propaganda for the Aryans’ superior athletic abilities, 1936 Olympic Highlights reveals that the good old U.S. of A. ultimately trounced the Nazi Olympians at virtually every turn.


Visit my websites at lostandrare.com and fesfilms.com.

A Few New Wrinkles!

Holiday Weekend!  A good time to remind about a few Café Roxy/Festival Films basics!

New Comedy Program for Theaters!
(Showtime info goes in box at bottom.)

My Festival Films website averages about 110 hits a day, and of those 77% are new visitors (info thanks to google analytics).  I do not advertise DVD sales to the general public, though I will gladly sell to anyone who happens to find me.  New visitors usually find me by doing an Internet search on "Public Domain Films."  A Google search just now puts me at #9 and Yahoo search on their first page in the #8 position.  I do not lobby to move up the list and believe I hold that coveted first-page position because I have been around so long.  The exact Yahoo listing is:

Festival Films | Public Domain Films | Home

Festival Films has been in business for over 30 years selling Public Domain Films, TV Shows, Stock Footage, 16mm Films, Movie Posters, DVDs and Video Masters.

www.fesfilms.com/public-domain - Cached

The public knows about Public Domain and so they search me out.  This results in weekly email or phone inquiries that start: "I just bought an old movie theater and am thinking about...." or "I'm starting a TV station and...."  That latter inquiry is not a joke.  I have recently entered a relationship with a TV station and I don't even know their name or location, but the owner is friendly and wanted 3 hours of public domain films a day and wants me to program them.  More about all this later if I get a link to their website.  Early results: "It seems the programming you have previously sent has been popular with our audience. We are getting positive feedback."


One new wrinkle I came up with for this station was an extended Saturday Matinee.  This involves running one of the Matinee Programs every Saturday, which with TV commercials comes to two hours, but then adding a second matinee feature to flesh out a 3-hour time slot.  The first Matinee feature that accompanies Chapter #1 of "Radar Men from the Moon" is "The Most Dangerous Game," and the logical second feature is a 53 minute Roy Rogers western.  In week 4 when the feature is a western -- John Wayne in "Hell Town" -- I sent an East Side Kids film (Kid Dynamite) to go with it so as not to have two westerns.  If they load up the 3 hours with commercials, and I have no way of telling if they do, then they can eliminate one of the cartoons to create more ad time.

Thinking of Roy Rogers, I recently obtained a number of new film transfers of his films (thanks to partner Derek Myers) that I simply did not have decent quality on previously, and I put these together into 4 double features for sale on Amazon.com.  As I say in a brief introduction I added: "You can finally see what's going on in all those night scenes."  Will advertising "New Film Transfers" resonate with fans who have been looking...?  I think perhaps it will at $12.95.

Red River Valley is a key Roy western as it is his first "modern" western set in the present with cars alongside horses.  It is also his first film with future sidekick Pat Brady, who made quite a comic foil to Gabby Hayes in this period.  Both films feature lovely Gale Storm as second leading lady.  First lead goes to a comic lady, Sally Payne, who goes for Pat while Gale and Roy connect for the fadeout.  Roy probably endeared himself to his young boy fans by rarely kissing in his movies, but in the second film, Man from Cheyenne, he kisses both Sally and Gale in the first five minutes.  What are you waiting for?  Go watch these films!

The Hollywood Theater in Dormont, PA, has been getting public domain programs from me for a year and mixing them in with shows they lease from others.  They added a little extra fun when they ran my 12 Nights of Horror and flew in a skeleton during House on Haunted Hill and recreated the body-less woman onstage during Brain That Wouldn't Die.  Last week they requested a special program based on "Lotsa Laffs" except with complete shorts.  I like filling special requests because if a show will work one place, then I can offer it to others on my website.

For those unfamiliar with programs offered by Café Roxy, or for a quickie reminder, I make a poster for every show.  The poster can be taken right off my website and either printed or the jpeg image can be used on your own website.  The empty rectangle is where you can put info about theater name, address, date and showtime.  I made the poster shown up top for the Dormont.  Here is how they are advertised in the Comedy section of fesfilms.com:

Lotsa Laffs! 105m. Hilarious shorts and cartoons in one giant laff-fest for movie theaters or Internet streaming. "Our Gang Follies of 1938," W.C. Fields in "The Dentist," 3 Stooges "Disorder in the Court" and Abbott and Costello "Who's On First?" -- plus cartoons "Arctic Giant" with Superman, Betty Boop in "Is My Palm Read?" and "Popeye Meets Ali Baba" and more! Check out these additional short comedy collections of Lotsa Laffs!

These are not new films.  They are not rare films.  But they are hilarious and good-to-go for movie theaters who want time-tested programs all put together for them.  Your audiences will thank you, and more importantly they will laugh loud and long!

Lost & Rare -- Found & Launched!

I have a new website: lostandrare.com and video line.  Please explore, watch lots of video prevues in our first two releases and have fun.   Each volume strives to include films that die-hard film fans have never heard of or seen, or have not seen in good quality, or in color, or ... you get it.  How did this all come to happen?

I have been working with two film enthusiasts and public domain experts for some years, who were aware of each other through a common link -- me -- but had not been in touch.  First is Bob Campbell, the producer of the hit PBS series "Matinee at the Bijou" in the 1980s.  The show recreated a Saturday Matinee with a serial chapter, cartoon, short subjects and exciting matinee "B" features like a mystery, Roy Rogers or Dr. Christian.  The series was an incredible hit that initiated many young film fans into "old" movies, fans who remember fondly and have clamored for more ever since.  Bijou ran for five original seasons on PBS, plus re-runs for years after.  You may recall the nostalgic theme song by Rudy Vallee.  For more info check out The Bijou Blog.

I had contributed one film back then -- One Frightened Night -- and am listed in the credits for season 4, but had no contact with Bob at that time.  Through a mutual friend Bob and I were introduced about 6 years ago and have been working since on various projects, one of which is a revival of Bijou in Hi Def.  Much more to say about recent developments soon when we have definite news to report.

The second associate is Derek Myers, who provides public domain films and TV shows to channel WGGS-TV in Greenville, SC, and to sister station WATC TV-57 in Atlanta, where viewers enjoy Roy Rogers, Bonanza, Beverly Hillbillies, Dragnet and more.  Derek loves to find original 16mm film prints and make his own transfers.  He has quite a collection of My Little Margie, Four Star Playhouse, Ozzie and Harriet, Judge Roy Bean (black and white) and many more.  We started trading films and information and have sold some video masters to companies that have issued them on DVD.

The final partner in the Lost & Rare team is producer/editor Peter Bedell, an associate of Bob's in Medford, Oregon, who authors the DVDs and also designed the box cover logo with film strip and vintage TV and the animated Festival Films and L&R intro in the video below.

In 2011 Derek acquired a rare spiritual Christmas film Star of Bethlehem in which James Mason and his family relate The Nativity (with a cast of children).  I discussed this a year ago in a previous blog.  Rather than sell the film to some other company, we got the idea to release it ourselves on DVD along with other Christmas films not on the market.  In February of this year Bob Campbell was sorting through films he had acquired in the 1980s for Bijou but had not used, or forgotten about or never even watched.  Many were quite fascinating -- Rare, Forgotten and Lost but now Found.  Hmm ...

Bob wanted a few transferred from 16mm to video and I said Derek could do that.  The first film was the 1961 TV pilot for "Jane Powell Show" so Bob could give a copy to Jane Powell.  Everything suddenly fell into place.  Bob had another pilot no one knows -- Munroe.  Derek had a Margaret O'Brien pilot called Maggie.  I suggested that one of Derek's obscure TV shows Meet McGraw had started as a 1954 episode of "Four Star Playhouse" and so was a kind of TV pilot since it turned into a detective series starring Frank Lovejoy in 1957.  I added the 1958 Ed Wynn Show to the mix as it had always appealed to me because Ed addresses the audience/sponsors at the end in a direct appeal to sell the show.  It turns out the cast of Munroe made a similar appeal.  5 pilots = 1 DVD release called "Lost and Rare TV Pilots."

Bob also had on film a rare 1939 baseball film -- Touching All Bases -- that I discussed a few weeks ago.  With much effort one can find this for sale on the Internet, but it is not promoted, not on view at Youtube and so is pretty much unknown or "Lost" to baseball fans because they do not know about it.  This 1939 celebration of Baseball's Centennial is simply fascinating.  We added four other vintage sports shorts from the Bijou collection and call our second volume Sports Immortals.  We will promote it  online, sell through Amazon, Movies Unlimited, etc., and also pursue educational sales.  Sports Immortals is on sale now at the new Lost & Rare website.

We are excited about upcoming rarities for 2012 release, such as:

• Unfinished Rainbows -- 1940 Technicolor docu-drama about the early history of aluminum, featuring the first credited screen appearance of Alan Ladd in his first color film role.
• Comic Strips of Television -- Lost 1948 Jay Ward pilot for the first cartoon series made for Television -- Crusader Rabbit -- plus Dudley DoRight's first appearance!  Watch a timely comic bit from "Hamhock Jones" below.
• I'm a Civilian Here Myself -- 1945 satirical Robert Benchley short produced for the Navy.
• The Butcher, The Baker, The Ice Cream Maker -- Innovative 1955 animated short -- first time in color (mint)!
• Golf -- 1922 two-reel slapstick comedy with Larry Semon and Oliver Hardy! Goofy gopher sequence may have inspired Caddyshack!
• Star of Bethlehem -- Unusual 1954 story of the Nativity produced by James Mason and featuring him and his family and five-year-old Jerry Mathers as Joseph!!
• The Columbia -- 1949 rare documentary about the Columbia River, with 3 songs by Woody Guthrie!
• Faith, Hope and Hogan -- 1950s Christophers Show with Ben Hogan, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Phil Harris!
• I.A.T.S.E. -- Lost historical 1946 short tells the history of The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees with rare film clips from the theater and movies! Jolson's entire performance of Mammy from The Jolson Story as never before shown.

And here are previews of each!



If you have a lost or rare cartoon, short, newsreel, TV show, war documentary or feature on film, please contact us. We may be interested in licensing your content for our series!
Please visit my original Festival Films website offering public domain Hollywood films for all purposes, and the new www.lostandrare.com website.  Thanks from Ron Hall!

TV Pilots - Lost & Rare!

Most everyone knows the concept of the TV pilot -- a sample show produced since the dawn of television and still being made today (though the costs have increased a hundred fold). They were shown to networks, to sponsors and to test audiences to determine if they would be successful if turned into a series. Hundreds were made and many went on to become popular TV shows, while others changed drastically. For example, the Dick Van Dyke Show evolved from a sit-com pilot starring Carl Reiner. Some died a quiet death, never hit the airwaves and are beyond "forgotten" into the realm of "never heard of." 

The most unique may be Kimbar of the Jungle (1949) starring muscleman Steve Reeves, since it is the first and only chapter of a planned 13-chapter adventure serial similar to the 1935 serial The New Adventures of Tarzan. Reeves plays a Tarzan clone in his only vine-swinging appearance. The 15 minute episode can be viewed on YouTube.

Unsold TV pilots made before 1964 are often in the public domain. The reasoning must have been, if they are not turned into a series, then what would have been the point of copyrighting and renewing them? The producers may have felt that way since they certainly proceeded to bury their losses and forget as fast as possible. 

Many more pilots were made in the 1950s and '60s than today since the costs were far less. An intriguing one that many cinephiles want to see (just once!) is Here Comes Tobor from 1956. This is because Tobor is the robot from the 1954 sci-fi featureTobor the Great and the world loves robots!  The plot has America's top secret super robot being sent to investigate a mysterious signal from a missing atomic submarine. Sounds good, but the execution of the pilot was only so-so and the show was not picked up. (Still is from the TV pilot.)

There must be hundreds of lost and obscure TV pilots out there! Recently I learned about a forgotten 1953 pilot called Johnny Nighthawk. Howard Duff is the owner of a one-plane wildcat airline who is hired to pick up a rare antique in San Francisco and fly it back to Los Angeles. The flyboy soon meets a man who dies in his hotel room, a trigger happy sexy dame (film legend Angela Lansbury), underworld hoodlums, the police, murder, and a priceless vase in Chinatown. It aired only once on Ford Television Theater and was titled The Ming Lama. 

I also recently heard about a 1965 Bette Davis pilot created by Aaron Spelling called The Decorator that  you can also enjoy on YouTube. The inimitable Miss Davis stars as a financially broke interior designer who fails to understand her precarious position. She sleeps to noon and saunters around her house smoking cigarettes as only Davis could smoke them. 

The same google search turned up Bette's first TV pilot from 1958, that I also had never heard of, called Paula. Bette had a different idea for her television pilot in 1958. Paula was to be a light comedy/drama about a successful Broadway theatrical agent (herself, of course), her agency and the eccentric clients they take on. The women wouldn't be played for laughs, they would do the playing. Sounds as if this might have been a real winner! Why Bette never attracted a sponsor for TV is a mystery perhaps only Peter falk's Columbo might well have solved. 

Other major movie stars also made pilots that were not picked up. The Jane Powell Show, made in 1961, is a good example of a lost pilot the world has never seen or scarcely heard of.  Jane plays a prominent singer and night club entertainer who abandons TV and film offers on a whim to marry a small town college professor and settle down to a campus life.

A very witty script and a lot of familiar Hollywood faces make it a shame this show didn't find a sponsor. The chemistry between Jane Powell and up-and-coming co-star Russell Johnson (the Professor on Gilligan's Island, 1964-67) is engaging.  The concept for this romantic sex comedy just may have been inspired by the success of 1959's Pillow Talk that launched the popular series of Doris Day and Rock Hunter sex comedies. The banter and bickering of the leads and the situations they encounter are similar, Jane even wears the same hair style as Doris  and Russell in many scenes is a dead-ringer for Rock.
  
After locating rare and lost TV shows and movies for years, I am joining forces with a number of private film collectors around the country to release the worthiest of titles under the Festival Films banner.  The new series is called LOST & RARE: Film and TV Treasures. Volumes 1 and 2 -- "Television Pilots" and "Sports Immortals" -- will be available on May 15th from vendors soon to be announced, or they may be ordered now from www.lostandrare.com. 

Meanwhile, please enjoy these sample clips from the "Lost and Rare" pilot episode for The Jane Powell Show. 








I am seeking similar unknown film and TV gems of all kinds from private collectors for future releases.  Please contact me if you have any truly rare films that we can share with the world for our mutual benefit!

 Visit my website at Festival Films.