"Although apocryphal narratives of film preservation depict an easy villain in the studio decisions and policies that purposefully destroyed superfluous reels of film to reclaim silver before 1927," Frick writes, "the full story of how many films remain from cinema's first decades is much more complicated and difficult to piece together." In this chapter, I attempt to piece together one part of the story. In her recent book Saving Cinema, Caroline Frick insightfully warns against assuming that silent-era producers did not value their old films. Aitken's fraud and self-dealing resulted in a shareholder lawsuit and illustrated the way in which film negatives, as theoretically worthless assets, were ripe for financial manipulation. Productions was simultaneously part of a financial fraud carried out by Triangle's founder, Harry Aitken. Productions, which retitled Hart's old films and sold them to states rights exhibitors. The FTC investigated the consumer fraud and unfair competition practices of a secretive Triangle enterprise called W.H.
In the process, Triangle perpetrated both consumer and financial frauds. Triangle and its successors, more than any other producer of the silent era, exploited their library extensively and widely. Hart's struggles, three FTC cases, and many of the industry's sniping problems of the period emerged because of the Triangle Film Corporation. He wanted to destroy old films not because they were worthless but precisely because they still held market value. He perceived reissued old films as a competitive threat to the new ones.
However, McIntire's proposal to destroy all star-driven films after two years speaks to a different marketplace reality. It is also true that some producers considered the underlying negatives of their old films to be worthless, especially if the films lacked stars or production value. Accountants in the 1910s and 1920s also fully depreciated films as assets within twelve months of release. Yes, it is true that most producers took advantage of the roughly twenty cents per pound they could earn by recycling old positive prints that were worn out or no longer needed. In popular histories and movies, such as Hugo (2011), we witness the destruction of old films. We tend to imagine a growth narrative in which old films were once considered worthless, then consistently rose in value due to the emergence of new technologies, such as television and home video, and new standards of critical appreciation. The correspondence from McIntire to Hart challenges our common assumptions about the value of old movies in cinema's silent era. McIntire supported Hart's campaign against reissues, and he wanted the star to push it even further. Hart's struggle resulted in a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation that established an important precedent-boundaries for the exploitation of film libraries. Some distributors had legally obtained the films from their owners other exchanges circulated pirated prints. Let us hit them right between the horns and prove our gratitude to that motion picture public which supports us."The "bootleggers" whom Hart identified were distributors trafficking in retitled old films. McIntire, in fact, wrote to Hart in response to an advertisement the star had placed in Exhibitor's Trade Review warning that the "bootleggers of the industry are at it again.
THE VAULT FILM SERIES
From 1917 to 1920, he had engaged in a series of legal disputes to exert control over the manner in which his old films circulated. Hart did not need McIntire's letter to know that old films were a problem.
I have a lot of your old RE ISSUED pictures to meet as COMPETITION in my town." Fayetteville had turned into a nest of "snipers"-the industry's term for an exhibitor who cheaply booked one of a star's old pictures to open the same week that the star's expensive new production opened down the street. "STARS MAKE A MISTAKE NOT HAVING THE YEAR, STAMPED ON EVERY FOOT OF FILM, And include in CONTRACTS AFTER TWO YEARS ALL OLD PRINTS MUST BE DESTROYED NOT RE ISSUED that is the JUNK killing the business.
THE VAULT FILM MOVIE
Hart, one of the world's biggest movie stars. McIntire of the Rose Theatre in Fayetteville, North Carolina, wrote a letter to William S. And the Birth of the Film Library (1910s)