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It’s a well-known fact that about three-fourths of all Silent Era films no longer exist, their prints having been lost due to decay, neglect, or accident over time. One of the most famous of these missing movies is the 1927 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gothic thriller London After Midnight, directed by Tod Browning of Dracula fame and starring Lon Chaney as one of the first on-screen vampires. It would have been possible, however, for a film scholar to see it up until 60 years ago. This weekend, in fact, marks the 60th anniversary of a catastrophic fire on the M-G-M lot that claimed not only London After Midnight, but many more silent works as well.
At around 10 p.m. on August 10, 1965, an electrical short occurred in Vault 7, a film storage facility located on Lot 3 of the sprawling M-G-M Studios in Culver City, California. While the company had been pioneers in motion picture preservation and was working to transfer its titles to safety stock, many of the older movies were still on highly flammable nitrate reels. The fire started by the short ignited the cellulose nitrate stock, and the resultant explosion caused Vault 7’s walls and ceiling to collapse. The building didn’t have a sprinkler system. It’s said that the explosion could be heard throughout the other studio lots as well.
While there fortunately were no fatalities (studio manager Roger Mayer erroneously reported one death), dozens of silent and early sound Metro productions were lost to the ages. Along with London After Midnight, the only extant copies of two more Chaney films, 1922’s mad scientist tale A Blind Bargain and Browning’s 1928 crime drama The Big City, were destroyed.
Consumed by the fire as well were the 1928 Greta Garbo romance The Divine Woman (although a nine-minute excerpt survives) and The Actress, also from 1928 and starring Norma Shearer in the title role. Five Our Gang episodes–Yale vs. Harvard and The Old Wallop from 1927 and 1928’s Edison, Marconi & Co., Growing Pains, and School Begins–were completely or partially lost. Gone, too, was 1934’s Jail Birds of Paradise, a two-reel comedy notable for featuring Moe and Curly Howard of Three Stooges fame sans partner Larry Fine.
There was a happy ending for at least one movie feared lost to the disaster. In 1968 a print of Buster Keaton’s first M-G-M feature, The Cameraman, was found in France. Nearly 25 years later another copy in better condition was recovered and restored. Whether or not any more of the early cinematic works that fell victim to the flames 70 years ago will turn up remains to be seen.