The Motion Picture Department is home to nearly one million film stills covering over 100 years of movie making.  Historians, scholars, students, and others from a broad range of disciplines contact us every year for access to the stills collection, both in person and remotely, from all over the world.

It is fairly simple and straightforward to find and select stills when requested by a film title or by a person’s name.  That is how the stills in the collection are physically organized in the vault; it is also how stills are most frequently requested. But what about requests for stills that show certain subjects, such as World War I airplanes, stars with their pets, Technicolor cameras on set, or…

Jewelry?

This was the task at hand when we received a request for stills of stars wearing beautiful jewelry that could be used in conjunction with the upcoming Carole Tanenbaum Vintage Collection Jewelry Trunk Show and Sale.

In this case, the catalog record unfortunately does little in trying to get at stills that show lovely pieces of jewelry on lovely actresses.  The catalog record for a still typically captures the title of the film and the actors and actresses shown in the still, but doesn’t go to the deeper level of what objects happen to be in the still, or how well accessorized the actresses are. This is where creative thinking, some research, and of course knowledge of the stills collection come into play.

A little research into jewelry designers such as Joseff of Hollywood, whose company designed jewelry for films for over 30 years, was the first step that led us to several titles as likely sources of stills featuring outstanding jewelry:  Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, Humoresque, Kismet, Singin’ in the Rain, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Cleopatra were just a few.  Our search quickly led us to the Warner Bros. Keybook Stills Collection for an abundance of stills of Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (1942) and Joan Crawford in Humoresque (1946), both very well appointed in 1940’s jewelry.

Images of even more stunning jewelry creations, worn by Grace Kelly and Jessie Royce Landis in To Catch a Thief (1955) and by Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra (1963), were found in the Core Publicity Stills Collection.

Film stills of this era were primarily shot and printed in black and white (even the stills shot for color films).  So for color images, we consulted a collection of gorgeous color transparencies from the 1950’s featuring such stars as Mitzi Gaynor in a publicity portrait for There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954) and Dorothy Dandridge in a publicity portrait for Island in the Sun (1957).

It never fails to surprise me how many different ways there are to access the stills collection, and for so many different and unexpected purposes.  Requests like these keep an already fascinating job even more fascinating!

I’ve been at the museum for 11 years now, first as an intern, then as a student at Eastman House’s L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. I was hired as a curatorial assistant and then moved into the position of cataloger for the Motion Picture Department.

My wife hates it when I talk in terms of fractions, but it’s been more than one-quarter of my life spent here at Eastman House, and the thing that attracted me, inspired me and drives me to this day is the wonderful film preservation program that we all play a daily part in.

George Eastman House has collected close to 28,000 titles in the last 60 years, and has been preserving them on film for almost as long, keeping them in vaults that will make sure they are accessible to future generations for hundreds of years to come.

Robert Osborne with Eastman House's Jared Case on the TCM set, taping the Salute to George Eastman House, airing Dec. 14.

In my current role as Head of Collection Information and Access, I get to talk to people about these films, whether it’s for exhibition at our own Dryden Theatre, or researchers who come to Rochester to view films from the collection, or institutions around the world that borrow the prints and play them at their own venues. So, when I received the opportunity to talk about some of these films with a national audience, I jumped at the chance.

Turner Classic Movies chose George Eastman House to be the focus of a 24-hour salute, providing airtime for films that have been conserved, preserved, restored, and reconstructed by the Motion Picture Department. The highlight of this salute to George Eastman House will be the introductions provided by longtime TCM host Robert Osborne and, as a representative of the museum, myself. I visited the studio on Friday, Nov. 11, to tape the segments for broadcast.

The four movies highlighted with introductions are Stanley Kubrick’s Fear and Desire (1953), Technicolor gem Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), early action film Roaring Rails (1924), and the oldest-existing film version of Mark Twain’s classic Huckleberry Finn (1920).

I did a lot of research and preparation in advance of the trip. I made sure I knew about not only the films themselves, but also the preservations that George Eastman House provided for them – the history, the technical aspects, the materials used. I tried to anticipate any question about the films that might be asked, and even prepared short papers to structure the information in my mind.

"Huckleberry Finn" (1920)

But I needn’t have worried. Mr. Osborne and the entire crew at Turner Classic Movies are so kind, professional, and generous that they made the entire experience a joy. We sat down for an hour and a half and had casual (but informative!) conversations about the films, the George Eastman House, and preservation in general. The set looked gorgeous, staged for the holiday season, and I had a great time, from the first minute to the last.

As the tribute day approaches, I will blog again, in more detail about the salute, as to what will be on, and when to watch. But the date to remember is one month from today — Wednesday, December 14 — starting at 6:15 a.m. on Turner Classic Movies.

On Thursdays in November and December, the Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House presents a tribute to one of the great sirens of the silver screen, the incomparable Elizabeth Taylor, with a film series titled A Place in the Sun: The Films of Elizabeth Taylor. 

When Taylor passed away in March 2011, so passed one of the last bona fide queens of a bygone era. While her stunning looks and tabloid-ready personal life often eclipsed her talent in the public’s eye, her staggering career lasted nearly 70 years, encompassing triumphs on stage, screen, and television. Although Taylor had been acting for several years, her big break came at age 12 as plucky jockey Velvet Brown in National Velvet. Unlike other child stars of her day, her appeal came not from her girlishness, but from her preternatural assuredness and dark beauty, traits that helped her ease into adult roles after a string of mostly forgettable contract pictures.

Taylor with Mickey Rooney in NATIONAL VELVET (1945).

She came into her own as an adult star — at age 17 — with the first of three iconic collaborations with lifelong friend Montgomery Clift, A Place In The Sun. As the intoxicating socialite who tempts working-class Clift away from his pregnant girlfriend, Taylor earned widespread acclaim and cemented her reputation as a serious actress.

It wasn’t until 1956, however, that Taylor truly entered the Hollywood stratosphere, earning four Academy Award® nominations in a row for iconic performances in films like Raintree County, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, and her first Oscar® triumph, Butterfield 8. Not classically trained, it was her charisma, her presence, and her tough charm that would come to define her acting style and persona. Taylor earned her well-earned second Academy Award® for Best Actress® for her role in the 1966 film Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?

As ‘Maggie the Cat’ in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, (1958)

Taylor spent the second half of her career using her celebrity for humanitarian efforts. Before AIDS was widely acknowledged, she was at the forefront of HIV/AIDS activism, and eventually raised $270 million for the cause that she described as “her life.” Fittingly for a dual citizen of Britain and the United States, Elizabeth Taylor was royalty in all the right ways: charming, beautiful, generous, and talented.

Please join us at the Dryden Theatre as we pay homage to one of Hollywood’s finest stars. The series begins Thursday with National Velvet. The roster also features A Place in the Sun, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Raintree County, Giant, Little Women, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Thursday, Nov. 3, 8 p.m.
National Velvet
(Clarence Brown, US 1945, 125 min.)

Thursday, Nov. 17, 8 p.m.
A Place in the Sun
(George Stevens, US 1951, 122 min.)

Thursday, Dec. 1, 8 p.m.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(Richard Brooks, US 1958, 108 min., 16mm)

Thursday, Dec. 8, 7 p.m.
Raintree County
(Edward Dmytryk, US 1957, 187 min., w/ intermission)

Thursday, Dec. 15, 7 p.m.
Giant
(George Stevens, US 1956, 197 min.)

Thursday, Dec. 22, 8 p.m.
Little Women
(Mervyn LeRoy, US 1949, 121 min.)

Thursday, Dec. 29, 8 p.m.
Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
(Mike Nichols, US 1966, 131 min.)

I have the best job. For the past five years, I’ve worked as a film archivist for a number of institutions – George Eastman House, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, the Royal Private Film and Photography archive in Bangkok, Thailand, and most recently at the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington, New Zealand on behalf of the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF). I’ve been able to take advantage of my background as a film historian as well as draw heavily on the archiving skills I gained at George Eastman House’s L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation– all while working on nitrate film and keeping a toe or two in the academic world. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better situation when I started in the field.

One of my most recent projects involves The White Shadow (1924), a 6-reel British feature film directed by Graham Cutts that includes some of the earliest on-screen work by Alfred Hitchcock. The film was recovered as part of an international collaboration between the New Zealand Film Archive and the five major nitrate-holding U.S. archives – George Eastman House, The Museum of Modern Art, The Library of Congress, the Academy Film Archive and the UCLA Film and Television Archive – to return, preserve and make available U.S.-produced films that no longer exist in US archives. The project was initiated and is coordinated by the National Film Preservation Foundation, a grant-giving organization which has provided funding to institutions in all 50 states and Puerto Rico to preserve rare films in their collections.

 The condition of the print (seen above) was shrunken, brittle and showing signs of advanced decomposition.

Through the project we’ve identified and repatriated films such as:

• Maytime (with an early performance by “It Girl” Clara Bow)
• Won in a Cupboard (the earliest known film directed by comedienne Mabel Norman)
• The Sergeant (the first known fictional film shot in Yosemite)
• Upstream (directed by John Ford)
• The Love Charm (a previously unknown early Technicolor short) and
• Pathe News: Virginian Types (featuring stencil-colored images of the residents of Old Rag Mountain, soon after it was announced that they would be evicted from their land to make way for the creation of Shenandoah National Park, and 10 years before being photographed by Arthur Rothstein as the forced-relocation was finally taking place.)

These two last films will become part of the George Eastman House nitrate collection and be preserved with funding from the NFPF. Click here to see videos of some of the newly-preserved films and a partial list of titles returning to the U.S.

So how did THE WHITE SHADOW, a British production, end up becoming part of this U.S.-film focused project? One of the goals of the project has been to inspect and identify when possible all of the items in the American section of the archive’s international nitrate collection. Given that intertitles in the film bear the name of Selznick (an American distribution company who also apparently handled the international distribution) and that the film stars Betty Compson, a famous American actress, the film had been classified (not unreasonably) as likely being an American production. Thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the NFPF was able to provide the man-power to inspect films in more detail and provide concrete identifications where possible.

Missing its opening credits (not unusual with films of this year), The White Shadow was originally inventoried as “Twin Sisters” (a placeholder title taken from the cans the films arrived in), I was able to identify the first two reels of the film based on the distributor, cast – the film stars not only Compson, but also British actor Clive Brook – information gleaned from the film stock itself (such as the date of the stock’s production that is printed on the film’s edges), and piecing together the story, then using internet resources and the archive’s reference library to confirm the film’s true identity. A week later I inspected a reel titled only “Unidentified American Drama,” and by matching the cast, sets and storyline, identified it as the title’s third reel.

With support from the National Film Preservation Foundation and the Academy Film Archive, the film has been preserved by the New Zealand Film Archive and Park Road Post-Production in Wellington. Given the condition of the print – shrunken, brittle and showing signs of advanced decomposition – the work proved difficult. Now printed on 35mm polyester film stock, new prints and duplicate negatives will be housed at the Academy Film Archive and the NZFA. The BFI will also receive a print to supplement their on-going Hitchcock preservation project. The preserved film now includes new opening credits and a coda that summarizes the missing reels, taken from a synopsis filed with the Library of Congress as part of the title’s copyright entry.

The $64,000 question is of course where are those three missing reels? There are a number of possibilities: We are 99.9% certain that the reels are not in the NZFA’s nitrate vault – though there are other as-yet unidentified reels from the same depositor in the collection, none match The White Shadow. The other three reels could have been lost or misplaced before the collector (New Zealand projectionist Jack Murtagh) acquired the film, the reels – printed on nitrate stock, which is particularly prone to decomposing when stored in warm or humid conditions – could have broken down sometime in the last 88 years, or perhaps they are, right now, sitting in another collector’s attic or basement, waiting to be discovered and reunited with the reels know to currently exist – it’s impossible to know.

The now-familiar gasp from the audience as the existing footage suddenly ends at what is possibly the film’s most dramatic scene never fails to drive home the need for conserving and preserving what titles we do have – be it ones with a famous name attached (which does make that constant problem of funding a bit easier to overcome), or equally culturally significant but long-forgotten documentaries or works by small production companies orphaned after the studio closed – and re-energizes my drive to keep looking for cinema’s lost history.

As I said, I have (what is for me) the best job in the world – after all, who knows what else is out there, just waiting to return to the screen?

I suppose it’s the feeling you get when you look at a garden you have cared for. Nothing can compare to experiencing it with your own senses, to see firsthand the fruits of your labor … that what you have planted, fed, and watered has flourished.

That was the feeling in the air at George Eastman House on Saturday, July 16, as National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Chairman Rocco Landesman and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter toured Eastman House.

NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman, left, and George Eastman House’s Tony Bannon discuss the three-strip Technicolor process in the camera gallery at Eastman House.

Hosted by Tony Bannon, the museum’s Ron and Donna Fielding Director, the guests were shown the Speed Graphic camera that shot the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima, displayed alongside the image, as well as a NASA Lunar Orbiter, Lumiere Cinematographe, and a three-strip Technicolor camera that had been used on studio lots for many celebrated MGM films.

And this was all before Landesman and Congresswoman Slaughter took their seats in the Dryden Theatre to experience films from the Eastman House motion picture archive, restored with the support from the NEA. The selected titles included the oldest film version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910), an early sound film from Theodore Case (1925), screen tests from Gone With the Wind (1939), and a documentary directed by Paul Morrissey (1965).

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, co-chair of the Congressional Arts Caucus, tells why it’s important to support the arts in Rochester and nationally.

Slaughter, co-chair of the Congressional Arts Caucus, is a longtime supporter of the arts as well as Eastman House, continuing to connect Rochester to the leadership of the arts in Washington, D.C. It for this tireless work the museum honored her with the inaugural George Eastman Medal of Honor in 2006.

The threads of George Eastman House are intertwined with those of federal agencies that serve the public, such as the Library of Congress and the National Archives. In this vein the museum’s collections and preservation schools and workshops have national and global reach and impact. But this, of course, cannot be achieved without support.

Both Landesman and Slaughter told local TV press how important it is to experience the country’s leading cultural organizations firsthand, in person.

“Film is a great art form, our cultural heritage, and right here is where it is preserved,” Landesman said. “Tony Bannon is a legend throughout the country for the work he does and we want to support him and George Eastman House.”

A private viewing in the Dryden Theatre of films from the Eastman House archive restored via support from the NEA. On the screen here is the oldest film version of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (1910)