List of rediscovered films
Encyclopedia
This is a list of rediscovered films that, once thought lost, have since been discovered in film archives or private collections. See also:

1890s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1896 Défense d’afficher Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...

 
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...

 
The film was recovered in 2004.
1897 X-Rays George Albert Smith
George Albert Smith (inventor)
George Albert Smith was a stage hypnotist, psychic, magic lantern lecturer, astronomer, inventor, and one of the pioneers of British cinema, who is best known for his controversial work with Edmund Gurney at the Society for Psychical Research, his short-films from 1897-1903 which pioneered film...

 
1899 Cléopâtre
Cléopâtre (1899 film)
Cléopâtre is a short silent film about resurrecting the mummy of Cleopatra.Released in 1899, Cléopâtre was one of the earliest horror films ever made. It was written and directed by Georges Méliès....

Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...

 
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...

, Jeanne d'Alcy
Jeanne d'Alcy
Jeanne d'Alcy was the earliest French film actress. She was the wife of French cinema pioneer Georges Méliès from 1926 until his death in 1938....

 
Was thought to be lost until a copy surfaced in 2005 in Paris.

1900s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1902 Le Voyage dans la Lune
Le Voyage dans la Lune
A Trip to the Moon is a 1902 French black-and-white silent science fiction film. It is based loosely on two popular novels of the time: Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and H. G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon....

Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...

 
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...

, Jeanne d'Alcy
Jeanne d'Alcy
Jeanne d'Alcy was the earliest French film actress. She was the wife of French cinema pioneer Georges Méliès from 1926 until his death in 1938....

 
Animated hand-colored ending discovered in a barn in France.
1909 El Hotel eléctrico
El Hotel eléctrico
El hotel eléctrico is a 1908 silent Spanish comedy-fantasy film directed by Segundo de Chomón.-Background:The film displays one of the earliest uses of stop motion animation in history, though it is not de Chomón's first try at this technique. His 1906 film, Le théâtre de Bob, use animated puppets...

Segundo de Chomón
Segundo de Chomón
Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz was a pioneering Spanish film director. He produced many short films in France while working for Pathé Frères and has been compared to Georges Méliès, due to his frequent camera tricks and optical illusions.-Selected filmography:*1902: Choque de trenes,...

 
Segundo de Chomón
Segundo de Chomón
Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz was a pioneering Spanish film director. He produced many short films in France while working for Pathé Frères and has been compared to Georges Méliès, due to his frequent camera tricks and optical illusions.-Selected filmography:*1902: Choque de trenes,...

, Julienne Mathieu
Julienne Mathieu
Julienne Mathieu was one of the earliest French silent film actresses who appeared mostly in French silents between 1905 and 1909.She appeared in the Spanish silent film El Hotel eléctrico released in 1908, one of the first films to incorporate stop animation.-Filmography:*Jeu de patience, Le *Roi...

 
1909 La Tosca André Calmettes, Charles Le Bargy
Charles le Bargy
Charles Gustave Auguste le Bargy was a French actor and early film director.He was born at La Chapelle...

 
Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage and early film actress, and has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known". Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas...

 
1909 Jephtah’s Daughter: A Biblical Tragedy

1910s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1910 Frankenstein
Frankenstein (1910 film)
Frankenstein is a 1910 film made by Edison Studios that was written and directed by J. Searle Dawley.It was the first motion picture adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The unbilled cast included Augustus Phillips as Dr...

J. Searle Dawley
J. Searle Dawley
J. Searle Dawley was an American director and screenwriter. He directed 149 films between 1907 and 1926. He was born in Del Norte, Colorado and died in Hollywood, California.-Selected filmography:...

 
Charles Ogle
Charles Stanton Ogle
Charles Stanton Ogle was an American silent film actor.-Biography:Born in Steubenville, Ohio, Ogle first performed in live theatre, making his first appearance on Broadway in 1905. He embarked on a career in film with Edison Studios in The Bronx, New York in 1908, appearing in The Boston Tea Party...

 
A print was bought by a film collector in the 1950s, who was not aware of its rarity until decades later.
1911 A Manly Man Thomas H. Ince
Thomas H. Ince
Thomas Harper Ince was an American silent film actor, director, screenwriter and producer of more than 100 films and pioneering studio mogul. Known as the "Father of the Western", he invented many mechanisms of professional movie production, introducing early Hollywood to the "assembly line"...

 
1911 At the Duke's Command Thomas H. Ince
1911 The Colleen Bawn
The Colleen Bawn
The Colleen Bawn, or The Brides of Garryowen is a melodramatic play written by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault. It was first performed at Miss Laura Keene's Theatre, New York, on 27 March 1860 with Laura Keene playing Anne Chute and Boucicault playing Myles na Coppaleen. It was most recently...

1911 Karađorđe Ilija Stanojević-Čiča  The first Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

n feature film, thought lost since 1928. Material from this movie was found in Austrian Film Archives in 2003.
1911 The Mirror Thomas H. Ince
1911 Maid or Man Thomas H. Ince
1911 The Sultan's Garden Thomas H. Ince
1912 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912 film)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a 1912 horror film based on both Robert Louis Stevenson's novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and on the play version of Thomas Russell Sullivan. Directed by Lucius Henderson, the film stars actor James Cruze as the dual role of Jekyll/Hyde.-Plot...

Lucius Henderson  James Cruze
James Cruze
James Cruze was a silent film actor and film director.-Life:Cruze was born as Jens Vera Cruz Bosen. The Vera Cruz middle name came from the battle of Vera Cruz. He was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but did not practice the religion after his teenage years...

 
1912 A Fool and His Money
A Fool and His Money
A Fool and His Money is a 1925 silent film starring William Haines and Madge Bellamy and is based on a novel by George Barr McCutcheon. The film was directed by Erle C. Kenton and was filmed before in 1920. That version starred Eugene O'Brien and Rubye De Remer....

Alice Guy-Blaché
Alice Guy-Blaché
Alice Guy-Blaché was a French pioneer filmmaker who was the first female director in the motion picture industry and is considered to be one of the first directors of a fiction film.-Early years:...

 
1912 In Nacht Und Eis
In Nacht und Eis
In Nacht und Eis , also called Der Untergang der Titanic is a 1912 German film about the sinking of Titanic. The filming began during the summer of 1912 and the film premiered that winter. The film's special effects are primitive by modern standards, but were impressive for that time...

Mime Misu  The first Titanic movie, was presumed lost around 1914 but found in a private film library in Germany in 1998.
1912 Under Two Flags
1912 Richard III
Richard III (1912 film)
Richard III is a 55-minute film adaptation of Shakespeare's play, starring Frederick Warde as the title character. The film, a French/U.S. coproduction, was produced by Film d'Art and released through the independent states rights film distribution system...

André Calmettes, James Keane
James Keane
James Keane may refer to:*James Keane , American actor*James Keane , Catholic prelate*James Keane , Australian ice hockey player*James Keane , Irish accordionist...

 
Robert Gemp, Frederick Warde
Frederick Warde
Frederick Barkham Warde was an English Shakesperian actor who relocated to the United States in the late 19th century.In the late 1870s he partnered with actor Maurice Barrymore and the two agreed to tour plays around the United States. Warde would have one section of the country while Barrymore...

 
The first known full-length William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 film. Found in a projectionist's collection in 1996.
1913 Poor Jake's Demise
Poor Jake's Demise
Poor Jake's Demise is a silent comedy film directed by Allen Curtis and featuring Lon Chaney, Sr. For many years the film was considered to be lost, but it was rediscovered in 2007.-Cast:* Max Asher - Jake Schultz* Daisy Small - Mrs. Schultz...

Allen Curtis
Allen Curtis
Allen Curtis , was an American film director of the silent era. He directed 278 films between 1913 and 1922.He was born in New York, New York and died in Hollywood, California.-External links:...

 
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...

, Louise Fazenda
Louise Fazenda
Louise Fazenda was an American film actress, appearing chiefly in silent comedy films.-Early life:Of Portuguese ancestry, she was born in Lafayette, Indiana. Her father, Joseph Fazenda, was a merchandise broker. After moving west Louise attended Los Angeles High School and St. Mary's Convent...

 
Chaney's first credited role. Was discovered in 2007 among several hundred other reels of film in an English collection.
1913 The Prisoner of Zenda
The Prisoner of Zenda
The Prisoner of Zenda is an adventure novel by Anthony Hope, published in 1894. The king of the fictional country of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation and thus unable to attend his own coronation. Political forces are such that in order for the king to retain his crown his...

Edwin S. Porter
Edwin S. Porter
Edwin Stanton Porter was an American early film pioneer, most famous as a director with Thomas Edison's company...

 
1913 When Lincoln Paid
When Lincoln Paid
When Lincoln Paid is a silent film, written by William Clifford, and directed by Francis Ford, who also appears in the film as Abraham Lincoln.-Plot:...

Francis Ford
Francis Ford (actor)
Francis Ford was a prolific film actor, writer, and director. He was the older brother of film director John Ford. He also appeared in many of John Ford's movies, including Young Mr. Lincoln and The Quiet Man.He starred in the 1912 two-reeler The Deserter by Thomas H. Ince and acted in over 400...

 
Recovered in 2006.
1914 The Active Life of Dolly of the Dailies
The Active Life of Dolly of the Dailies
The Active Life of Dolly of the Dailies is a 1914 drama film serial directed by Walter Edwin. The serial was considered to be lost in entirety, until a copy of the fifth episode was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive in 2010.-Cast:...

Walter Edwin Mary Fuller
Mary Fuller
Mary Claire Fuller was an American stage and silent film actress and screenwriter.-Early life:Born in Washington, D.C., to Nora Swing and attorney Miles Fuller, she spent her childhood on a farm. As a child, she was interested in music, writing and art...

, Yale Boss
Yale Boss
Yale Boss was an American child actor of the silent screen.-Biography:New York-born Boss, was one of the screen's first child stars...

 
Discovered in 2009 in the New Zealand Film Archive
New Zealand Film Archive
The New Zealand Film Archive is a charitable trust dedicated to the collection, preservation and viewing of mainly New Zealand films and videos made between 1895 to the present day.- Background :...

 
1914 Won in a Closet
Won in a Closet
Won in a Closet is a black-and-white comedy film, notable as the first film directed by Mabel Normand.-Preservation status:This film, previously thought to be a lost film, was discovered in 2010 in New Zealand where it was known as Won in a Cupboard. This makes the film the oldest surviving film...

Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand was an American silent film comedienne and actress. She was a popular star of Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios and is noted as one of the film industry's first female screenwriters, producers and directors...

 
Mabel Normand Discovered in 2009 in the New Zealand Film Archive
1914 Cruel, Cruel Love
Cruel, Cruel Love
Cruel, Cruel Love is a 1914 American comedy silent film made at the Keystone Studios and starring Charlie Chaplin.- Plot :This early Chaplin film has him playing a character quite different from the Tramp for which he would become famous. He is a rich, upper-class gentleman whose romance is...

George Nichols
George Nichols (actor)
George Nichols was an American actor and director. He appeared in 221 films between 1908 and 1928. He also directed 103 films between 1911 and 1916.He was born in Rockford, Illinois and died in Hollywood, California....

 
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...


Minta Durfee
Minta Durfee
Araminta Estelle "Minta" Durfee was an American silent film actress from Los Angeles, California, possibly best known for her role in Mickey .-Biography:...

 
Complete nitrate copy found in South America
1914 Der Hund von Baskerville (The Hound of the Baskervilles)
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of four crime novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West Country and tells the story of an...

Rudolf Meinert 
1914 Salomy Jane
Salomy Jane (1914 film)
Salomy Jane is a Western feature film based on Bret Harte's 1898 novella of the same name. The film is the only known surviving complete work of Beatriz Michelena and the California Motion Picture Corporation.-Plot:...

William Nigh
William Nigh
William Nigh was an American film director, writer, and actor. His film work sometimes lists him as either "Will Nigh" or "William Nye".He was born in Berlin, Wisconsin....

, Lucius Henderson
Beatriz Michelena
Beatriz Michelena
Beatriz Michelena was an American actress during the silent film era, known at the time for her operatic soprano voice and appearances in musical theatre. She was one of the few Latina stars visible on the silver screen in the United States in the 1910s...

, House Peters 
Complete nitrate copy found in Australia in 1996.
1914 The Girl Stage Driver
The Girl Stage Driver
The Girl Stage Driver is a silent short Western film. It was thought to have been lost, but an incomplete 35mm positive print was found in 2009 in the New Zealand Film Archive. The film was shot in Tucson, Arizona.-Cast:...

Norbert A. Myles, Edna Payne
Edna Payne
Edna Payne was an American silent screen motion picture actress.-Career:Her parents were both stage actors, so Payne began her career as a child in vaudeville, making her movie debut in Higgenses Versus Judsons . She played the lead in reel dramas, and later in a few reel westerns including The...

, Will E. Sheerer
Webster Cullison An incomplete 35mm positive print was discovered in 2009 in the New Zealand Film Archive
New Zealand Film Archive
The New Zealand Film Archive is a charitable trust dedicated to the collection, preservation and viewing of mainly New Zealand films and videos made between 1895 to the present day.- Background :...

.
1914 A Thief Catcher
A Thief Catcher
A Thief Catcher is a one-reel 1914 American-made motion picture, produced by Mack Sennett for his Keystone film company, directed by Ford Sterling, and starring Sterling, Mack Swain, Edgar Kennedy, and Charles Chaplin as a policeman...

Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...

 
A print was discovered in 2010 at a Michigan antique sale.
1914 The Stain
The Stain (film)
The Stain is a 1914 silent drama film directed by Frank Powell and featuring Theda Bara in her onscreen debut. A print of the film was discovered in Australia in the 1990s.-Cast:* Edward José - Stevens * Thurlow Bergen - The young lawyer...

Frank Powell
Frank Powell
Frank E. Powell was a stage and silent film actor, screenwriter, and director in the United States. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.Powell made his Broadway theatre debut in 1904 and began his career in film in 1909 as an actor and scriptwriter at Biograph Studios. There, he also...

 
Edward José
Edward José
Edward José was a Belgian film director and actor of the silent era.He directed 42 films between 1915 and 1925...

, Theda Bara
Theda Bara
Theda Bara , born Theodosia Burr Goodman, was an American silent film actress – one of the most popular of her era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" . The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman...

 
A print of the film was discovered in Australia in the 1990s.
1915 Double Trouble William Christy Cabanne 
1915 His Lordship's Dilemma
His Lordship's Dilemma
His Lordship's Dilemma is a 1915 silent short comedy film produced by the Gaumont Film Company and distributed by the Mutual Film Corporation. The film stars W.C...

W.C. Fields  Found in a Belgian film archive.
1915 Peculiar Patients' Pranks
Peculiar Patients' Pranks
Peculiar Patients' Pranks is a 1915 short comedy film featuring Harold Lloyd.-Cast:* Harold Lloyd - Lonesome Luke* Snub Pollard - * Gene Marsh* Bebe Daniels...

Hal Roach
Hal Roach
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...

 
Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies....

 
Found in Australia's National Film and Sound Archive
National Film and Sound Archive
The National Film and Sound Archive is Australia’s audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national collection of audiovisual materials and related items...

.
1915 Youth Harry Handworth  Film exists in the British Film Institute archive
1916 East Lynne
East Lynne (1916 film)
East Lynne is a 1916 silent drama film directed by Bertram Bracken and starring Theda Bara. It is based on the novel of the same name. A print of this film survives in the film archives of the Museum of Modern Art.-Cast:* Theda Bara - Lady Isabel Carlisle...

Bertram Bracken  Theda Bara
Theda Bara
Theda Bara , born Theodosia Burr Goodman, was an American silent film actress – one of the most popular of her era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" . The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman...

 
One of Bara's four surviving films.
1916 Mysteriet natten till den 25:e Georg af Klercker 
1916 Als ich tot war Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...

 
Found in 1994 in a Slovenian archive.
1916 Purity
Purity (film)
Purity is an American silent film written by Clifford Howard and directed by Rae Berger and starring Audrey Munson. It is notable for its nude scenes.The film was called Reinheit in Germany.-Preservation status:...

Rae Berger
Rae Berger
Rae Berger or Rhea Berger was an early silent film actor and director. He is erroneously listed in Duke University's "Women Film Pioneers", he was in fact male.-Director filmography:*Danger Within *The Magic Eye...

 
Film survives in an archive in France.
1916 Snow White
Snow White (1916 film)
Snow White is a 1916 American silent film made by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and produced by Adolph Zukor and Daniel Frohman. It was directed by J...

Inspired Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

 to make films.
1916 Gretchen the Greenhorn Chester M. Franklin, Sidney Franklin
Sidney Franklin (director)
Sidney Franklin was an American film director and producer. His brother Chester Franklin also became a director during the silent film era best known for helming the early Technicolor film Toll of the Sea....

 
Dorothy Gish
Dorothy Gish
Dorothy Elizabeth Gish was an American actress, and the younger sister of actress Lillian Gish.-Early life:...

 
Recovered in 1991.
1916 Zepped Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...

 
A propaganda short film, a copy was found in 2009, and a second in 2011.
1917 Beatrice Fairfax Olive Thomas
Olive Thomas
Olive Thomas was an American silent film actress and model. She is best remembered for her marriage to Jack Pickford and her death.-Early life:...

 
All but one episode of this series survives in the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 archive.
1917 Bucking Broadway
Bucking Broadway
Bucking Broadway is a 1917 film by John Ford, probably his sixth feature film. Long thought to be lost, along with about 60 of Ford's 70 silent films, it was found in 2002 in the archives of the CNC . It was subsequently restored and digitized...

John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

 
Found in 2002 in a French archive.
1917 His Wedding Night
His Wedding Night
His Wedding Night is a 1917 short comedy film starring Fatty Arbuckle, Al St. John, and Buster Keaton, and directed by Arbuckle.-Cast:* Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle - Drugstore soda clerk* Al St...

Roscoe Arbuckle 
1917 The Image Maker Eugene Moore  Film survives in a private collection.
1917 Max and His Taxi
1917 Max Comes Across
1917 Max Wants a Divorce
1917 A Reckless Romeo
A Reckless Romeo
A Reckless Romeo is a 1917 short silent comedy film directed by and starring Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle.-Production background:The film was produced by the Comique Film Corporation when it and many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey...

Roscoe Arbuckle  Roscoe Arbuckle  Found in an unmarked canister at the Norwegian Film Institute in 1998, alongside The Cook
The Cook
The Cook is a silent film starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. The movie is a slapstick comedy and focuses on goings-on at a high-end restaurant with Arbuckle as the Cook and Keaton as the Waiter....

1917 The Rough House
The Rough House
The Rough House is a short comedy film written and directed by and starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. The Rough House was Keaton's first film as a director.-Cast:* Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle - Mr Rough...

Roscoe Arbuckle, Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...

 
1918 The Cook
The Cook
The Cook is a silent film starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. The movie is a slapstick comedy and focuses on goings-on at a high-end restaurant with Arbuckle as the Cook and Keaton as the Waiter....

Roscoe Arbuckle  Roscoe Arbuckle, Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...

 
Found in an unmarked canister at the Norwegian Film Institute in 1998, alongside A Reckless Romeo
A Reckless Romeo
A Reckless Romeo is a 1917 short silent comedy film directed by and starring Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle.-Production background:The film was produced by the Comique Film Corporation when it and many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey...

1918 Hell Bent
Hell Bent
Hell Bent is a 1918 Western film directed by John Ford and featuring Harry Carey. A print of the film exists in the Czechoslovak Film Archive.-Cast:* Harry Carey - Cheyenne Harry* Duke R. Lee - Cimmaron Bill * Neva Gerber - Bess Thurston...

John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

 
A print exists in the Czechoslovak Film Archive
1918 Mr. Fix-It
Mr. Fix-It (1918 film)
Mr. Fix-It is a silent film comedy starring Douglas Fairbanks, Marjorie Daw, and Wanda Hawley, directed by Allan Dwan at Artcraft Pictures, and released by Paramount Pictures.-Preservation status:...

Allan Dwan
Allan Dwan
Allan Dwan was a pioneering Canadian-born American motion picture director, producer and screenwriter.-Early life:...

 
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro....

 
restored by George Eastman House
George Eastman House
The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...

 and shown at San Francisco Silent Film Festival
San Francisco Silent Film Festival
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a film festival first held in 1996 and presented annually every July at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, California, USA...

 in July 2011
1918 Oh Baby!
1919 Back Stage
Back Stage (1919 film)
Back Stage is a 1919 comedy, one of the last films that Buster Keaton would appear with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle before they went their separate ways, Keaton would get his own studio, and Arbuckle got into feature length films....

Roscoe Arbuckle 
1919 Scarlet Days D. W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...

 
1919 The Spiders
The Spiders (film)
The Spiders is a adventure film directed by Fritz Lang. It was released in two parts in 1919 and 1920.-Synopsis:In San Francisco, well-known sportsman Kay Hoog announces to a club that he has found a message in a bottle with a map drawn by a Harvard professor who has gone missing. The map tells of...

Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...

 
Restored in 1978 from a newly-discovered original print
1919 The Valley of the Giants
The Valley of the Giants (1919 film)
Valley of the Giants is a silent drama film, produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed through Paramount Pictures. It is based on Peter B. Kyne's popular . James Cruze was the director and Wallace Reid the star.-Production background:...

James Cruze
James Cruze
James Cruze was a silent film actor and film director.-Life:Cruze was born as Jens Vera Cruz Bosen. The Vera Cruz middle name came from the battle of Vera Cruz. He was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but did not practice the religion after his teenage years...

 
Wallace Reid
Wallace Reid
Wallace Reid was an actor in silent film referred to as "the screen's most perfect lover".-Early life:Born William Wallace Reid in St...

 
Found in Russian state archives. Digital copy turned over to the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 in 2010.
1919 When Bearcat Went Dry Oliver L. Sellers Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...

 
Found in a projectionist's collection.
1919 The Wicked Darling
The Wicked Darling
The Wicked Darling is a 1919 silent drama film directed by Tod Browning. The film was considered to be a lost film, until a copy was found in Europe in the 1990s. The copy now resides in the Nederlands Filmmuseum.-Cast:* Priscilla Dean - Mary Stevens...

Tod Browning
Tod Browning
Tod Browning was an American motion picture actor, director and screenwriter.Browning's career spanned the silent and talkie eras...

 
Lon Chaney, Sr. A copy was found in Europe in the 1990s, and now resides in the Nederlands Filmmuseum.
1919 You're Fired
You're Fired (1919 film)
You're Fired is a silent film comedy, produced and distributed by Famous Players-Lasky and Paramount Pictures respectively. James Cruze directed and Wallace Reid starred.-Preservation status:...

James Cruze Wallace Reid Found in Russian state archives. Digital copy turned over to the Library of Congress in 2010.
1919 The Witness for the Defense George Fitzmaurice
George Fitzmaurice
George Fitzmaurice was a film director and producer. Fitzmaurice's career first started as a set designer on stage...

 
Elsie Ferguson
Elsie Ferguson
Elsie Louise Ferguson was an American stage and film actress.-Early life:Born in New York City, Elsie Ferguson was the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Hiram Benson Ferguson, a successful attorney...

 
Print rediscovered in Gosfilmofond. Screened at Univ. of North Dakota. Ferguson's only surviving silent film.
1919 Different from the Others
Different From The Others
Different From The Others is a German film produced during the Weimar Republic. It was first released in 1919 and stars Conrad Veidt and Reinhold Schünzel.The story for Anders als die Andern was written by Richard Oswald with the assistance of Dr...

Richard Oswald
Richard Oswald
Richard Oswald was an Austrian director, producer, and screenwriter.Richard Oswald, born in Vienna as Richard W. Ornstein, began his career as an actor on the Viennese stage. He made his film directorial debut at age 34 with Das Eiserne Kreuz...

 
Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Man Who Laughs , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...

 
German copies destroyed by the Nazis in 1933 and thought lost since then. A copy was found in the Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 in the late 70s and restored by the Stadtmuseum München. One of the earliest known sympathetic depictions of homosexuality in film.

1920s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1920 Der Wildtöter und Chingachgook
The Deerslayer and Chingachgook
The Deerslayer and Chingachgook is the feature-length first part of the two-part 1920 German adventure film Lederstrumpf , directed by Arthur Wellin and featuring Béla Lugosi. It is based on the novel The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper...

Arthur Wellin
Arthur Wellin
Arthur Wellin was a German film director, actor, screenwriter and producer. He directed 18 films between 1916 and 1927. He also appeared in 11 films between 1915 and 1933. He was born in Berlin, Germany....

 
Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...

 
Recovered in the 1990s.
1920 Genuine
Genuine (film)
Genuine is a 1920 silent horror film directed by Robert Wiene. It was also released as Genuine: A Tale of a Vampire....

Robert Wiene
Robert Wiene
Robert Wiene was an important film director of the German silent cinema.Robert Wiene was born in Breslau, as the elder son of the successful theatre actor Carl Wiene. His younger brother Conrad also became an actor, but Robert Wiene at first studied law at the University of Berlin. In 1908 he also...

 
Complete copy was discovered in the Berlin film archive.
1920 If I Were King
If I Were King (1920 film)
If I Were King is a silent film produced by Fox Film Corporation, directed by J. Gordon Edwards, and starring William Farnum as Francois Villon with Fritz Leiber, Sr. and Betty Ross Clarke.-Cast:* William Farnum - Francois Villon...

J. Gordon Edwards
J. Gordon Edwards
J. Gordon Edwards was a Canadian-born film director, producer, and a writer who began his career as a stage actor and as a stage director. He made his directorial debut on film in 1914's St. Elmo. Soon went on helming all of the Fox studio's mega-budget spectacles, including all of actress Theda...

 
Print is held by the Library of Congress
1920 Algol
Algol (film)
Algol: Tragedy of Power is a 1920 German science fiction film about an alien from the planet Algol.-Production background:The film was directed by Hans Werckmeister and stars Emil Jannings and John Gottowt. The story centers on a human who is given a machine by an alien spirit which if used would...

Emil Jannings
Emil Jannings
Emil Jannings was a German actor. He was not only the first actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, but also the first person to be presented an Oscar...

 
1920 In the Days of St. Patrick Norman Whitten 
1920 Within Our Gates
Within Our Gates
Within Our Gates is a silent race film that dramatically expresses the racial situation in America during the violent years of Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration, and the emergence of the "New Negro".-Production background:...

Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films...

 
Found in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, translated as La Negra.
1920 Helen of Four Gates
Helen of Four Gates
Helen of Four Gates is a British silent film melodrama, directed by cinema pioneer Cecil Hepworth and starring Alma Taylor , James Carew and Gerald Ames.-Production background:...

Cecil Hepworth
Cecil Hepworth
Cecil Milton Hepworth was an English film director, producer and screenwriter. He was among the founders of the British film industry and continued making films into the 1920s....

 
Alma Taylor
Alma Taylor
- Life :Taylor was born in London. She made her first screen appearance as a child actor in the 1907 film His Daughter's Voice. She went on to appear in more than 150 film roles, appearing in a number of larger-budget films such as Shadow of Egypt which was shot on location in Egypt in 1924. Taylor...


James Carew
James Carew
James Carew was an American actor who appeared in many films, mainly in Britain. He was born in Goshen, Indiana in 1876 and began work as a clerk in a publishing firm...

 
Found in a film vault in Quebec, Canada in 2008.
1921 The Blue Fox
The Blue Fox
The Blue Fox is a silent adventure film serial directed by Duke Worne. An incomplete print of the film exists at the UCLA Film and Television Archive.-Cast:* Ann Little - Ann Calvin* J. Morris Foster - John Densmore...

Duke Worne
Duke Worne
Duke Worne was an American director and actor of the silent era. He directed 74 films between 1919 and 1931...

 
1921 The Conquest of Canaan
The Conquest of Canaan
The Conquest of Canaan is a silent film drama produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It starred Thomas Meighan and Doris Kenyon and was directed by Roy William Neill...

Roy William Neill
Roy William Neill
Roy William Neill was a film director best known today for directing several of the Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, made between 1943 and 1946 and released by Universal Studios....

 
Thomas Meighan
Thomas Meighan
Thomas Meighan was an American actor of silent films and early talkies. He played several leading man roles opposite popular actresses of the day including Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. At one point he commanded $10,000 a week....

, Doris Kenyon
Doris Kenyon
Doris Kenyon was a popular actress of motion pictures and television.-Youth:She grew up in Syracuse, New York, where her family had a home at 1805 Harrison Street. Her father, Dr. James B. Kenyon, was a Methodist Episcopal Church minister at University Church. Kenyon studied at Packer College...

 
Found in Russian state archives. Digital copy turned over to the Library of Congress in 2010.
1921 The Devil
The Devil (film)
The Devil Hungarian film directed by Michael Curtiz. Later, the film was shot for American audiences by "Franz" Ferenc Molnar, in 1921 and starring George Arliss, in his film debut.This film was considered to be a lost film...

Ferenc Molnar
Ferenc Molnár
LanguageFerenc Molnár was a Hungarian dramatist and novelist. His Americanized name was Franz Molnar...

 
George Arliss
George Arliss
George Arliss was an English actor, author and filmmaker who found success in the United States. He was the first British actor to win an Academy Award.-Life and career:...

 
Was also made in 1918 in Hungary. American release is currently under restoration and schedule for re-release in 2011
1921 Der Tanz auf dem Vulkan
Dance on the Volcano
Dance on the Volcano is a 1920 German film directed by Richard Eichberg and featuring Bela Lugosi. The U.S. version of the film was known as Daughter of the Night.-Preservation status:...

Richard Eichberg
Richard Eichberg
Richard Eichberg was an German film director and producer. He directed 87 films between 1915 and 1949. He also produced 77 films between 1915 and 1950.He was born in Berlin, Germany and died in Munich, Germany....

 
Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...

 
Found in a film archive in the 1990s, albeit in its American release version.
1921 Hard Luck
Hard Luck (1921 film)
Hard Luck is a 1921 short comedy film starring comedian Buster Keaton. It was written and directed by Keaton and Edward F. Cline. The runtime is 22 minutes. For sixty years it was Keaton's only major lost film until it was partially reconstructed in 1987, with the critical final scene still...

Edward F. Cline
Edward F. Cline
Edward Francis Cline was a screenwriter, actor, writer and director. He was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin and died in Hollywood.-Career:...


Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...

 
Buster Keaton Long considered Keaton's major lost film until partially reconstructed in 1987. The climactic final scene was later recovered in a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n archive.
1921 Molly O'
Molly O (1921 film)
Molly O' is a silent film starring Mabel Normand and directed by F. Richard Jones.-Cast:*Mabel Normand ... Molly O'*George Nichols ... Tim O'Dair*Anna Dodge ... Mrs. Tim O'Dair *Albert Hackett ... Billy O'Dair...

F. Richard Jones
F. Richard Jones
Frank Richard Jones was an American director and producer.-Early life and career:Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Dick Jones was sixteen years old when he became involved in the fledgling film industry in his hometown with the Atlas film company...

 
Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand was an American silent film comedienne and actress. She was a popular star of Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios and is noted as one of the film industry's first female screenwriters, producers and directors...

 
1922 Kick In
Kick In (1922 film)
Kick In is a silent film crime drama produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures.-Production background:...

George Fitzmaurice
George Fitzmaurice
George Fitzmaurice was a film director and producer. Fitzmaurice's career first started as a set designer on stage...

 
Betty Compson
Betty Compson
Betty Compson was an American actress. Born Eleanor Luicime Compson in Beaver, Utah, she had an extensive film career. Her father died when she was young, and she was forced to drop out of school and earn a living for herself and her mother...


Bert Lytell
Bert Lytell
Bert Lytell , Born Bertram Lytell, he was a popular screen star of the silent film era who starred in romantic, melodrama and adventure films....

 
Found in Russian state archives. Digital copy turned over to the Library of Congress in 2010.
1922 Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes (1922 film)
Sherlock Holmes is an American silent film starring John Barrymore as Holmes and Roland Young as Watson. The film was titled Moriarty in the UK.-Production background:...

Albert Parker
Albert Parker
Albert Parker was the owner of The Claxton Bakery and creator of the Old Fashion Claxton Fruitcake. Parker got his start working with Savino Tos, the founder and previous owner of The Claxton Bakery, in 1927 when he was eleven years old. In 1945, Tos sold the bakery to Albert Parker and retired...

John Barrymore Film was restored over a thirty year period from the original camera negatives at the George Eastman House.
1922 Beyond the Rocks
Beyond the Rocks (film)
Beyond the Rocks is a 1922 silent drama film directed by Sam Wood, starring Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson. It is based on the novel of the same name by Elinor Glyn.-Plot:...

Sam Wood
Sam Wood
Samuel Grosvenor "Sam" Wood was an American film director, and producer, who was best known for directing such Hollywood hits as A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and The Pride of the Yankees...

 
Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the...

, Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...

 
Donated by collector Joop Van Liempd (1913–2002) to Nederlands Filmmuseum and restored by them in 2005.
1922 Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood (1922 film)
Little Red Riding Hood is a Walt Disney short cartoon, and is a rendition of the traditional story of Little Red Riding Hood.-Production background:The film is part of the Laugh-O-Grams series that was released in 1922...

One of the first theatrical animated cartoons from Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

. Found in a London film library in 1998 and restored the same year.
1922 Phantom
Phantom (1922 film)
Phantom is a silent film that was directed by F. W. Murnau the same year Murnau directed Nosferatu. It is an example of German Expressionist film and has a surreal, dreamlike quality.-Plot summary:The film is told in an extended flashback...

F.W. Murnau 
1922 The Young Rajah
The Young Rajah
The Young Rajah is a 1922 silent film starring Rudolph Valentino. The film was based on the book Amos Judd by John Ames Mitchell.-Plot:...

Phil Rosen
Phil Rosen
Phil Rosen was an American film director and cinematographer. He directed 142 films between 1915 and 1949....

 
Rudolph Valentino
1923 The Call of the Canyon
The Call of the Canyon
The Call of the Canyon is a silent Western directed by Victor Fleming. The film was based on the story of the same name by Zane Grey.-Preservation status:...

Victor Fleming
Victor Fleming
Victor Lonzo Fleming was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were The Wizard of Oz , and Gone with the Wind , for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.-Life and career:Fleming was born in La Canada, California, the son of Elizabeth Evaleen ...

 
Richard Dix
Richard Dix
Richard Dix was an American motion picture actor who achieved popularity in both silent and sound film. His standard on-screen image was that of the rugged and stalwart hero.-Early life:...

 
Found in Russian state archives. Digital copy turned over to the Library of Congress in 2010.
1923 Canyon of the Fools
Canyon of the Fools
Canyon of the Fools is a silent Western film starring Harry Carey.-Preservation status:Once thought to be lost, this film was one of ten silent films digitally preserved in Russia and provided to the Library of Congress in October 2010.-Cast:...

Val Paul
Val Paul
Val Paul , was an American actor and director of the silent era. He appeared in 99 films between 1913 and 1922...

 
Found in Russian state archives. Digital copy turned over to the Library of Congress in 2010.
1923 Circus Days
Circus Days
Circus Days is a feature length silent film comedy starring then child actor Jackie Coogan, directed by Eddie Cline, produced by Sol Lesser and Jackie Coogan's own production company, and distributed through Associated First National Pictures....

Edward F. Cline
Edward F. Cline
Edward Francis Cline was a screenwriter, actor, writer and director. He was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin and died in Hollywood.-Career:...

 
Jackie Coogan
Jackie Coogan
John Leslie Coogan , known professionally as Jackie Coogan, was an American actor who began his movie career as a child actor in silent films. Many years later, he became known as Uncle Fester on 1960s sitcom The Addams Family...

 
Found in Russian state archives. Digital copy turned over to the Library of Congress in 2010.
1923 Souls for Sale
Souls for Sale
Souls for Sale is a silent film written, directed, and produced by Rupert Hughes from his novel of the same name. The film featured Eleanor Boardman in her first leading role, having won a contract with Goldwyn Studios through their "New Faces of 1921" contest just two years prior.The film is most...

Rupert Hughes
Rupert Hughes
Rupert Hughes was an American historian, novelist, film director and composer based in Hollywood. Hughes was born in Lancaster, Missouri. His parents were Felix Turner Hughes and Jean Amelia Summerlin, who were married in 1865. His brother Howard R. Hughes, Sr., co-founded the Hughes Tool Company....

 
Eleanor Boardman
Eleanor Boardman
Eleanor Boardman was an American film actress, popular during the era of silent movies.-Early life and career:...

 
Rediscovered and restored in 2006 by Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...

 and MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...

 
1923 The Eternal Struggle
The Eternal Struggle (film)
The Eternal Struggle is a silent drama film directed by Reginald Barker. Distributed by Metro Pictures, the film is based on the 1913 novel The Law-Bringers, written by Edith Joan Lyttleton.-Preservation status:...

Reginald Barker  Renée Adorée
Renée Adorée
Renée Adorée was a French actress who had appeared in Hollywood silent movies during the 1920s.-Early life:...

 
Found in Russian state archives. Digital copy turned over to the Library of Congress in 2010.
1923 Maytime
Maytime (1923 film)
Maytime is a 1923 American silent romantic drama film directed by Louis J. Gasnier and starring Ethel Shannon, Harrison Ford and William Norris. The film also features one of Clara Bow's earliest cinema roles...

Louis J. Gasnier
Louis J. Gasnier
Louis J. Gasnier was a French film director.Born in Paris, Gasnier was working in theatre when Pathé hired him to direct films in the earliest days of cinema. He directed comedian Max Linder in many of his early short comedies...

 
Ethel Shannon
Ethel Shannon
Ethel Shannon was an American actress. She appeared in over 30 silent movies in the early 20th century.-Early life and career:...

, Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford (silent film actor)
Harrison Ford was an American stage and film actor. He was a leading Broadway theatre performer and a star of the silent film era.-Career:...

 
Found in the New Zealand Film Archive
New Zealand Film Archive
The New Zealand Film Archive is a charitable trust dedicated to the collection, preservation and viewing of mainly New Zealand films and videos made between 1895 to the present day.- Background :...

 in 2009; undergoing restoration
1923 The White Shadow
The White Shadow (film)
The White Shadow is a British drama film directed by Graham Cutts and starring Betty Compson, Clive Brook, and Henry Victor.Long thought to have been a completely lost film, in August 2011 the National Film Preservation Foundation announced that the first three reels of the six-reel picture had...

Graham Cutts
Graham Cutts
Graham Cutts was a British film director who was one of the leading British directors in the 1920s. His fellow director A. V. Bramble believed that Gainsborough Pictures had been built on the back of his work. His daughter was actress Patricia Cutts...

 
Betty Compson
Betty Compson
Betty Compson was an American actress. Born Eleanor Luicime Compson in Beaver, Utah, she had an extensive film career. Her father died when she was young, and she was forced to drop out of school and earn a living for herself and her mother...


Clive Brook
Henry Victor
Henry Victor
Henry Victor was an English-born character actor. Raised in Germany, Victor is probably best remembered for his portrayal of the strongman Hercules in Tod Browning's 1932 film Freaks. He originally was a leading figure in UK silent films...


A.B. Imeson
A.B. Imeson
-Filmography:His first role was playing Satan in the silent film The Picture of Dorian Gray .*Bonnie Prince Charlie * The Virgin Queen * The White Shadow * The Notorious Mrs. Carrick -Portrait:...

 
Found in the New Zealand Film Archive
New Zealand Film Archive
The New Zealand Film Archive is a charitable trust dedicated to the collection, preservation and viewing of mainly New Zealand films and videos made between 1895 to the present day.- Background :...

 in August 2011
1924 $20 A Week Harmon F. Weight 
1924 The Arab
The Arab (1924 film)
The Arab is a silent film starring Ramon Novarro and Alice Terry, written and directed by Rex Ingram, based on a 1911 play by Edgar Selwyn.-Production background:...

Rex Ingram
Rex Ingram (director)
Rex Ingram was an Irish film director, producer, writer and actor. Legendary director Erich von Stroheim once called him "the world's greatest director."-Early life:...

 
Ramon Novarro
Ramón Novarro
Ramón Novarro was a Mexican leading man actor in Hollywood in the early 20th century. He was the next male "Sex Symbol" after the death of Rudolph Valentino...

, Alice Terry
Alice Terry
Alice Terry was an American film actress who began her career during the silent film era, appearing in thirty-nine films between 1916 and 1933.-Career:...

 
Found in Russian state archives. Digital copy turned over to the Library of Congress in 2010.
1924 Venus of the South Seas
Venus of the South Seas
Venus of the South Seas is a feature film starring swimmer Annette Kellerman and one of the last films made in the Prizmacolor process....

Annette Kellerman
Annette Kellerman
Annette Marie Sarah Kellerman was an Australian professional swimmer, vaudeville and film star, and writer...

 
Restored by Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 in 2004. Last reel of 55-minute film is in Prizmacolor
Prizma
The Prizma Color system was a technique of color motion picture photography, invented in 1913 by William Van Doren Kelley and Charles Raleigh. Initially, it was a two-color additive color system, similar to its predecessor, Kinemacolor...

 
1924 The Breaking Point Herbert Brenon 
1924 Empty Hearts Alfred Santell
Alfred Santell
Alfred Santell was an American film director born September 14, 1895 in San Francisco, California. He directed over 60 films, including The Patent Leather Kid , Body and Soul , and Beyond the Blue Horizon...

 
John Bowers
John Bowers
John Bowers was an American stage and silent film actor who starred in ninety-four films including short subjects.-Biography:...

, Clara Bow
Clara Bow
Clara Gordon Bow was an American actress who rose to stardom in the silent film era of the 1920s. It was her appearance as a spunky shopgirl in the film It that brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl." Bow came to personify the roaring twenties and is described as its leading sex...

 
1924 Pied Piper Malone Alfred E. Green  Thomas Meighan
Thomas Meighan
Thomas Meighan was an American actor of silent films and early talkies. He played several leading man roles opposite popular actresses of the day including Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. At one point he commanded $10,000 a week....

, Lois Wilson
Lois Wilson
Lois Wilson may refer to:*Lois Wilson , wife of Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson, founder of Al-Anon*Lois Miriam Wilson, first female Moderator of the United Church of Canada from 1980 to 1982...

 
Discovered in a Russian film archive by historians Mark Tiedje and John Coles. It was screened in 2007 in Georgetown, South Carolina, where it was filmed.
1925 Clash of the Wolves
Clash of the Wolves
Clash of the Wolves was a 1925 animal movie featuring an early starring role Rin Tin Tin, a German Shepherd who appeared in many movies at the time, the film is distributed by Warner Bros....

Noel M. Smith
Noel M. Smith
Noel Mason Smith was an American film director and writer. He directed 125 films between 1917 and 1952.He was born in California, and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:...

 
Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin was the name given to a dog adopted from a WWI battlefield that went on to star in twenty-three Hollywood films. The name was subsequently given to several related German Shepherd dogs featured in fictional stories on film, radio and television.-Origins:The first of the line Rin Tin...

, Charles Farrell
Charles Farrell
Charles Farrell was an American film actor of the 1920s silent era and into the 1930s, and later a television actor...

, June Marlowe
June Marlowe
June Marlowe , was an American actress, who appeared in six Our Gang short subjects as the lovely schoolteacher Miss Crabtree.-Career:...

, Heinie Conklin
Heinie Conklin
Heinie Conklin was an American actor of the silent film era, who appeared in nearly 400 films. Claimed to be one of the original Keystone Kops, Conklin's silent screen makeup consisted heavy eyebrow lining and a thinnish, upside-down, painted-on variation of Kaiser Wilhelm's moustache...

 
A 35mm projection print was uncovered in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 and repatriated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It underwent restoration and preservation in 2003.
1925 Keep Smiling Albert Austin
Albert Austin
Albert Austin was an actor, film star, director and script writer, noted mainly for his work in Charlie Chaplin films. He was the brother of actor William Austin....

, Gilbert Pratt
Gilbert Pratt
Gilbert Pratt was an American film director, actor and writer. He directed 87 films between 1917 and 1936.He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:...

 
Monty Banks
Monty Banks
Montague Banks was a comedian and film director. In the 1920s, he worked in Hollywood, starring in many silent short comedies and in the feature-length action thriller Play Safe...

 
Found in Russian state archives. Digital copy turned over to the Library of Congress in 2010.
1925 The Lost World
The Lost World (1925 film)
The Lost World is a 1925 silent film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name. The movie was produced by First National Pictures, a large Hollywood studio at the time, and stars Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger. This version was directed by Harry O...

Harry Hoyt  Bessie Love
Bessie Love
Bessie Love was an American motion picture actress who achieved prominence mainly in the silent films and early talkies. With a small frame and delicate features, she played innocent young girls, flappers, and wholesome leading ladies. Her role in The Broadway Melody earned her a nomination for...

, Lewis Stone
Lewis Stone
Lewis Shepard Stone was an American actor.Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, son of Bertrand Stone and Philena Heald Ball. Stone's hair grew gray by the time he was twenty. He fought in the Spanish-American War, then returned to a career as a writer. He soon began acting...

, Wallace Beery
Wallace Beery
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...

, Lloyd Hughes
Lloyd Hughes
Lloyd Hughes was an American silent film actor.-Life and career:Born in Bisbee, Arizona, Hughes received his education at the Los Angeles Polytechnic School. He sought a career as an actor early in life, and his clean-cut appearance and ability soon gained him recognition...

 
Only 65 minutes abridged version existed until 1992, when Jan-Christopher Horak, formerly of George Eastman House, located a nearly full-length print at the Filmovy Archiv (Prague, Czech republic).
1926 Bardelys the Magnificent
Bardelys the Magnificent
Bardelys the Magnificent is a 1926 silent romantic drama film. It was directed by King Vidor starring John Gilbert and Eleanor Boardman, based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini. It was the second film of the 19 year old John Wayne, who had a minor role...

King Vidor
King Vidor
King Wallis Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned nearly seven decades...

 
John Gilbert
John Gilbert (actor)
John Gilbert was an American actor and a major star of the silent film era.Known as "the great lover," he rivaled even Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw...

 
Restored in 2008 from a nearly-complete print discovered in France in 1998.
1926 The Bat
The Bat (1926 film)
The Bat is a silent film based on the 1920 hit Broadway play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, directed by Roland West and starring Jack Pickford and Louise Fazenda...

Roland West
Roland West
For the basketball player, see Roland West Roland West was a Hollywood director known for his innovative film noir movies of the 1920s and early 1930s.-Biography:...

 
Tullio Carminatti 
1926 The Boob
The Boob
The Boob is a romantic comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, directed by William Wellman, and starring Gertrude Olmstead, Antonio D'Algy, George K. Arthur, and Joan Crawford.-Plot:...

William Wellman  Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....

, George K. Arthur
George K. Arthur
George K. Arthur was an English actor and producer. He appeared in 59 films between 1919 and 1935. He won an Academy Award for Best Short Film in 1956 for the film The Bespoke Overcoat....

 
1926 Camille
Camille (1926 film)
Camille is a silent film based on the 1852 novel and play La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The film was adapted by Fred De Gresac, George Marion Jr., Olga Printzlau and Chandler Sprague, directed by Fred Niblo, and starred Norma Talmadge, Gilbert Roland, and Lilyan Tashman...

Fred Niblo
Fred Niblo
Fred Niblo was an American pioneer film actor, director and producer.-Biography:He was born Frederick Liedtke in York, Nebraska, to a French mother and a father who had served as a captain in the American Civil War and was wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg...

 
Norma Talmadge
Norma Talmadge
Norma Talmadge was an American actress and film producer of the silent era. A major box office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most popular idols of the American screen.Her most famous film was Smilin’ Through , but she also...

 
1926 The Exquisite Sinner Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.-Youth:Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish...

 
Conrad Nagel
Conrad Nagel
Conrad Nagel was an American screen actor and matinee idol of the silent film era and beyond. He was also a well-known television actor and radio performer.-Biography:...

, Renee Adoree
Renée Adorée
Renée Adorée was a French actress who had appeared in Hollywood silent movies during the 1920s.-Early life:...

, George K. Arthur
George K. Arthur
George K. Arthur was an English actor and producer. He appeared in 59 films between 1919 and 1935. He won an Academy Award for Best Short Film in 1956 for the film The Bespoke Overcoat....

, Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy was an American actress. Trained as a dancer, she devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. Originally typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent, her career prospects improved following her portrayal of Nora Charles...

 
1926 The Flaming Frontier Edward Sedgwick
Edward Sedgwick
Edward Sedgwick was a film director, writer, actor and producer.-Biography:He was born in Galveston, Texas, the son of Edward Sedgwick, Sr. and Josephine Walker, both stage actors. Young Edward Sedgwick joined his show business family as one of the Five Sedgwicks, a vaudeville act...

 
Hoot Gibson
Hoot Gibson
Hoot Gibson was an American rodeo champion and a pioneer cowboy film actor, director and producer.-Early life and career:...

, Dustin Farnum
Dustin Farnum
Dustin Lancy Farnum was an American singer, dancer and an actor in silent movies during the early days of motion pictures. After a great success in a number of stage roles, in 1914 he landed his first film role in the movie 'Soldiers of Fortune', and later in Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man...

 
1926 Mare Nostrum
Mare Nostrum (film)
Mare Nostrum is a silent film set during World War I. A Spanish merchant sailor becomes involved with a spy. It was the first production made in voluntary exile by Rex Ingram and starred his wife, Alice Terry. It is based on the novel of the same name by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez...

Rex Ingram
Rex Ingram (director)
Rex Ingram was an Irish film director, producer, writer and actor. Legendary director Erich von Stroheim once called him "the world's greatest director."-Early life:...

 
Antonio Moreno
Antonio Moreno
Antonio "Tony" Moreno was a notable Spanish-born American actor and film director of the silent film era and through the 1950s.- Biography :...

, Alice Terry
Alice Terry
Alice Terry was an American film actress who began her career during the silent film era, appearing in thirty-nine films between 1916 and 1933.-Career:...

 
1926 You Never Know Women
You Never Know Women
You Never Know Women is a 1926 silent film romantic drama from director William Wellman that was produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The stars of the picture are Florence Vidor, Lowell Sherman and Clive Brook...

William Wellman  Florence Vidor
Florence Vidor
Florence Vidor was an American actress.Born Florence Arto, her father, J. P. Arto, was an important executive and she started working in silent movies thanks to her husband, film director King Vidor. She signed her first contract with Vitagraph Studios in 1916...

, Lowell Sherman
Lowell Sherman
Lowell Sherman was an American actor and film director....

, Clive Brook, El Brendel
El Brendel
El Brendel was a vaudeville comedian turned movie star, best remembered for his dialect schtick as a Swedish immigrant. His biggest role was as "Single-0" in the sci-fi musical Just Imagine , produced by Fox Film Corporation...

 
Never really a lost film, a copy has resided at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 since the 1970s,
1926 A Page of Madness
A Page of Madness
-External links:*...

Teinosuke Kinugasa
Teinosuke Kinugasa
-External links:* *...

 
Found by the director in his garden shed in 1970; he had buried it during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and forgotten it.
1927 Duck Soup
Duck Soup (1927 film)
Duck Soup is a Laurel and Hardy short silent film produced by Hal Roach Studios.-Production background:Duck Soup was considered a lost film for nearly fifty years, until a print was discovered in 1974...

Fred Guiol
Fred Guiol
Fred Guiol was an American film director and screenwriter. Guiol worked at the Hal Roach Studios for many years, and directed Laurel and Hardy's earliest short films, as their famous comic partnership gradually developed during 1927...

 
Laurel & Hardy  Thought lost until a copy surfaced in 1974.
1927 The Magic Flame
The Magic Flame
The Magic Flame is a feature film directed by Henry King. It was based on the play Konig Harlekin by Rudolph Lothar. George Barnes was nominated at the 1st Academy Awards for Best Cinematography. The film promoted itself as the "Romeo and Juliet" of the circus upon its release...

Henry King
Henry King (director)
Henry King was an American film director.Before coming to film, King worked as an actor in various repertoire theatres, and first started to take small film roles in 1912. He directed for the first time in 1915, and grew to become one of the most commercially successful Hollywood directors of the...

 
Ronald Colman
Ronald Colman
Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...

, Vilma Banky
Vilma Bánky
Vilma Bánky was a Hungarian-born American silent film actress, although the early part of her acting career began in Budapest, spreading to France, Austria, and Germany...

 
1927 Napoléon Abel Gance
Abel Gance
Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. He is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse , La Roue , and the monumental Napoléon .-Early life:...

 
Never totally lost, but existing prints were once only half as long as the current restoration.
1927 The Ridin' Rowdy Richard Thorpe
Richard Thorpe
Richard Thorpe was an American film director.Born Rollo Smolt Thorpe in Hutchinson, Kansas, he began his entertainment career performing in vaudeville and onstage. In 1921 he began in motion pictures as an actor and directed his first silent film in 1923. He went on to direct more than one hundred...

 
1927 The Rough Riders
The Rough Riders
The Rough Riders is a silent film, released by Paramount Pictures, and starring Charles Farrell, Mary Astor and Noah Beery. This fictional account of Theodore Roosevelt's military unit in Cuba was directed by Victor Fleming.-Cast:...

Victor Fleming
Victor Fleming
Victor Lonzo Fleming was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were The Wizard of Oz , and Gone with the Wind , for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.-Life and career:Fleming was born in La Canada, California, the son of Elizabeth Evaleen ...

 
Charles Farrell
Charles Farrell
Charles Farrell was an American film actor of the 1920s silent era and into the 1930s, and later a television actor...

, Mary Astor
Mary Astor
Mary Astor was an American actress. Most remembered for her role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart, Astor began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s.She eventually made a successful transition to talkies, but almost...

, Noah Beery, George Bancroft
George Bancroft
George Bancroft was an American historian and statesman who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state and at the national level. During his tenure as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845...

 
1927 The Senorita Alfred E. Green  Bebe Daniels
Bebe Daniels
Bebe Daniels was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent movie era as a child actress, became a star in musicals like 42nd Street, and later gained further fame on radio and television in Britain...

 
1927 Sorrell and Son
Sorrell and Son
Sorrell and Son is a silent film released on December 2, 1927 and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director in the 1st Academy Awards the following year...

Herbert Brenon  H.B. Warner, Anna Q. Nilsson
Anna Q. Nilsson
Anna Quirentia Nilsson was a Swedish born American actress who achieved success in American silent movies.-Background:...

, Carmel Myers
Carmel Myers
Carmel Myers was an American actress who worked chiefly in silent movies.Myers was born in San Francisco, the daughter of an Australian rabbi and Austrian Jewish mother. Her father became well-connected with California's emerging film industry, and introduced her to film pioneer D. W. Griffith,...

, Nils Asther
Nils Asther
Nils Anton Alfhild Asther was a Danish-born Swedish actor active in Hollywood from 1926 to the mid 1950s, known for his beautiful face and often called "the male Greta Garbo"...

, Louis Wolheim
Louis Wolheim
Louis Wolheim was an American character actor.His trademark broken nose was the result of an injury sustained while playing football for Cornell University. Despite his rugged visage, Wolheim was intelligent and cultivated, speaking French, German, Spanish, and Yiddish. He was also a mathematics...

, Mary Nolan
Mary Nolan
Mary Nolan was an American actress and dancer.-Ziegfeld Follies dancer:Born Mary Imogene Robertson in Kentucky, Robertson's childhood was beset with hardship that included the death of her mother in 1908 and an absent father. As a child, she worked as a farm laborer, before moving to New York City...

 
1927 Tarzan and the Golden Lion
Tarzan and the Golden Lion (film)
Tarzan and the Golden Lion is a Tarzan film based on the 1923 novel of the same title written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of the Tarzan character. The film starred James Pierce as Tarzan, Frederick Peters as Esteban Miranda, Dorothy Dunbar as Jane, and Edna Murphy as Betty Greystoke. The film...

J. P. McGowan
J. P. McGowan
John Paterson McGowan was a pioneering Hollywood actor and film director, occasionally too screenwriter and stunt actor. J.P...

 
James Pierce
James Pierce
James Hubert Pierce , of Shelbyville, Indiana, was the fourth actor to portray Tarzan on film.-Early life/College/Early film career:...

 
Thought lost until a print was discovered in the closet of a French asylum in the 1990s.
1927 Upstream
Upstream (film)
Upstream is a comedy film directed by John Ford. A "backstage drama", the movie is about a Shakespearean actor and a woman from a knife-throwing act. The film was considered to be a lost film, but in 2009 it was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive.It is considered the first Ford film to...

John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

 
Discovered in New Zealand in 2010 among 75 silent films being returned to the US, many of which were thought lost.
1927 Metropolis
Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...

Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...

 
Alfred Abel
Alfred Abel
Alfred Abel was a German film actor, director, and producer. He appeared in over 140 silent and sound films between 1913 and 1938...

, Brigitte Helm
Brigitte Helm
Brigitte Helm was a German actress, best remembered for her dual role as Maria and her double, the Maschinenmensch, in Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film Metropolis.-Career:...

 
The full 153-minute version was discovered in an Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

n film museum in 2008.
1927 Wings
Wings (film)
Wings is a silent film about World War I fighter pilots, produced by Lucien Hubbard, directed by William A. Wellman and released by Paramount Pictures. Wings was the first film, and the only silent film, to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Wings stars Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, and...

William A. Wellman
William A. Wellman
William Augustus Wellman was an American film director. Although Wellman began his film career as an actor, he worked on over 80 films, as director, producer and consultant but most often as a director, notable for his work in crime, adventure and action genre films, often focusing on aviation...

 
Clara Bow
Clara Bow
Clara Gordon Bow was an American actress who rose to stardom in the silent film era of the 1920s. It was her appearance as a spunky shopgirl in the film It that brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl." Bow came to personify the roaring twenties and is described as its leading sex...

, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers, Richard Arlen
Richard Arlen
-Biography:Born Sylvanus Richard Van Mattimore in St. Paul, Minnesota, he attended the University of Pennsylvania. He served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. His first job after the war was with St. Paul's Athletic Club...

, Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...

 
Found in the Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...

 film archive in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

.
1928 The Constant Nymph
The Constant Nymph (1928 film)
The Constant Nymph is a 1928 British silent film drama, directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ivor Novello and Mabel Poulton. This was the first film adaptation of the 1924 best-selling and controversial novel of the same name by Margaret Kennedy...

Adrian Brunel
Adrian Brunel
Adrian Brunel was an English film director and screenwriter. Brunel's directorial career started in the silent era, and reached its peak in the latter half of the 1920s...

 
Ivor Novello
Ivor Novello
David Ivor Davies , better known as Ivor Novello, was a Welsh composer, singer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his first successes were as a songwriter...

, Benita Hume
Benita Hume
Benita Hume was an English film actress. She appeared in 44 films between 1925 and 1955.She was married to actor Ronald Colman from 1938 to his death in 1958; they were the parents of a daughter, Juliet...

 
1928 Tillie's Punctured Romance
Tillie's Punctured Romance (1928 film)
Tillie's Punctured Romance is a 1928 circus comedy starring W. C. Fields as a ringmaster and Louise Fazenda as a runaway. Written by Monte Brice and Keene Thompson and directed by A. Edward Sutherland, this movie has nothing to do with the revered 1914 Charles Chaplin film aside from sharing the...

A. Edward Sutherland
A. Edward Sutherland
A. Edward Sutherland aka Eddie Sutherland was a film director and actor. Born Albert Edward Sutherland in London, he was from a theatrical family. His father, Al Sutherland, was a theatre manager and producer and his mother, Julie Ring, was a vaudeville performer...

 
W. C. Fields
W. C. Fields
William Claude Dukenfield , better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer...

 
1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc is a silent film produced in France in 1928. It is based on the record of the trial of Joan of Arc. The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and stars Renée Jeanne Falconetti...

Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jr. was a Danish film director. He is regarded by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest directors in cinema.-Life:Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark...

 
Although inferior prints existed, a nearly-pristine print was found in the janitor's closet of a Norwegian mental asylum.
1928 The Racket
The Racket
The Racket is an American crime film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Thomas Meighan, Marie Prevost, Louis Wolheim, and George E. Stone...

Lewis Milestone
Lewis Milestone
Lewis Milestone was a Russian-American motion picture director. He is known for directing Two Arabian Knights and All Quiet on the Western Front , both of which received Academy Awards for Best Director...

 
Thomas Meighan
Thomas Meighan
Thomas Meighan was an American actor of silent films and early talkies. He played several leading man roles opposite popular actresses of the day including Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. At one point he commanded $10,000 a week....

, Marie Prevost
Marie Prevost
Marie Prevost was a Canadian-born actress of the early days of cinema. During her twenty year career, she made 121 silent and talking pictures.-Early life:...

, Louis Wolheim
Louis Wolheim
Louis Wolheim was an American character actor.His trademark broken nose was the result of an injury sustained while playing football for Cornell University. Despite his rugged visage, Wolheim was intelligent and cultivated, speaking French, German, Spanish, and Yiddish. He was also a mathematics...

 
Produced by Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...

, and discovered following his death in his private collection.
1928 The Spanking Age
The Spanking Age
The Spanking Age is a 1928 Our Gang short silent comedy film directed by Robert F. McGowan. It was the 80th Our Gang short that was released...

Robert F. McGowan
Robert F. McGowan
Robert Francis McGowan was an American film director and producer, best known as the senior director of the Our Gang short subjects film series from 1922 until 1933.-Career:...

 
An Our Gang
Our Gang
Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals, was a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and the adventures they had together. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, the series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively...

film thought to be lost, but rediscovered in 1990.
1928 Two Arabian Knights
Two Arabian Knights
Two Arabian Knights is an American comedy film, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring William Boyd and Mary Astor. A silent film, Two Arabian Knights was produced by Howard Hughes and was distributed by United Artists.-Plot:...

Lewis Milestone
Lewis Milestone
Lewis Milestone was a Russian-American motion picture director. He is known for directing Two Arabian Knights and All Quiet on the Western Front , both of which received Academy Awards for Best Director...

 
Produced by Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...

, and long thought lost until a print was found in his vault after his death.
1928 The Mating Call
The Mating Call (film)
The Mating Call is a 1928 silent drama film about a WWI vet who takes on the Ku Klux Klan when he loses his wife to a womanizing Klansman. The film was produced by Howard Hughes for his Caddo Corporation, and was originally released by Paramount Pictures...

James Cruze
James Cruze
James Cruze was a silent film actor and film director.-Life:Cruze was born as Jens Vera Cruz Bosen. The Vera Cruz middle name came from the battle of Vera Cruz. He was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but did not practice the religion after his teenage years...

 
Produced by Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...

, and long thought lost until a print was found in his vault after his death.
1929 Drag
Drag (film)
Drag is a drama film directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Richard Barthelmess.-Cast:*Richard Barthelmess...David Carroll*Lucien Littlefield...Pa Parker*Kathrin Clare Ward...Ma Parker*Alice Day...Allie Parker*Tom Dugan...Charlie Parker...

Frank Lloyd
Frank Lloyd
Frank Lloyd was a film director, scriptwriter and producer...

 
1929 The Letter
The Letter (1929 film)
The Letter is an American drama film which was made in both silent and talking versions by Paramount Pictures.-Preservation status:...

Jean de Limur
Jean de Limur
Jean de Limur was a French film director, actor and screenwriter. His works include La Garçonne and The Letter .-Filmography:* 1929 : The Letter...

 
Jeanne Eagels
Jeanne Eagels
Jeanne Eagels was an American actress on Broadway and in several motion pictures. She was a former Ziegfeld Follies Girl who went on to greater fame on Broadway and in the emerging medium of sound films....

, O. P. Heggie, Reginald Owen
Reginald Owen
John Reginald Owen was a British character actor. He was known for his many roles in British and American movies and later in television programs.-Personal:...

, Herbert Marshall
Herbert Marshall
Herbert Marshall , born Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall, was an English actor.His parents were Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner. He graduated from St. Mary's College in Old Harlow, Essex and worked for a time as an accounting clerk...

 
1929 Why Be Good?
Why Be Good?
Why Be Good? is a silent comedy film from First National Pictures starring Colleen Moore and Neil Hamilton. This movie had a Vitaphone soundtrack with music and sound effects. Jean Harlow had a small role in this movie.-Plot:...

William Seiter 
1929 Wonder of Women Clarence Brown
Clarence Brown
Clarence Brown was an American film director.-Early life:Born in Clinton, Massachusetts, to a cotton manufacturer, Brown moved to the South when he was 11. He attended Knoxville High School and the University of Tennessee, both in Knoxville, Tennessee, graduating from the university at the age of...

 

1930s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1930 The Bat Whispers
The Bat Whispers
The Bat Whispers is a mystery film directed by Roland West, produced by Joseph M. Schenck, and released by United Artists.-Plot:A mysterious criminal by the name of "The Bat" eludes police and then finally announces his retirement to the country, while a wealthy Cornelia Van Gorder takes up...

Roland West
Roland West
For the basketball player, see Roland West Roland West was a Hollywood director known for his innovative film noir movies of the 1920s and early 1930s.-Biography:...

 
One of the first films shot in widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....

. A complete print was discovered and restored in the late 1990s.
1930 Mamba
Mamba (film)
Mamba was released by Tiffany Pictures. It was shot entirely in Technicolor and stars Jean Hersholt, Eleanor Boardman, Ralph Forbes, Josef Swickard, Claude Fleming, William Stanton and William von Brincken...

Albert S. Rogell
Albert S. Rogell
Albert S. Rogell was an American film director of more than a hundred movies between 1921 and 1958.-Selected filmography:* Mamba * Air Hostess * No More Women * The Hell Cat...

 
Jean Hersholt
Jean Hersholt
Jean Pierre Hersholt was a Danish-born actor who lived in the United States, where he was a leading film and radio talent, best known for his 17 years starring on radio in Dr. Christian and for playing Shirley Temple's grandfather in Heidi...


Eleanor Boardman
Eleanor Boardman
Eleanor Boardman was an American film actress, popular during the era of silent movies.-Early life and career:...


Ralph Forbes
Ralph Forbes
rightRalph Forbes was an English actor in the American cinema. He was also a noted stage actor....

 
Footage from the final reel (stored at the UCLA Film and Television Archive
UCLA Film and Television Archive
The UCLA Film and Television Archive is an internationally renowned visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. It holds more than 220,000 film and television titles and 27 million feet of...

) and all the Vitaphone soundtrack discs for this film were originally thought to be the only elements from the film to survive. A complete print of the film, running nine reels, and four soundtrack discs were discovered in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 in 2009.
1930 Wara Wara
Wara Wara
Wara Wara is a Bolivian feature film, directed by José Maria Velasco Maidana, combining historical drama and romance. The film was described as a "superproduction" by the press at the time.-Preservation:...

Jose Maria Velasco Maidana
José Maria Velasco Maidana
José Maria Velasco Maidana was a Bolivian film director, composer, conductor, actor, painter and dancer.He is known for "his ballets and symphonic works, a number of which embrace national/native themes", but also for his films. He entered the cinema industry "at the very start of Bolivian fiction...

 
The only known surviving Bolivian film of the silent era. Discovered in a La Paz
La Paz
Nuestra Señora de La Paz is the administrative capital of Bolivia, as well as the departmental capital of the La Paz Department, and the second largest city in the country after Santa Cruz de la Sierra...

 basement in 1989, it required over a decade of restoration and was not released until 2010.
1930 Limite
Limite (film)
Limite is a film by Brazilian director and writer Mario Peixoto , filmed in 1930 and first screened in 1931.Sometimes cited as the greatest of all Brazilian films, this 120-minute silent experimental feature by novelist Peixoto, who never completed another film, was seen by Orson Welles and won the...

Mário Peixoto
Mario Peixoto
Mário Rodrigues Breves Peixoto was mainly known for his first and only film Limite, a silent experimental film filmed in 1930 and premiered in Rio de Janeiro on 17 May 1931. Peixoto wrote, directed and took up a minor role in the film...

 
Experimental silent feature made in Brazil. The restored complete version had its U.S. premiere in Brooklyn, New York in November 2010.
1931 Love and Duty
Love and Duty
Love and Duty is a 1931 silent film from China directed by Bu Wancang and starring Ruan Lingyu and Jin Yan.-Production history:Based on a novel by a Polish expatriate, S...

Bu Wancang
Bu Wancang
Bu Wancang was a prolific Chinese film director and screenwriter active between the 1920s and the 1960s. He is also known by his Cantonese name, Baak Maan Chong, and his English name, Richard Poh. He was born in Anhui.-Career:...

 
Ruan Lingyu
Ruan Lingyu
Ruan Lingyu , born Ruan Fenggen , was a Chinese silent film actress. One of the most prominent Chinese film stars of the 1930s, her death at the age of 24 led her to become an icon of Chinese cinema.- Career :...

 
Silent film made in China, and rediscovered in Uruguay in the 1990s
1931 The Stolen Jools
The Stolen Jools
The Stolen Jools is a short comedy film produced by the Masquers Club of Hollywood, featuring many cameo appearances by the film stars of the day...

William C. McGann
William C. McGann
William C. McGann was an American film director. He directed 52 films between 1930 and 1940. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:...

 
All-star cast Made for a charity, film was discovered in the UK under its alternate title The Slippery Pearls
1931 The Smiling Lieutenant
The Smiling Lieutenant
The Smiling Lieutenant is an American film directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert, and released by Paramount Pictures.-Production background:...

Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...

 
Rediscovered in Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 in the 1980s.
1931 Dick & Doof - Spuk um Mitternacht James Parrott
James Parrott
James Parrott , was an American actor and film director; and the younger brother of film comedian Charley Chase.-Early years:...

 
Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel
Arthur Stanley "Stan" Jefferson , better known as Stan Laurel, was an English comic actor, writer and film director, famous as the first half of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy. His film acting career stretched between 1917 and 1951 and included a starring role in the Academy Award winning film...

, Oliver Hardy
Oliver Hardy
Oliver Hardy was an American comic actor famous as one half of Laurel and Hardy, the classic double act that began in the era of silent films and lasted nearly 30 years, from 1927 to 1955.-Early life:...

 
German version (spoken by Laurel and Hardy) of Laurel & Hardy's Berth Marks
Berth Marks
Berth Marks is a 1929 short comedy starring Laurel and Hardy. The story involves Stan and Ollie as two musicians attempting to travel by train to Pottsville...

/The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case
The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case
The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case is a Laurel and Hardy comedy film released in 1930. It is 28 minutes in duration and was made from three-reels. It was directed by James Parrott, produced by Hal Roach and distributed by MGM.-Plot:...

, found 2004 in Moscow's film archive.
1932 Doctor X
Doctor X (film)
Doctor X is a First National/Warner Bros. horror and mystery film based on the play of the same name. It was directed by Michael Curtiz and stars Lee Tracy, Fay Wray, and Lionel Atwill....

Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtiz was an Academy award winning Hungarian-American film director. He had early creditsas Mihály Kertész and Michael Kertész...

 
Lee Tracy
Lee Tracy
William Lee Tracy was an American actor.- Early life :Tracy was born in Atlanta, Georgia.After graduating from Western Military Academy in 1918 he studied electrical engineering at Union College, and then served as a 2nd lieutenant in World War I. In the early 1920s he decided to work as an actor...


Fay Wray
Fay Wray
Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...

 
Technicolor version found in personal vault of Jack L. Warner.
1932 The Most Dangerous Game
The Most Dangerous Game (film)
The Most Dangerous Game is a 1932 Pre-Code adaptation of the 1924 short story of the same name by Richard Connell, the first film version of that story. The plot concerns a big game hunter on an island who chooses to hunt humans for sport. The film stars Joel McCrea, Leslie Banks, and King Kong...

Irving Pichel
Irving Pichel
Irving Pichel was an American actor and film director. He married Violette Wilson, daughter of Jackson Stitt Wilson, a Methodist minister and Socialist mayor of Berkeley, California. Her sister was actress Viola Barry...


Ernest B. Schoedsack
Ernest B. Schoedsack
Ernest Beaumont Schoedsack was an American motion picture cinematographer, director, and producer.Born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Schoedsack is probably best remembered for being the co-director of the 1933 film, King Kong....

 
Fay Wray
Fay Wray
Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...

 
A horror movie
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 filmed on the same set as King Kong
King Kong (1933 film)
King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...

.
1932 The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House is an American comedy horror film directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff, produced just one year after their success with Frankenstein, also released by Universal Studios.-Background:...

James Whale
James Whale
James Whale was an English film director, theatre director and actor. He is best remembered for his work in the horror film genre, having directed such classics as Frankenstein , The Old Dark House , The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein...

 
Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...


Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg , better known as Melvyn Douglas, was an American actor.Coming to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man , Douglas later transitioned into more mature and fatherly roles as in his Academy Award-winning performances in Hud...


Gloria Stuart
Gloria Stuart
Gloria Frances Stuart was an American actress, activist, painter, bonsai artist and fine printer. Over a Hollywood career which spanned, with a long break in the middle, from 1932 until 2004, she appeared on stage, television, and film, for which she was best-known...

 
Thought lost for decades, filmmaker Curtis Harrington
Curtis Harrington
Curtis Harrington was an American film and television director whose work included experimental films, horror films, and episodic television.-Biography:...

 discovered a print in the Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....

 vault, which was restored by Eastman House.
1932 Rynox
Rynox
Rynox is a 1932 British crime film, directed by Michael Powell and starring Stewart Rome and John Longden. Rynox was adapted from a novel by popular thriller writer of the day Philip MacDonald....

Michael Powell
Michael Powell (director)
Michael Latham Powell was a renowned English film director, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger...

 
Stuart Rome
Stuart Rome
Stuart Rome is an American artist photographer and professor of photography at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied under John Pfahl while receiving his BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology...


John Longden
John Longden
John Longden was a West Indian-born English film actor. He appeared in 84 films between 1926 and 1964, including five films directed by Alfred Hitchcock.-Biography:...

 
Found in the vaults of Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately west of central London. The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows to commercials to pop promos.The purchase of Shepperton...

 in 1990.
1933 Berkeley Square
Berkeley Square (film)
Berkeley Square is a drama film produced by Fox Film Corporation, directed by Frank Lloyd, and starring Leslie Howard, Heather Angel, Valerie Taylor, and Colin Keith-Johnston. The film was thought to be a lost film until rediscovered in the 1970s....

Frank Lloyd
Frank Lloyd
Frank Lloyd was a film director, scriptwriter and producer...

 
Leslie Howard
Leslie Howard (actor)
Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...


Heather Angel
Valerie Taylor
Valerie Taylor (actress)
Valerie Taylor was an English actress. She was married the actor Hugh Sinclair.-Partial filmography:* Berkeley Square * Designing Women * Went the Day Well?...

 
Rediscovered in the 1970s.
1933 The Ghoul T. Hayes Hunter
T. Hayes Hunter
T. Hayes Hunter was an American film director of the silent era. He directed 34 films between 1912 and 1934.He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and died in London, England...

 
Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...

, Ernest Thesiger
Ernest Thesiger
Ernest Frederic Graham Thesiger CBE was an English stage and film actor. He is best known for his performance as Dr...

 
A damaged, incomplete print was found in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

 in the 1970s, and was thought to be the only surviving copy until a nearly-pristine one was found in the archives of the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...

.
1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtiz was an Academy award winning Hungarian-American film director. He had early creditsas Mihály Kertész and Michael Kertész...

 
Lionel Atwill
Lionel Atwill
Lionel Atwill was an English stage and film actor born in Croydon, London, England.He studied architecture before his stage debut at the Garrick Theatre, London in 1904. He become a star in Broadway theatre by 1918, and made his screen debut in 1919. He acted on the stage in Australia but was most...

, Fay Wray
Fay Wray
Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...

 
Technicolor version found in personal vault of Jack L. Warner.
1933 Der Sieg des Glaubens
Der Sieg des Glaubens
Der Sieg des Glaubens is the first documentary film directed by Leni Riefenstahl, who was hired despite opposition from Nazi officials that resented employing a woman — and a non-Party member too...

Leni Riefenstahl
Leni Riefenstahl
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens , a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party...

 
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 
This 64-minute documentary was ordered destroyed by Hitler for showing Nazi party member Ernst Röhm
Ernst Röhm
Ernst Julius Röhm, was a German officer in the Bavarian Army and later an early Nazi leader. He was a co-founder of the Sturmabteilung , the Nazi Party militia, and later was its commander...

, who had been murdered on Hitler's orders. A copy was found in Britain in the 1990s.
1934 Of Human Bondage John Cromwell
John Cromwell (director)
Elwood Dager Cromwell , known as John Cromwell, was an American film actor, director and producer.-Biography:...

 
Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...

 
The negative was discovered to have been destroyed in 1964 when actress Kim Novak
Kim Novak
Kim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...

 requested a print. A copy was recovered several years later.
1933 Ojo Okichi (Miss Okichi) Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His film Ugetsu won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and appeared in the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll in 1962 and 1972. Mizoguchi is renowned for his mastery of the long take and mise-en-scène...

 
Isuz Yamada  This film did not actually appear in official filmographies of Mizoguchi until a print was discovered in the vaults of Shochiku studios in 2008.
1935 Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht Leni Riefenstahl
Leni Riefenstahl
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens , a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party...

 
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

, Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...

, Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s...

, Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...

 
Thought to have been lost following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, an incomplete print running 28 minutes was discovered in the 1970s.
1936 Border Vengeance
Border Vengeance
Border Vengeance is a 1935 American western B movie directed by Ray Heinz, written by Forbes Parkhill based upon the novel The Return of the Muley Kid by R. Craig Christensen. The film had its premiere on June 1, 1935 and was released to theaters on June 5.-Background:The project starred former...

Ray Heinz Reb Russell
Reb Russell
Ewell Albert "Reb" Russell was a Major League Baseball player for the Chicago White Sox and the Pittsburgh Pirates....

, Mary Jane Carey, Kenneth MacDonald
Kenneth MacDonald
Kenneth MacDonald was an English actor who was best known for the parts of Gunner Nobby Clark in It Ain't Half Hot Mum and Mike Fisher in Only Fools and Horses.-Personal life:...

 
Formerly listed on the Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...

 as a lost film, a copy was made available as a free download circa 2004 as part of the collection of the Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

.
1937 Slaves in Bondage
Slaves in Bondage
Slaves in Bondage is an American film directed by Elmer Clifton. It stars Lona Andre, Donald Reed, and Wheeler Oakman.-Production background:...

Elmer Clifton
Elmer Clifton
Elmer Clifton, was an American writer, director, and actor from the early silent days. A collaborator of D. W. Griffith, he appeared in The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance before giving up acting in 1919 to concentrate on work behind the camera...

 
Lona Andre
Lona Andre
Lona Andre was an American film actress.Born Launa Anderson in Nashville, Tennessee, Andre attracted attention with her first films in Hollywood and was named as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1932. After winning the Paramount Panther Woman Contest, she was signed to a movie contract by...

, Donald Reed
Donald Reed
Donald Reed was a film actor, and later, Beverly Hills video consultant. He appeared in 47 films between 1925 and 1940...

, Wheeler Oakman
Wheeler Oakman
Wheeler Oakman was an American film actor.Usually appearing as a henchman in films, rarely a leading role, he appeared in over 280 films between 1912 and 1948....

, Florence Dudley 
Long listed on the Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...

 as a lost film, it resurfaced on DVD in the mid-2000s.
1939 Le Jour Se Leve
Le Jour se lève
Le Jour se lève is a 1939 French film directed by Marcel Carné and written by Jacques Prévert, based on a story by Jacques Viot. It is considered one of the principal examples of the French film movement known as poetic realism....

Marcel Carné
Marcel Carné
-Biography:Born in Paris, France, the son of a cabinet maker whose wife died when their son was five, Carné began his career as a film critic, becoming editor of the weekly publication, Hebdo-Films, and working for Cinémagazine and Cinémonde between 1929 and 1933. In the same period he worked in...

 
Jean Gabin
Jean Gabin
-Biography:Born Jean-Alexis Moncorgé in Paris, he grew up in the village of Mériel in the Seine-et-Oise département, about 22 mi north of Paris. The son of cabaret entertainers, he attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly...

, Jules Berry & Arletty
Arletty
Arletty was a French actress, singer, and fashion model.-Life and career:Arletty was born Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat in Courbevoie , to a working-class family. Her early career was dominated by the music hall, and she later appeared in plays and cabaret. Arletty was a stage performer for ten years...

 
When RKO acquired the distribution rights to Le Jour se lève in preparation for remaking it as The Long Night, they also sought to buy up and destroy all available prints of the original film. For a time, it was thought that the French film had been lost completely, but copies re-appeared in the 1950s and its classic status was re-established.
1939 Smith
Smith (film)
Smith is a short film directed by Michael Powell to promote a charity that helped ex-servicemen who had fallen on hard times, starring Ralph Richardson and Flora Robson.-Production background:...

Michael Powell
Michael Powell (director)
Michael Latham Powell was a renowned English film director, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger...

 
Ralph Richardson
Ralph Richardson
Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....

 & Flora Robson
Flora Robson
Dame Flora McKenzie Robson DBE was an English actress, renowned as a character actress, who played roles ranging from queens to villainesses.-Early life:...

 
A short film made in 1939 to promote an ex-servicemen's charity. It got caught up in the start of WWII and wasn't shown publicly. It wasn't even mentioned by Powell in his autobiography. A copy was found in 2003 and it had its first public screening in the UK in 2004. 65 years after it was completed.
1939 Tevya
Tevye (film)
Tevye is an American film adaptation of Sholem Aleichem's story of the same name, also known as Tevya, Tevye der Milchiker, or Tevye the Milkman.-Production background:...

Maurice Schwartz
Maurice Schwartz
Maurice Schwartz was a Russian-born film and theatre actor active in the United States. He was also a film director, film producer, theatrical producer, screenwriter and theatre director.-Theatre:...

 
Maurice Schwartz
Maurice Schwartz
Maurice Schwartz was a Russian-born film and theatre actor active in the United States. He was also a film director, film producer, theatrical producer, screenwriter and theatre director.-Theatre:...


Julius Adler
Julius Adler (actor)
Julius Adler was a Jewish actor, writer, and director in Yiddish theater.-Career:He was born in Biłgoraj, Poland into an orthodox Jewish family. When his father died six years later his mother emigrated to America leaving the children with grandparents. In 1920 the family was reunited in the...

 
Long thought lost, a print was discovered and restored in 1978.

1940s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1940 Confucius
Confucius (1940 film)
Confucius is a 1940 Chinese film directed by Fei Mu. Produced during the war, the film was released twice in the 1940s before being thought lost. In 2001, the film was rediscovered when an anonymous donor sent a damaged copy of the print to the Hong Kong Film Archive...

Fei Mu
Fei Mu
Fei Mu was a major Chinese film director from the pre-Communist era.-Biography:Born in Shanghai, China, Fei Mu is considered by many to be one of the major film directors prior to the communist revolution in 1949...

 
A print was anonymously donated to the Hong Kong Film Archive
Hong Kong Film Archive
Hong Kong Film Archive is located at 50 Lei King Road, Sai Wan Ho, Hong Kong .It was opened in January 2001 and it is now under the management of Leisure and Cultural Service Department...

 in 2001.
1940 Kampf um Norwegen - Feldzug 1940
Kampf um Norwegen - Feldzug 1940
Kampf um Norwegen – Feldzug 1940 is a 1940 Nazi propaganda film directed by Martin Rikli and Dr. Werner Buhre under orders of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. The documentary film follows the Invasion of Denmark and Norway in the spring of 1940....

Martin Rikli
Werner Buhre 
Found in Norway in 2005
1941 Kukan
Kukan
Kukan is a documentary film by Rey Scott about the Chinese resistance to Japanese aggression during the early part of World War II . The film, subtitled The Battle Cry of China, was given an Honorary Academy Award...

Rey Scott  An extant print of this Academy Award-winning documentary was located by Hawaiian filmmaker Robin Lung.
1945 Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors
Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors
is the first Japanese feature-length animated film. It was directed by Mitsuyo Seo, who was ordered to make a propaganda film for the war by the Japanese Naval Ministry. Shochiku Moving Picture Laboratory shot the 74-minute film in 1944 and screened it on April 12, 1945. It is a sequel to Momotarō...

Mitsuyo Seo
Mitsuyo Seo
was a Japanese animator, screenwriter and director of animated films who played a central role in the development of Japanese anime. He was born in Himeji, Hyōgo Prefecture.-Career:...

 
Japan's first feature
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

 animated film. Presumed to have been confiscated and burnt by the American occupation
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the Occupation of Japan following World War II...

, but a negative was found in Shochiku
Shochiku
is a Japanese movie studio and production company for kabuki. It also produces and distributes anime films. Its best remembered directors include Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Keisuke Kinoshita and Yōji Yamada...

's vault in 1984

1950s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1957 Shadows John Cassavetes
John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes was an American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen...

 
Cassavetes showed a first version of his film only a handful of times, then scrapped it and re-shot the movie entirely. Found at a sale of items lost on the New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 subway, and tracked down by cinema historian Ray Carney
Ray Carney
Ray Carney, also known as Raymond Carney, Ph.D, is an American scholar and critic, primarily known for his work as a film theorist, although he writes extensively on American art and literature as well. He is known for his study of the works of actor and director John Cassavetes...

.

1960s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1965 The Noble Experiment Tom Graeff
Tom Graeff
Thomas Lockyear "Tom" Graeff was an American screenwriter, director and actor. He is known for the 1959 b-movie Teenagers from Outer Space.-Early life:...

 
Tom Graeff
Tom Graeff
Thomas Lockyear "Tom" Graeff was an American screenwriter, director and actor. He is known for the 1959 b-movie Teenagers from Outer Space.-Early life:...

 
Surviving print found by Elle Schneider in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

.
1966 Incubus Leslie Stevens
Leslie Stevens
Leslie Clark Stevens III was the creator of the cult TV series The Outer Limits and director of the cult horror film Incubus , starring William Shatner. He wrote an early work of New Age philosophy, Est: The Steersman Handbook .-Early life and career:Leslie Stevens was born in Washington, D.C...

 
William Shatner
William Shatner
William Alan Shatner is a Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, and author. He gained worldwide fame and became a cultural icon for his portrayal of James T...

 
Surviving print found at Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...

 with French subtitles.

1970s

Year Film Director Cast Notes Ref
1971 Bun-Rye's Story
Bun-Rye's Story
Bun-Rye's Story is a 1971 South Korean film directed by Yu Hyun-mok and based on a novel by Bang Young-wung.- Plot :Bun-rye, the eldest daughter in a poor family, is violated by Yong-pal, who is a married man, and out of desperation she becomes a concubine of Young-cheol, a gambler who is...

Yu Hyun-mok
Yu Hyun-mok
Yu Hyun-mok was a South Korean film director. Born in Sariwon, North Hwanghae, Korea , he made his film debut in 1956 with Gyocharo...

 
1971 Necromania
Necromania
Necromania is a pornographic film by Edward D. Wood, Jr., released in 1971.-Production and rediscovery:...

Edward D. Wood, Jr.  Believed lost for years until an edited version resurfaced at a yard sale in 1992, followed by a complete unedited print in 2001.
1971 The Young Marrieds
The Young Marrieds (film)
The Young Marrieds is a pornographic film directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. Reportedly, this was made after Necromania, thus being Ed Wood's last film before his death.-Preservation:...

Edward D. Wood, Jr.  Believed lost for years until rediscovered in Canada.
1972 Marjoe
Marjoe
Marjoe is a 1972 American documentary film produced and directed by Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan about the life of evangelist Marjoe Gortner. It won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.- Story:...

Howard Smith
Howard Smith
Howard Smith may refer to:*Howard Smith , U.S. film director, journalist, broadcaster; Academy Award winner for feature-length documentary, 1972*Howard Smith , British ambassador and Director General of MI5, 1979–1981...


Sarah Kernochan
Sarah Kernochan
Sarah Kernochan is a documentarian, film director, screenwriter and producer from the United States.After graduating in 1965 from Rosemary Hall , where she was a classmate of Glenn Close, and in 1968 from Sarah Lawrence College, she worked as a ghostwriter for The Village Voice for about a year...

 
Marjoe Gortner
Marjoe Gortner
Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner, generally known as Marjoe Gortner , is a former revivalist who first gained a certain fame in the late 1940s when he became the youngest ordained preacher at the age of four...

 
Although released on VHS, the film had long been out of print and had deteriorated. In 2002 the negative and other elements were found in a vault in New York City.
1972 Born to Boogie
Born to Boogie
Born to Boogie is a 1972 concert film based around a concert at Wembley Empire Pool starring Marc Bolan and T. Rex. Directed by Ringo Starr, the movie was released on The Beatles' Apple Films label...

Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...

 
Marc Bolan
Marc Bolan
Marc Bolan was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist and poet. He is best known as the founder, frontman, lead singer & guitarist for T. Rex, but also a successful solo artist...

 Elton John
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...

 
Although released on VHS, the original print remained in storage and was presumed lost. The film was rediscovered and subsequently remastered for DVD release in 2005.
1974 Deranged
Deranged
Deranged is a Canadian/American horror film made in 1974 and directed by Alan Ormsby and Jeff Gillen. It is also known by the title Deranged: The Confessions of a Necrophile in the USA...

Jeff Gillen
Alan Ormsby
Alan Ormsby
Alan Ormsby is an American director, screenwriter, make up artist, actor and author. He is best known for his work in the horror genre.-Film career:...

 
Roberts Blossom
Roberts Blossom
Roberts Scott Blossom was an American theater, film and television actor and poet. He is best known for his roles as Old Man Marley in Home Alone and as Ezra Cobb in the horror film Deranged...

 
Disappeared after its release in 1974, and was later rediscovered in Florida.
1978 Showdown at the Cotton Mill
Showdown at the Cotton Mill
Showdown At The Cotton Mill is a 1978 film directed by Wu Ma. The film is a sequel to Shoalin Avengers...

Chi Ping Chang
Peng Chang
San Lin Chen 
Ma Wu Discovered in a Taiwanese film vault.

External links

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