By Travis Johnson
Film is a fragile medium. According to Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, over half of American films made before 1950, and nine out ten pre-1929 films are simply gone forever, so it’s always exciting when we rediscover a movie we thought consigned to the ash-heap of history.
1930’s Mamba was only the sixth colour talkie and the very first non-musical one. Directed by Albert Rogell for Poverty Row production house Tiffany Pictures, Mamba is an action/drama set in German East Africa at the dawn of World War One, and stars Jan Hersholt, Eleanor Boardman (wife of King Vidor), and Ralph Forbes. It was thought lost since 1932, most likely burned along with the rest of Tiffany’s nitrate stock, which was used in the “burning of Atlanta” sequence in Gone With the Wind.
However, Adelaide couple Murray and Pat Matthews, now 87, saved a 35mm print in 1957 and, thanks to making contact with Hollywood history expert Paul Brennan via the imdb.com message boards, that print has now been restored by the Film Foundation and screened at UCLA’s Billy Wilder Theatre on Saturday, March 18.
The recovered print is now in cold storage, but new 35mm prints can be struck for festival exhibition, and a DVD release is in the planning stages.
Swedish film scholar and early talkies expert Jonas Nordin was also instrumental in the film’s recovery and restoration, painstakingly re-synching the sound. As he explains in his blog here, Australia offers rich pickings for film archaeologists. With Oceania being the end of the distribution line, many prints earmarked for destruction instead were kept by early exhibitors and projectionists.
Mamba itself is an incredibly rare find, and a landmark film in the development of cinema technology. Hopefully wider modern audiences will get a chance to check it out sooner rather than later.
I keep hearing the Tiffany story of MGM buying the elements of that company after they banrupted(Tiffany-Stahl as in John Stahl) and then on sold it to Louis B Mayer’s then son in law David O. Selznick for destruction at that fire which was supposed attended by Selznick’s agent brother, Myron, and Vivian Leigh. Is there any evidence. Certainly I would not destroy elements at all in any case whatsoever. Same may have happened to the Film Booking Office’s(FBO) elements in more modern times when a TV series deal with the films fell thru and the owner or manager of the material destroyed it for the silver content. Proof? Not seen any.
Post 1935, most Hollywood companies were of the opinion then, that silent films were dead and the creaky dawn of sound titles were not screenable and that storage space was wasted by keeping them. Vault fires were becoming frequent as a way of incinerating that they considered junk. Fox burnt almost everything pre 1933 in 1937. When Selznick called for unwanted burnables to create the GWTW Atlanta fire scene, truckloads of the pre 1933 materials from all studios and storage vaults and wharehouses were shipped there and burnt. That was the fact of the time. Up it all went, hence the scarcity of elements from that era, especially from defunct studios like Tiffany, FBO, Liberty, Chesterfield, and early Monogram. What we feel now and would do is different, but then, in the 30s, with renewed Hollywood business zeal, those old films were believed to be a waste of space.
Post 1935, most Hollywood companies were of the opinion then, that silent films were dead and the creaky dawn of sound titles were not screenable and that storage space was wasted by keeping them. Vault fires were becoming frequent as a way of incinerating that they considered junk. Fox burnt almost everything pre 1933 in 1937. When Selznick called for unwanted burnables to create the GWTW Atlanta fire scene, truckloads of the pre 1933 materials from all studios and storage vaults and wharehouses were shipped there and burnt. That was the fact of the time. Up it all went, hence the scarcity of elements from that era, especially from defunct studios like Tiffany, FBO, Liberty, Chesterfield, and early Monogram. What we feel now and would do is different, but then, in the 30s, with renewed Hollywood business zeal, those old films were believed to be a waste of space.