Film History: Found, Lost & Found Again

Vintage documents, letters, newspaper ads, magazine articles and more -- a library at your fingertips!
Paul E. Gierucki
Godfather
Posts: 251
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 4:23 pm

Film History: Found, Lost & Found Again

Postby Paul E. Gierucki » Fri May 24, 2013 8:43 pm

Long before Facebook, Wikipedia, newsgroups, and movie related web sites -- at a time when home computers were still a rare commodity -- film historians and collectors often shared news of their discoveries by way of publications like 8mm Collector (later Classic Film Collector, now Classic Images), Film Fan Monthly, The Big Reel, Film Collectors' World (later Movie Collectors World), World of Yesterday, Funny Business, and various fan club newsletters. Sadly, most of those magazines are defunct, back issues scarce, and the wealth of information they contained is not available online.

Thousands of articles and news stories are in limbo, material written by the likes of William K. Everson, Sam Gill, Kalton Lahue, Samuel K. Rubin, Gene Fernett, John Hampton, Raymond Lee, Anthony Slide, Chaw Mank, Denis Gifford, as well as many of the members of this forum. Because this information has not yet been carried over to the digital realm, younger generations of film fans and budding historians who rely primarily upon web based resources (read: Wikipedia) are revisiting old topics and unwittingly reintroducing errors and myths which had been debunked by others many years ago. Worse, the discoveries and work of veteran film historians are essentially being lost due to this neglect.

As such, I have decided to start adding some of those vintage articles to the Silent Comedy Mafia Research Archive -- and encourage you to do the same. This is an opportunity for us to document our own history, as well as those who came before, in a more easily accessed form.

Paul E. Gierucki

Gary Johnson
Cugine
Posts: 656
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2009 4:15 am
Location: Sonoma, CA
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Re: Film History: Found, Lost & Found Again

Postby Gary Johnson » Sat May 25, 2013 2:02 pm

As a kid I would stand at magazine kiosks and pour over many of those publications that you mentioned, Paul. I was never a film collector but would use those magazines as reference points to what was available to be seen. I got very good at knowing what type of establishment would carry a CLASSIC FILM IMAGE or FILM MONTHLY. Head shops and used record stores were always guaranteed to have the latest issues available.


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