The First Kiss lost to time

A lost Hollywood film was shot at Washington College.

The First Kiss was released in August 1928 by Paramount. This silent film was shot on the Eastern Shore, and while most scenes were filmed in St. Mary’s, a few were shot on the campus of Washington College. In June of that year, Hollywood legends Fay Wray and Gary Cooper were in Chestertown. Sadly, like many films of this era, it is lost, and only image stills remain. 

 

The movie was based on a short story from The Saturday Evening Post, “Four Brothers” by Tristram Tupper. It featured the Talbot family, once a grand family, now fallen on hard times. With an alcoholic father and three lazy brothers, Mulligan Talbot (Gary Cooper) is determined to make the Talbot name respected again… by robbing ships on the Chesapeake Bay to pay for his brother’s education. Once his brothers become successful, Mulligan sells his ships and repays those he stole from… which brings about charges of piracy. His brothers and love interest, Anna (Fay Wray), come to his defense. He is found guilty and paroled into Anna’s care. Director Rowland V. Lee shot on location in Talbot County and at the College. Most scenes shot here were of the brother’s education, so Lane Chandler, Leslie Fenton, and Paul Fix were the actors most concerned. Washington College students were lucky enough to serve as extras. 

So why can’t we watch this film? According to Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, “Half of all American films made before 1950 and over 90% of films made before 1929 are lost forever.” The Library of Congress stated in 2013 that 75% of all silent films have been lost. The culprit for this is nitrate film. Prior to the 1950s, most movie and camera film were nitrocellulose film based. When this film begins to degrade or get overheated, left next to a hot projector bulb, for example, it becomes highly flammable. It is so combustible that it is usually stored in near freezing temperatures, requires a Hazmat license to transport, and only a few facilities in the US will store it. If it does catch fire, it is extremely hard to extinguish. It can be submerged in water, and the combustion will create its own oxygen to feed the fire. When nitrate film is found in a collection, it is usually digitized and then safely destroyed. In the 1920s through the 1950s, movie studios would store their films in massive warehouses, often called vaults. If one film went up, soon there was a raging inferno! This happened several times, to Lubin films in 1914, Universal Pictures in 1924, and Warner Bros. in 1933, Fox in 1937, and even MGM in 1965. These fires were often not in California; studios would often set up these warehouses on the East Coast. 

Even more devastating is that many of the films were junked or destroyed on purpose. A film might have been remade and the original destroyed. Space was also expensive, so films that were not seen as commercially viable were gotten rid of.  

Occasionally, a lost film will be found. Sometimes it is a heavily edited version, one that used different cuts or scraps, or a copy that was used to make prints. “The First Kiss” was made up of six reels of film. Sometimes, only some of the reels might be lost. Once in a while a print will surface in another country. Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis’ original cut was lost, but restoration copies were cobbled together from different takes and bits found over the years until Giorgio Moroder made his restoration in 1984. Some films will use scripts and images to cobble together a version of the film, like Turner Classic Movies did in 2002 for Tod Browning’s 1927 film London After Midnight, one of the most sought-after lost films. If the film had sound, a “talkie,” the still images could be overlaid to the soundtrack. Nitrate film was only for the images, so soundtracks were made separately and with different materials. 

It is sad that we can’t watch Gary Cooper and Fay Wray walk the Washington College campus. The loss of so much early film is an immense tragedy. It makes the work done by film archives and historians so important. Efforts by the Library of Congress, Academy Film Archive, and filmmakers like Martin Scorsese are preserving as much as possible.