Films Locked in Vaults

Too Many Classic Films Remain Buried in Studios' Vaults

Michael Hiltzik | October 23, 2015

Will McKinley, a New York film writer, is dying to get his hands on a copy of "Alias Nick Beal," a 1949 film noir starring Ray Milland as a satanic gangster. For classic film blogger Nora Fiore, the Grail might be "The Wild Party" (1929), the first talkie to star 1920's "It" girl Clara Bow, directed by the pioneering female director Dorothy Arzner. Film critic Leonard Maltin says he'd like to score a viewing of "Hotel Haywire," a 1937 screwball comedy written by the great comic director Preston Sturges.

Source: https://twitter.com/drapnelson

Produced by Paramount Studios, these are all among 700 titles assumed to be nestled in the vaults of Universal Pictures, which inherited Paramount's 1930s and 1940s film archive from its forebear MCA, which acquired the collection in 1958. They're frustratingly near at hand but out of reach of film fans and cinephiles.

<more at http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20151025-column.html; related links: https://upvoted.com/2015/10/07/paramount-film-releases-full-length-movies-on-youtube/ (Paramount Film Releases Full-Length Movies On YouTube. October 7, 2015) and http://instant.warnerarchive.com/ (Warner Archive. Stream Classic TV and hard-to-find movies.)>