There are several “lost” films in the history of the Watch Tower Society. The 1914 Photodrama of Creation was a big success and since at least twenty complete sets were produced, most of it survived – both in private hands as well as official archives. But subsequent Bible Student films have not fared so well.
There was a Photodrama
“sequel" produced by Bible Students in 1917 called Restitution. Details of this are featured in an older article on
this blog AT THE MOVIES. Sad to say,
only a few minutes have as yet been discovered. It was renamed several times in
a troubled history and was finally rebranded as Redemption and sold in pieces on 16 mm film in the late 1920s. If
you use the search facility to access the above referenced article you will see
a link to where the surviving footage can be seen on YouTube.
Some film was taken by
secular sources. In 1913 when CTR arrived at the Hot Springs, Arkansas,
convention, his arrival was filmed (see 1913 convention report page 66). The Hot Springs New Era newspaper for June
7, 1913, also said that the baptism ceremony was filmed by the same cameraman.
But at the end of the year (Hot Springs
New Era for 30 December 1913) in response to an IBSA enquiry, there were
recriminations between cameraman, studio and express company when the negatives
disappeared in transit. So I wouldn’t hold your breath for film of Pastor
Russell alighting from a 1913 train any time soon.
When the Chicago 1921 Pageant
of Progress exhibition was filmed, the IBSA stand was reportedly featured (see write-up
by Fred Franz’ brother Albert in New Era
Enterprise for September 6, 1921). However, most newsreel material was very
short-lived. Once shown, if shown at all, such films were usually melted down
to reuse the silver and nitrocellulose base.
But returning to the
Bible Students’ own endeavors, the bumper year for lost films seems to be 1922.
That year the Bible
Students held a convention at Philadelphia over four days, April 13-16. It
started in the Moose Hall and later transferred to the Metropolitan Opera House
for the public meeting, where Joseph F Rutherford gave the public lecture. The
review of the whole event as found in the New
Era Enterprise newspaper for May 30, 1922, page 4, mentioned a special film
show.
So on the Friday
evening, at Moose Hall, to an audience of around 1500 people, 8 reels of moving
pictures were shown. For that size of audience it would have been on regular 35
mm film and would have been the length of a modest feature film. The convention
program showed what this film contained.
Whether this was raw
unedited footage or a professional presentation we do not know, but what is
obvious is that these films were soon edited down quite severely to make two
one-reelers, one on Palestine, and one on Imperial Valley. This was as part of
the Kinemo project, described in the New Era
Enterprise for July 11, 1922, and also in The Watch Tower for May 1, 1922.
There were three films in total in the
original Kinemo project, the two aforementioned and a third on the Great
Pyramid. They were produced on safety film (rather than dangerous nitrate
stock) on a substandard film gauge, 17.5 mm. They could only be seen with a
special Kinemo projector, designed for home or parlor use. All three films
featured Joseph F Rutherford in cameo appearances.
Using the search
facility on this blog under the heading KINEMO
you can find a series of articles on this project. The three Kinemo films
survived in private hands and have now been painstakingly copied frame by
frame, and the articles will give the YouTube links to watch them today.
But the question we are
left with is – what about the remaining six reels as shown in Philadelphia in
April 1922?
The 1922 convention
that everyone remembers today is the much larger event held later that year in September
at Cedar Point, Ohio. This too provides a tantalising glimse of lost films.
In readiness for the
100th year anniversary of the events, the Watchtower Society put out
a call for some footage actually taken at this Cedar Point convention. This
request was based on an advertisement in the New Era Enterprise over several issues in October and November,
1922.
This venture (or
something similar) was suggested in the Convention Notes as found in the Enterprise for October 31, 1922.
It was hoped that
someone somewhere still had this footage. It would have been special for the 100th
anniversary year if it had survived and could be restored, but this did not
happen. Extant photographs of the event show a full sized camera filming J F
Rutherford as he spoke out of doors in “The Grove.” Time may tell if it ever did
survive anywhere. It should be noted that as well as the 17.5 mm Kinemo
version, it was also possible to buy a standard 35 mm print from the same
source.
However, motion
pictures were also shown at this convention, which provides even more “lost”
films to consider. Again from the Enterprise for October 31, 1922:
The views of Egypt,
Palestine and Imperial Valley were obviously the current Kinemo trilogy in some
shape or form, but what about the other films?
The description talked
about “Views of the Bible House (back in Pittsburgh?) and other organization
buildings and offices in Brooklyn, the Bethel Home, etc., the printing and
binding of books and pamphlets, etc.” These films were shown on three evenings,
Friday to Sunday.
But what happened to
them thereafter?
Since the Society did not choose to retain 1922
footage that was actually sold to the public at the time, this does not bode
well for these other films ever surfacing.
But stranger things
have happened.
We might end by asking
why such films became “lost?” The Society’s experience during the Great War,
and its view of the future, meant that archiving was not always a high
priority, certainly not for material viewed as ephemeral at the time. Even when
the Society produced a reprint of the first 40 years of (Zion’s) Watch Tower they had to appeal to private collectors to
help them complete their file for the project. And who would know that a
hundred years after these events there would be interest in these old moving
pictures? We might easily make the same mistakes today in choosing what or what
not to keep in our personal video DVD collection.
Material in private hands may survive for a while, but when people die their relatives often throw things out because they don’t realize their significence. Like many collectors I have repeatedly followed up leads only for them to end this way. It is good that now there is far more interest in preserving the past and that technology allows for greater sharing.
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