Lost 1923 Warner Bros Film Found.

From Joshua Cattermole:


"A very exciting reveal today, and a major film that hasn't been seen for nearly a century. I bring to you The Gold Diggers silent film from 1923. This was the first of a long series of ''Gold Digger'' films based off of the 1919 Broadway play by Avery Hopwood, though the later ones were more loosely based. The silent version here had only a few stills surviving from it, but here is a near complete print, 4 reels out of 6, comprising parts 1, 4, 5 and 6 (with a few small bits missing off some stars and ends of the reels). I'd say there is perhaps 70% of the film surviving here, with the start and end being complete. The missing sections I have done my best to write little blurbs to fill in the plot, using the surviving Vitaphone recordings of the 1929 sound version, which is incredibly close to the plot of the 1923 version, often using direct quotation from the original silent picture here in the remake 6 years later.

This film was a major production back in the day, made by the upcoming Warner Brothers studios. It was released on 22 September 1923 and made reportedly made $501,000 ($470,000 domestically and $31,000 internationally) off of a $280,000 budget. It stars actors and actresses such as Hope Hampton, Wyndham Standing, Louis Fazenda, Gertrude Short, Alex Francis, John Harron and Anne Cornwall. The plot very much embodies the title, featuring a bunch of young women appearing to dupe a bunch of old rich men in a humorous setting. The film sets and the clothing in this production are pretty impressive, and really do embody the glitz and glamour of the Roaring 20s and the Flapper era. Whether the film itself is good or not, the artistic content is well worth seeing.

As to the film print itself. I found this local to myself, in Mansfield, central England. The seller told me that he'd found it from a house clearance several years ago and didn't have the equipment to run it or fully identify it. When I collected the film from the gentleman they were being stored in the back of an old van. The 4 reels of Gold Diggers were accompanied by a couple reels of early 1930s cartoons and one 1920s British newsreel. The cartoons and a part of the newsreel were affected by nitrate decay. However, the Gold Diggers reels are in miraculous condition. No sign of decay at all, and only a little bit of sprocket damage and brittleness around old splices. When I projected it to film this video there were absolutely no problems whatsoever. A miracle that such an old print can run so cleanly.


The film print itself, in 35mm nitrate, has been tinted in various locations such as was common back in the silent era for emotive effect. The film is on early 1920s Belgian film stock by the company Gevaert, so clearly copied from an original American print exported for domestic projection and copied for further distribution and exhibition in England. After the film had its projection run in England it presumably went into storage and got lost, though it's had a bit of editing during it's life. This can be seen at the end of Reel 5 where the scene jumps, and somebody had spliced a bit of film saying ''End of Part Four'' there, which was incorrect. Similarly, at the end of the film you can see ''The End'' with the words ''Universal'' behind it, presumably chopped and spliced onto this film from a Universal Pictures film. The final reel of the surviving footage had a number ''6'' scored into it, so it's clear the entire film was together originally, though it's extremely unfortunate that it wasn't 100% complete when I encountered it. Who knows, it may still be in some attic here in central England waiting to be joined with the rest of the film.



As always, the video I have uploaded was done by projecting the nitrate using my 1906 cinematograph onto a screen and positioning a camera to capture it, so apologies for the loss of quality. Similarly, there is a bit of shutter ghosting on some sections, which is due to the shutter on my projector. The jumpiness is also due to the nature of my machine's mechanism. To be clear, the film print itself is in near perfect condition, and any quality issues are on my end. However, the film is perfectly watchable, and surely a lack of top HD Blu-Ray quality is a small price to pay for watching a major lost film which hasn't been shown to the public for nearly 100 years.


This work took a great deal of time to put together and upload, so I do hope that you enjoy the film and the work that went into bringing it to the public eye once more


Massive thanks to my brother Steve for filming, and my mate Robbie at RM Film for the tech side of things. Cheers lads.

The Gold Diggers (1923)