Questions for Doug and others - variations of Chaplin found on toy projector films. LONG

Hello, Doug and others,

From reading the posts here over the past month it looks like there are many differences between 'show at home' and theatrical Chaplin shorts from print to print, from different eras and from different companys.

I am kind of familiar with films made for toy projectors. I have a few myself in both 16 and 35mm format. But no Chaplins. There is literally a multitude of Chaplin film prints from 25 foot excerpts to full length shorts.

My question: Has anyone found variations in shots or angles in some of these 25-100 foot toy projector films opposed to the Blackhawks and other well known sources? My thought is that the source negatives for some of these may date back to the 1910s and could have been used up until the 1940s or 50s.

One of the reasons why I ask is that a catalog in front of me from the Paramount Manufacturing company ca. mid-1920s points out anyone with the $ can buy abridged 35mm (nitrate) Chaplin films to use in hand crank toy projectors.

The Paramount Manufacturing Company catalog even advertises footage cut out from theatrical feature films that would otherwise be thrown out. They advertise 100 foot lengths from Lon Chaney, Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Valentino films. This is 35mm, not 16. Nitrate film, not safety.

I have one of these reel trims and it is definately from a lost film and nitrate.

Also advertised are various lenghts available from 35mm theatrical prints that have out lived thier commercial usefullness. 'This is the same film the big theatres use....' 'We get this film after the big theatres use it.'

It is possible that a portion of an orignial theatrical Mutual, Keystone or First National could survive as a nitrate 35mm toy projector trim, provided they do survive (slim chance they did), or the source material from some of these early titled 35mm 25-50ft abridgement prints were reduced to 16mm and those 16mm elements were still in use several decades afterward and differ in lineage and content from footage contained in the assumed 'complete' two reelers that we all have been used to seeing all these years.

Toy projector film is a very complicated area of research. (that is why I don't do it) Unfortunately, most film collectors consider them to be trash and they get junked. But, lots of reminants of now lost films can be found within these prints these days.

For example, a few minuets of the lost very first Our Gang short was recently found to be on a toy print. Some of the Our Gang rip offs (McDougall Alley Kids, Mickey McGuire) exist solely on them. Same for long forgotten cartoons. It is just a matter of finding out what misappropriately titled box or which unnamed decomposing nitrate excerpt they can be found on.

Can the same be said for a missing Chaplin scene?

Have a nice day,

Darren Nemeth This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Owner of 'Giant Squid Audio Lab' - Specialists in durable, high fidelity Binaural / Stereo and Mono miniature microphones for discriminating DAT and Mini Disc recording enthusiasts.

Great topic, Darren. I wish I could help more. I have only seen a 35mm clip from 'The Floorwalker' a couple of years ago on Ebay (didn't buy it). Of course, I have no way of knowing if this was clipped from a worn out original theatrical print, or if it was simply a 35mm dupe.

I'm also not sure how many (if any) of the 16mm toy films were sourced from 35mm clips that were also distributed as toy films (obviously, all of them were sourced from 35mm at some point!).

I would LOVE to see a list of Toy films, with a description of what the source film is, and quality - not all of them are worthless, for sure. Unfortunately, it's such a pig-in-a-poke that I've stopped buying them (not to mention they go on Ebay for prices far in excess of what I think they're really worth!).

A member of this group who probably wishes to remain anonymous just sent me a tape with a number of dubs of Toy Films on it, and I have a small pile myself. Since it's a lazy Sunday afternoon, and muggy as hell here in New Jersey today, I don't mind listing them for you All of these are from 50 foot reels (1 1/2 - 2 minutes).

1. Hollywood Film Enterprises (346) Charlie The Nurse Maid Good quality material containing the first few minutes of 'His Trysting Place.' This is the footage that's missing from Blackhawk's print!

2. Hollywood Film Enterprises (365) Charlie And Tillie's Flirtation Good quality material containing the entire 2 minute fence scene which is missing from the Image DVD.

3. Empire Safety Film Co. Charlie And The Villain Turns out to be a couple of minutes from 'The Champion.' What raised my eyebrows about this one is not the film - which looks very good... but then again, most copies of 'The Champion' look very good... but the price on the can - $4.50, which was an awful lot of money in 1928 (which is when this is from).

4. No. mfg. listed Busy Charlie Clip from 'Behind The Screen.' Nothing special.

5. Empire Safety Film Co. Charlie At The Beach I hoped I was getting part of 'By The Sea' here... nope. It's a cartoon.

6. Keystone Sleepless Night A couple of minutes of 'Police'

I have another batch to go through, but I'm out of Toy Film energy for now...

Anyone care to add to this list?

A project I've thought about too - it would be nice to have a cross-reference of source films and excerpt titles. It woudl be an easy project to create, just have people send titles and companies to one user who enters it all in a database program.

Hell, I'd be glad to do this. Question is, does anybody really care that much? Will it even matter if all the European restorations happen?

Yes - because people (like me) collect Chaplin films in 16mm, and no matter how nice the European restorations are, they're probably not going to be available in that format - leaving the actual 'film' collectors right back where they started.

But all that aside... it's just an interesting topic. I hope more people come forth with some data - probably quite a few of you have at least a couple of these things laying around...

Years ago I bought one called The Cop, which is essentially the Eric Campbell gas lamp confrontation from Easy Street. Even though I have a very nice, complete 16mm Easy Street with a good soundtrack, I always kept The Cop.

Hi, Darren

Like others, I've stopped buying these things because they're too much money for what they are, and chances are they're not going to be anything interesting anyway.

However, I have found some footage on toy films - the very beginning of "Those Love Pangs," the deleted (?) Spanish dancer sequence from "The Adventurer," A close-up of Eric Campbell's face in the street light from "Easy Street" (usually missing in 16mm prints), and, I think, some alternate shots from "The Vagaband" on an old Kodascope reel.

Doug Sulpy