Riches in Rolls

The Library of Congress sometimes discovers that it is richer than it knew. Last winter, for instance, the Library found that it owns probably the world's finest collection of early U.S. movies. Last week this treasure--which is on paper instead of celluloid film--was still unexplored, uncatalogued. But it was known to include such riches as:

D. W. Griffith's The Violin Maker of Cremona (1909); 250 other Biograph films (1908-1912); 85 Keystone comedies with their cops (1914-1915); The Life of Buffalo Bill, starring William Cody himself (1912); scenes of the San Francisco earthquake (1906); a Yale-Princeton football game (1903);* the Sharkey-Jefferies fight (1899); the opening ceremonies of the New York subway (1904).

One day last February, Assistant Librarian of Motion Pictures Howard Lamarr Walls peered into an air-conditioned vault deep in the annex to Capitol Hill's most operatic piece of architecture. He saw thousands of rolls of paper: almost the entire output of U.S. motion-picture companies from 1897 to 1912. (Before 1912, he explains, motion pictures could not be copyrighted as such, and producers got around this by copyrighting their films, printed on paper, as photographs.)

When funds and technical workers can be found (probably not until after the war) the Library's priceless paper reels will be put back into projection form.

* Princeton won 11-6

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