one who truly misses the ‘good old days’.

PeterM

Sincerely,
PeterM

Ted Green,
bacongrabbers tent, Wigan, U.K.

Ross

Hats off to this website!!

Dave Liebeskind
http://www.ReelDupes.com

After that, I talked to this dealer, Douglas Hart, and explained that I needed to look through those scripts for research purposes, as one of the key points of the book was to describe how the films changed from initial idea to final product. He very generously allowed me to come to his store–Backlot Books, on Sunset and Poinsetta, I recall, a little shack next to a barber shop, and only open on Saturdays–and read the scripts into my trusty cassette recorder. He wouldn’t let me make copies, but he would let me dictate them. Consequently, I have lots of tapes of me reading these scripts at a furious pace. I remember spending many a Saturday sitting on a milk crate and dictating them as fast as possible. I think I actually typed up a few of these, but later I’d just listen to the tapes and make notes on what was different in the scripts. Anyway, this is the type of adventure you encounter when doing research for a book.

Amazingly, as soon as I got through all of the scripts from this source, a book-dealer friend of mine told me about another rare book dealer who had just acquired a collection of L&H scripts. Turned out that *these* scripts were exactly the ones that the first guy didn’t have! He, too, let me dictate these into my cassette recorder. I think somebody up there was helping me on this project–there were just too many spooky coincidences like that for me to think otherwise.

Ultimately, there were only a handful of scripts I never got to see. Sadly, among them were “Two Tars,” “Big Business,” “The Music Box” and “Sons of the Desert”; strangely, “The Bullfighters” was missing from the Fox collection at USC, which otherwise was amazingly complete, having initial treatments through final revised drafts on all the other L&H films.

I for one am *very* grateful that so much stuff was still available to be sold at the Roach Studio auction. I remember Roy Seawright telling me that when the studio was taken over by the government in 1942, he was ordered to pitch boxes of scripts and stills and who knows what else into an incinerator, because they needed more space to make those army films. I also remember Marvin Hatley telling me he went to the auction to try to find some of his scores; he did find the conductor’s copy for “Block-Heads,” and I have some of that in xerox copies. He also got the conductor’s copy for “Of Mice and Men,” which he gave to me.

You mention five missing films. Make that six: Even Lucky Dog was once considered a lost film. As I understand it, Robert Youngson found it when he needed it for one of his compilation movies.

It was me, by the way, who helped to bring the French 16mm print of Why Girls Love Sailors to light, what an experience that was!! You just ask a french collector about the missing L&H films, and immediately you are offered a vhs copy of Why Girls Love Sailors! I have since then located and identified the trailer for the German version of Pardon Us.