The most wanted missing movies

We’ve come a long way since the birth of cinema, through the ‘Talkie’ and Technicolor to a world of CGI. Only with over a century of celluloid reeled out behind us, there’s a few landmark movies lost in the run time.

“Over half of all American films made before 1950 are lost forever,” claims Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, whilst the Filmmuseum Berlin estimates 90% of silent movies may be gone for good - nothing but the odd production still or scene left of their cinematic life.

[Lost Three Stooges film found in Australian garden shed]

However, with a copy of sought-after 1933 Three Stooges movie ‘Hello, Pop!’ recently uncovered, 46 years after it was presumed lost in an infamous MGM fire, our hopes are now raised of still recovering some of the world’s most wanted missing movies.

Check list at the ready? Let’s get hunting.

Murder At Monte Carlo (1934)
Before he swashbuckled his way to becoming Hollywood’s biggest star, Aussie-born Errol Flynn made his first stint as a leading man in ‘Murder At Monte Carlo’ – playing a reporter trying to get the scoop on the death of a famous mathematician. The film was average, but Flynn was spotted by studio exec Irving Asher who immediately contacted his Hollywood office, claiming the young actor was “the best picture bet we have ever seen”. Flynn secured a seven year contract with Warner Bros., and within months was filming the classic ‘Captain Blood’. The movie that made him though was lost to the depths of the archives.

The Way Of All Flesh (1927)
Twelve years before he made movie history with indisputable classics ‘The Wizard Of OZ’ and ‘Gone With The Wind’, director Victor Fleming steered Swiss-born star Emil Jannings to the first ever Academy Award for Best Actor in ‘The Way Of All Flesh’. Since that inaugural Oscars night though, all copies of the creepy drama have been inexplicably lost - making ‘The Way Of All Flesh’ the only Academy Award winning movie no longer thought to exist.

The Great Gatsby (1926)
The first of four adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal novel, and the only one to be filmed in the actual Roaring 20s, ‘The Great Gatsby’ is an early example of Hollywood jumping on the pop-culture bandwagon. Directed by Herbert Brenon, the movie received only average reviews and was soon a forgotten oddity. Fitzgerald himself didn’t think much of it either, reportedly walking out of a screening halfway thought. “It’s ROTTEN and awful and terrible,” his wife Zelda wrote of the experience. Only the original trailer (yes there were trailers even in the 20s) remains of this missing movie.

A Study In Scarlet (1914)
Long before Cumberbatch and Downey Jr., ‘A Study In Scarlet’ was the ever first film to adapt legendary detective Sherlock Holmes for the screen. Although 1900 super-short ‘Sherlock Holmes Baffled’ had debuted a surreal vision of the sleuth, ‘A Study In Scarlet’ marked the first appearance of the character as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intended – played by the interestingly named James Bragington in his first and only ever role. Never seen again after its initial release, it’s thought most prints of the movie may have been recycled for metal during Britain’s early war effort.

Humour Risk (1921)
One of the greatest comedy acts in American film history, The Marx Brothers, may (or may not) have had their earliest effort sabotaged from within. Eight years before the release of their first feature-length movie ‘The Cocoanuts,’ 1921 silent ‘Humour Risk’ saw a prototype set-up of the bumbling brothers playing entirely different personas. Following a disastrous preview screening, the only print then mysteriously went missing, spawning two theories concerning its fate. One explanation is the film may have been accidentally thrown away after it was left in the screening box overnight.  The second: Groucho Marx purposely burned the negatives to prevent anyone else watching it. When asked about the movie years later, Groucho dismissed the question saying “Forget about that one.”

The Mountain Eagle (1927)
Dubbed “the Holy Grail for film historians”, ‘The Mountain Eagle’ is the only missing movie to feature in Alfred Hitchcock’s incredible back catalogue. Set in Kentucky (but filmed in Austria), the love triangle melodrama was the director’s second ever attempt at movie making, but plagued by production problems (including a bout of altitude sickness for Alfred). The soon-to-go missing movie was then panned by critics upon release, with Hitchcock later describing the film as “awful”, adding that he was “not sorry” no surviving prints could be found. Still, with only a handful of production stills known to exist, ‘The Mountain Eagle’ sits at the top of the BFI’s infamous ‘75 Most Wanted’ list.

The Public Life Of Henry The Ninth (1935)
On the surface ‘The Public Life Of Henry The Ninth’ is an average 30s comedy about a glass collector at a pub. But it’s what went on behind the camera that makes this movie so sought after… it was the first ever film produced by Hammer. Yup, the horror guys. Before the cult British production house went on to make the monster movies (like ‘The Curse Of Frankenstein’ and ‘The Mummy’) that would define the blood splattered company, founder William Hinds started out from these far more humble roots. A small number of stills from the debut still exist, but the movie itself? Vanished.

London After Midnight (1927)
Second only to ‘The Mountain Eagle’ as one the world’s most wanted movies, ‘London After Midnight’ was director Tod Browning’s first dabble in the vampire genre before he made the insanely influential ‘Dracula’ in 1931. However the movie gains extra appeal from its undead star, Lon Chaney - early cinema’s “Man Of A Thousand Faces” who fronted influential silent horrors such as ‘The Hunchback Of Notre Dame’ and ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’. As one of the actor’s last ever screen performances, the movie survived in an MGM vault until it was lost in the same 1967 fire that supposedly destroyed ‘Hello, Pop!’. Or was it?

Saved From The Titanic (1912)
Hollywood’s long history of cashing-in on a crisis got off to an impressive start when ‘Saved From The Titanic’ premiered just 29 days after the eponymous ship tragically sank. Actual survivor Dorothy Gibson had barely made it out of the lifeboat when she began drafting the screenplay, using her connections as a young actress to get the adaptation straight into production. Gibson played herself (obviously), wearing the same clothes she wore on the night of the sinking - whilst stock footage of icebergs and Titanic’s sister ship, Olympia, was used to complete the film. The movie was a massive success, however all known prints were destroyed in a 1914 fire at Éclair Studios. Dorothy herself suffered a mental breakdown after production, never making another movie again.

Should these lost movies be sought out? Or are they probably best forgotten? Let us know in the comments below.