Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Need Info on Waterfront (1928)

This is topic Need Info on Waterfront (1928) in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 12-16-2003, 09:34 AM:

Waterfront was the film that opened our theatre, IMDB has a page on it. Is there somewhere else that may have something? Leonard Maltin's and other books don't list it so we have assumed that there is no extant print for anybody to have seen in the past 60 or so years. Is there someplace that that can be verified? We would like to put together a re-creation of opening night.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-16-2003, 09:57 AM:

Well it must survive somewhere, because five people have posted reviews on IMDB and therefore have presumably seen it recently. I think it's unlikely that those comments are based on having viewed the film 80ish years ago - if so, their authors must all be over 100 and have very good memories.

I would try the Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art and UCLA Film and Television Archive as a starting point. My knowledge of US archives is a little patchy but I think those are the three main places which have loanable prints of archive features. It was originally a First National picture, which means that the rights would have to be cleared with Warners. You would also need to have two projectors capable of running changeovers, because these archives will not allow the heads and tails to be cut from their prints. Being a 1928 Vitaphone there would be one of two ratio scenarios: if the film has been fully restored from the camera neg it will probably have been optically printed to Academy (1:1.38), but you might get an 'early sound special' (1:1.15 approx.) print, which was made by printing the optical track over a strip of the full-gate picture (Vitaphone recorded on discs initially and therefore the cameras used the same aperture size as for silent).

You could also post a request for further information on the e-mail listserve of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) - more details here.

Posted by Ron Keillor (Member # 1790) on 12-16-2003, 02:36 PM:

this source probably has limited availability so I'll reproduce the data here
from the American Film Institute Feature Films 1921-1930:
WATERFRONT
First National Pictures. 16 Sept. 1928 (c) 7 Sept. 1928 LP25619
Mus score & sd eff (Vitaphone) b&w 35mm 7 reels, 6,368 ft. (also si. 6,142 ft.)
Prod Ned Marin; Dir William A. Seiter; Cont Tom Geraghty; Titl Gene Towne, Casey Robinson; Story Will Chappell, Gertrude Orr Photog Lee Garmes Film Ed John Rawlins
Cast: Dorothy Mackaill ( Peggy Ann Andrews ), Jack Mulhall ( Jack Dowling) ), James Bradbury Sr. ( Peter Seastrom ), Knute Erickson ( Capt. John Andrews ), Ben Hendricks, Jr. ( Oilcan Olson ), William Norton Bailey ( Brute Mullin ), Pat Harmon ( an oiler)

Comedy-drama
Jack Dowling, an oiler on a tramp steamer, falls in love with Peggy Ann Andrews and thereby angers her father, a San Francisco tugboat skipper. Jack asks Peggy if she will marry him and go to live in the country, but she turns him down, wanting no part of farm life. When Peggy's father learns that Jack wants to be a farmer, he changes his mind about him, and the two men are soon conspiring to make Peggy give up waterfront life: they shanghai Peggy and put her to work peeling potatoes on a docked freighter. Peggy is at first resentful but soon comes to realize that she truly loves Jack and prepares to be a country housewife.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 12-17-2003, 11:51 PM:

Leo's sig said:

quote:
--------------------
'I recently re-read the first paragraph of the US constitution. It begins 'We, the American people...', and continues for another 50 or so majestic words. This thing [the new draft European Union constitution] reads like a Hitler speech!' - Margaret Thatcher

Maggie was wrong again. It says 'We the people'.
We are dangerously close to being assaulted by a bunch of people singing the "Schoolhouse Rock" song.