Westwood's Fortune: UCLA Film and Television Archive
by Jere Guldin
Part of the UCLA Archive's operations
are located in what
was formerly the Technicolor plant in Hollywood.
Photo courtesy of and © UCLA.
In vault 11 on
the Warner Bros. lot were negatives to classic feature films from the 1940s.
Vault 15 held missing picture elements to early Vitaphone sound short subjects
of the 1920s. In vault 30, Jack Warner's personal holding vault, were negatives
to numerous U.S. and foreign films, from both the silent and sound eras,
long thought lost. In vault 10 were black & white and Technicolor prints
to most of the "Looney Tune" and "Merrie Melodie" shorts
from more than two decades, original Technicolor successive exposure negatives
of Warner Bros. cartoons from 1948 through 1951, and Technicolor negatives
to the Fleischer/Famous Studio Superman series.
All of these were acquired by the University of California at Los Angeles
(UCLA) Film and Television Archive in a deposit of nitrate prints and negatives
made by Warner Bros. in 1989. Included in the deposit were over 500 prints,
and nearly 200 negatives, of Warner Bros. cartoons.
This wasn't the first major collection of animation received by the archive.
Nor will it be the last.
The Film Collection
As the largest university-based media archive in the United States,
UCLA Film and Television Archive's holdings number well over 200,000. Included
in the collection are rare nitrate and safety-based feature films, short
subjects and news reels; unique television kinescopes and tapes; and original
radio transcription disks.
Animation has always been an integral part of the collection. One of the
archive's first major acquisitions also comprises the largest segment of
its animated holdings. Spanning the years 1927 through 1951, the archive
holds the National Telefilm Associates/Republic Pictures pre-print materials
of Paramount Pictures short subjects. Included in the collection are original
nitrate negatives to many of the Fleischer "Inkwell Imps," "Color
Classic," "Screen Song," "Talkartoon," and "Betty
Boop" cartoons; Famous Studio "Noveltoon" and "Little
Lulu" subjects; and "Puppetoons" by George Pal. A sizable
number of 35mm and 16mm prints enhance this collection.
Not as large a collection, but certainly as significant, is the Blackhawk
Films/Film Preservation Associates Van Beuren and Ub Iwerks nitrate negatives
and prints from the 1930s, and Paul Terry's "Aesop's Film Fables"
from the 1920s. A large number of vintage 16mm Kodascope Libraries prints
of "Out of the Inkwell" and "Felix the Cat" cartoons
comprise just part of the Stanford Theatre Collection of silent films.
Other collections include nitrate negatives and prints from animation luminaries
such as Walter Lantz, Rudy Ising, George Pal and Robert Abel. International
animation and student films are also well represented.
The hallway of a nitrate storage
building,
containing ten individual, specially-built storage
vaults. The archive's nitrate film collection
occupies 57 such vaults. Photo courtesy of
and © UCLA.
The Small Screen Holdings
Animation holdings in the archive's television
collection may not be as extensive, but certainly are as wide-ranging.
From ABC came 16mm prints of programs, many with original commercials,
such as The Bugs Bunny Show, Beany and Cecil, and George
of the Jungle, plus a large number of Disneyland and The
Mickey Mouse Club shows. Examples of early television animation include
episodes of Crusader Rabbit, Jim and Judy in Teleland and
The Ruff and Reddy Show. A continually-growing collection is the
Emmy Award nominees from each year, placed with the archive annually by
the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. There are also hundreds of
animated commercials, spanning from the 1950s to the present.
Viewing Facilities and Preservation
Many of the archive's prints and videos can be made available for on-site
viewing at its Research and Study Center on the UCLA campus. Titles held
only in 35mm must be seen at the archive's Hollywood facility. Campus viewing
appointments are held free of charge, but there is a fee for 35mm viewing.
Interior of a nitrate vault. Each vault
is capable of housing over 1,000
cans, or more than a million feet
of film.
Photo courtesy of and © UCLA.
Animation
preservation is a priority at the archive. Films preserved stretch from
the beginning of the century through the 1940s, ranging from silent film
fragments to Technicolor sound cartoons. A small amount of preserved animation
footage and related stories are also to be found in the Hearst Newsreel
collection, the rights to which are owned by the archive. (In addition
to actively preserving and restoring these newsreels, the archive licenses
footage from them through its Commercial Services division.) Many of the
animated films preserved by the archive can be seen during its annual "Festival
of Preservation," a month-long series of restored motion pictures
and television programs held on the UCLA campus.
Please Contact...
To research the archive's collection, contact: UCLA Film and Television
Archive, Research and Study Center, 180 Powell Library, 405 Hilgard Avenue,
Los Angeles, CA 90024, U.S.A. or phone (310) 206-5388, fax (310) 205-5392.
For information about licensing footage from the Hearst Newsreel collection,
contact: UCLA Film and Television Archive, Commercial Services, 1015 North
Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood, CA 90038, or phone (213) 466-8559, fax (213)
461-6317.
To receive the archive's calendars and newsletters, contact: UCLA Film
and Television Archive, 302 East Melnitz, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles,
CA 90024, or phone (310) 206-8013, fax (310) 206-3129.
Additional information about UCLA Film and Television Archive can be found
on the archive's web site at www.cinema.ucla.edu
Jere Guldin is a film preservationist at UCLA Film and Television Archive,
and director of the Animation Preservation Project for ASIFA-Hollywood.
He has written articles on animation history and preservation for various
magazines and journals.
Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an email to editor@awn.com.
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