Tag: Oddities

Oddball 6-foot ‘Lobsta Mickey’ statue returns to Boston

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BOSTON (AP) — A long-forgotten, and somewhat unsettling, statue of Mickey Mouse with giant lobster claws for hands has found its way back to Boston.

The 700-pound statue was last seen in the city nearly two decades ago at Quincy Market where it entertained tourists and shoppers — before slipping out of sight and into city lore after it was sold in 2005 at an auction organized by Disney.

In the interim, references to the 6-foot tall “Lobsta Mickey” appeared on Atlas Obscura, a website for oddball landmarks, and in a “Zippy the Pinhead” comic strip from 2019.

Still, the statue itself — one of 75 Mickey Mouse-inspired sculptures commissioned by Disney for the cartoon character’s 75th anniversary — remained elusive.

That’s until Deon Point, creative director for the Boston sneaker store Concepts, became fixated on tracking down the creation. Concepts collaborates with Nike on a line of lobster-themed sneakers.

Point told The Boston Globe that he spent five years following online threads before finally spotting a listing for the mouse/crustacean relic on eBay.

The statue had found its way to a New Jersey lawn, but was in need of some repairs. It was discolored, split in sections and its concrete foundation had begun to crumble.

Point hired a local artist to refurbish and repaint the statue.

The day before Halloween, “Lobsta Mickey” made its second public debut in the city, when it was set up on Concepts’ Newbury Street showroom floor.

“People were a little terrified,” Point told the Globe, referring of the customer response. “People think we created this thing, which, of course, we didn’t.”

Point said he plans to keep “Lobsta Mickey” on display through the holidays, before finding a new, long-term home somewhere within Boston.

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November 26, 2022
Cat’s out of the bag when TSA finds stowaway feline at JFK

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This photo provided by Transportation Security Administration shows a cat stuck in a checked bag going through security at John F. Kennedy airport on Nov. 16, 2022 in New York. The stowaway cat, identified as “Smells,” was returned to its owner. The cat’s owner said that Smells must have crawled into the suitcase of a visiting friend. She didn’t know her tabby was missing until airport officials reached her. (Transportation Security Administration via AP)

This photo provided by Transportation Security Administration shows a cat stuck in a checked bag going through security at John F. Kennedy airport on Nov. 16, 2022 in New York. The stowaway cat, identified as “Smells,” was returned to its owner. The cat’s owner said that Smells must have crawled into the suitcase of a visiting friend. She didn’t know her tabby was missing until airport officials reached her. (Transportation Security Administration via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — Don’t accuse the TSA of catnapping on the job. When an alert agent at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport noticed tufts of orange fur poking out of a slightly unzipped suitcase, it gave him pause.

As the bag went through the X-ray unit Nov. 16, the Transportation Security Administration agent was in for a surprise: Inside were four paws and a tail belonging to a feline stowaway.

“On the bright side, the cat’s out of the bag,” a TSA spokesperson tweeted Tuesday.

The passenger was paged to return to the ticket counter after the cat was found, the spokesperson, Lisa Farbstein, said in an email.

“The traveler said that the cat belonged to someone else in the household, implying that he was not aware that the cat was in the suitcase,” Farbstein said.

“We call that a good CATch!” she said.

The stowaway cat, identified by the New York Post as “Smells,” was returned to its owner.

The cat’s owner told the Post that Smells must have crawled into the suitcase of a visiting friend. She didn’t know her tabby was missing until airport officials reached her.

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November 25, 2022
Iranian who inspired ‘The Terminal’ dies at Paris airport

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PARIS (AP) — An Iranian man who lived for 18 years in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport and whose saga loosely inspired the Steven Spielberg film “The Terminal” died Saturday in the airport that he long called home, officials said.

Mehran Karimi Nasseri died after a heart attack in the airport’s Terminal 2F around midday, according an official with the Paris airport authority. Police and a medical team treated him but were not able to save him, the official said. The official was not authorized to be publicly named.

Nasseri lived in the airport’s Terminal 1 from 1988 until 2006, first in legal limbo because he lacked residency papers and later by apparent choice.

Year in and year out, he slept on a red plastic bench, making friends with airport workers, showering in staff facilities, writing in his diary, reading magazines and surveying passing travelers.

Staff nicknamed him Lord Alfred, and he became a mini-celebrity among passengers.

“Eventually, I will leave the airport,” he told The Associated Press in 1999, smoking a pipe on his bench, looking frail with long thin hair, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. “But I am still waiting for a passport or transit visa.”

Nasseri was born in 1945 in Soleiman, a part of Iran then under British jurisdiction, to an Iranian father and a British mother. He left Iran to study in England in 1974. When he returned, he said, he was imprisoned for protesting against the shah and expelled without a passport.

He applied for political asylum in several countries in Europe. The UNHCR in Belgium gave him refugee credentials, but he said his briefcase containing the refugee certificate was stolen in a Paris train station.

French police later arrested him, but couldn’t deport him anywhere because he had no official documents. He ended up at Charles de Gaulle in August 1988 and stayed.

Further bureaucratic bungling and increasingly strict European immigration laws kept him in a legal no-man’s land for years.

When he finally received refugee papers, he described his surprise, and his insecurity, about leaving the airport. He reportedly refused to sign them, and ended up staying there several more years until he was hospitalized in 2006, and later lived in a Paris shelter.

Those who befriended him in the airport said the years of living in the windowless space took a toll on his mental state. The airport doctor in the 1990s worried about his physical and mental health, and described him as “fossilized here.” A ticket agent friend compared him to a prisoner incapable of “living on the outside.”

In the weeks before his death, Nasseri had been again living at Charles de Gaulle, the airport official said.

Nasseri’s mind-boggling tale loosely inspired 2004′s “The Terminal” starring Tom Hanks, as well as a French film, “Lost in Transit,” and an opera called “Flight.”

In “The Terminal,” Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, a man who arrives at JFK airport in New York from the fictional Eastern European country of Krakozhia and discovers that an overnight political revolution has invalidated all his traveling papers. Viktor is dumped into the airport’s international lounge and told he must stay there until his status is sorted out, which drags on as unrest in Krakozhia continues.

No information was immediately available about survivors.

___

Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

___

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Nasseri’s first name to Mehran, not Merhan.

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November 15, 2022
Iranian who inspired ‘The Terminal’ dies at Paris airport

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PARIS (AP) — An Iranian man who lived for 18 years in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport and whose saga loosely inspired the Steven Spielberg film “The Terminal” died Saturday in the airport that he long called home, officials said.

Mehran Karimi Nasseri died after a heart attack in the airport’s Terminal 2F around midday, according an official with the Paris airport authority. Police and a medical team treated him but were not able to save him, the official said. The official was not authorized to be publicly named.

Nasseri lived in the airport’s Terminal 1 from 1988 until 2006, first in legal limbo because he lacked residency papers and later by apparent choice.

Year in and year out, he slept on a red plastic bench, making friends with airport workers, showering in staff facilities, writing in his diary, reading magazines and surveying passing travelers.

Staff nicknamed him Lord Alfred, and he became a mini-celebrity among passengers.

“Eventually, I will leave the airport,” he told The Associated Press in 1999, smoking a pipe on his bench, looking frail with long thin hair, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. “But I am still waiting for a passport or transit visa.”

Nasseri was born in 1945 in Soleiman, a part of Iran then under British jurisdiction, to an Iranian father and a British mother. He left Iran to study in England in 1974. When he returned, he said, he was imprisoned for protesting against the shah and expelled without a passport.

He applied for political asylum in several countries in Europe. The UNHCR in Belgium gave him refugee credentials, but he said his briefcase containing the refugee certificate was stolen in a Paris train station.

French police later arrested him, but couldn’t deport him anywhere because he had no official documents. He ended up at Charles de Gaulle in August 1988 and stayed.

Further bureaucratic bungling and increasingly strict European immigration laws kept him in a legal no-man’s land for years.

When he finally received refugee papers, he described his surprise, and his insecurity, about leaving the airport. He reportedly refused to sign them, and ended up staying there several more years until he was hospitalized in 2006, and later lived in a Paris shelter.

Those who befriended him in the airport said the years of living in the windowless space took a toll on his mental state. The airport doctor in the 1990s worried about his physical and mental health, and described him as “fossilized here.” A ticket agent friend compared him to a prisoner incapable of “living on the outside.”

In the weeks before his death, Nasseri had been again living at Charles de Gaulle, the airport official said.

Nasseri’s mind-boggling tale loosely inspired 2004′s “The Terminal” starring Tom Hanks, as well as a French film, “Lost in Transit,” and an opera called “Flight.”

In “The Terminal,” Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, a man who arrives at JFK airport in New York from the fictional Eastern European country of Krakozhia and discovers that an overnight political revolution has invalidated all his traveling papers. Viktor is dumped into the airport’s international lounge and told he must stay there until his status is sorted out, which drags on as unrest in Krakozhia continues.

No information was immediately available about survivors.

___

Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

___

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Nasseri’s first name to Mehran, not Merhan.

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November 12, 2022
Iranian who inspired “The Terminal” dies at Paris airport

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PARIS — An Iranian man who lived for 18 years in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport and inspired the Steven Spielberg film “The Terminal” died Saturday in the airport, officials said.

Merhan Karimi Nasseri died after a heart attack in the airport’s Terminal 2F around midday, according an official with the Paris airport authority. Police and a medical team treated him but were not able to save him, the official said. The official was not authorized to be publicly named.

Karimi Nasseri, believed to have been born in 1945, lived in the airport’s Terminal 1 from 1988 until 2006, first in legal limbo because he lacked residency papers and later by choice, according to French media reports.

He had been living in the airport again in recent weeks, the airport official said.

His saga inspired “The Terminal” starring Tom Hanks, and a French film.

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November 12, 2022
Rare Pikachu, Kobe’s sneakers — a hidden vault guards it all

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The ordinary brown brick building, tucked within a nondescript block on a street in Delaware, would probably not garner much attention if it weren’t for the razor wire and armed guards outside — hints that something important lay inside, possibly even precious.

Fort Knox it is not. But the stash of collectibles the building holds is undoubtedly worthy of guarding.

There’s a rare Pikachu card and a century-old one of baseball great Honus Wagner, which recently sold for $7.25 million in a private sale. In addition to the trading cards, there are baseball bats and basketball shoes, including a pair of sneakers worn and signed by the late NBA great Kobe Bryant.

In all, $200 million in collectibles are stored in two vaults inside the building, equipped with some of the latest technology to keep the valuable cache safe from harm or thieves.

“A lot of people don’t keep jewelry at their house. They keep it at a safety deposit box,” maybe at a secure bank, said Ross Hoffman, the chief executive officer of Goldin Co., a division of industry giant Collectors, which operates the vault, a high-security facility specializing in protecting collectibles.

The building has no signage, and the company asked that any hint of its location not be divulged. Inside is a technologically advanced facility with a guarded vault, equipped with seismic motion detectors that will sound the alarm should anyone try to jackhammer through walls.

To move from room to room, a security guard ushers you through a card-activated double door entry way, letting the first door close before passing through the next. There are surveillance cameras everywhere.

Behind one of two 7,500-pound (3,400-kilogram) vault doors, each more than a foot thick, are rows of shelves that extend to the building’s rafters. Rows upon rows of boxes are filled with collectors’ items — including some with relatively little monetary worth but that represent sentimental value for their owners or that could someday be worth much more.

Hoffman called the facility a “pain killer.”

“There’s pain of things getting lost. There’s pain in the things getting stolen,” Hoffman said.

Interest in sports collectibles and memorabilia has boomed in recent years, not just high-ticket items but also for rediscovered pieces that had been tucked away in attics or basements. In August, a mint condition Mickey Mantle baseball card sold for $12.6 million, surpassing the $9.3 million paid for the jersey worn by Diego Maradona when he scored the contentious “Hand of God” goal in soccer’s 1986 World Cup.

“A lot of times people have collectibles for the bragging rights to show it to other people so they can go, ooh and ahh,” said Stephen Fishler, founder of ComicConnect, who has watched the growing rise — and profitability — of collectibles being traded across auction houses.

But some people don’t want the burden of being responsible for securing their property, which they view as investments akin to stocks, Fishler said. These storage facilities help better liquify collectibles by treating them as assets that can be more easily bought and sold.

Hoffman, whose parent company also runs one of the leading grading and authenticating services, said his newest venture is an acknowledgment of the big money now involved in collectibles.

Before the pandemic, the sports memorabilia market was estimated at more than $5.4 billion, according to a 2018 Forbes interview with David Yoken, the founder of Collectable.com.

By 2021, that market had grown to $26 billion, according to the research firm Market Decipher, which predicts the market will grow astronomically to $227 billion within a decade — partly fueled by the rise of so-called NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which are digital collectibles with unique data-encrypted fingerprints.

While digitized NFTs don’t require vaults for safekeeping, the trade in physical collectibles is expected to remain busy and lucrative.

“For a lot of people that buy cards, they have an intention of selling it,” Hoffman said, “so to keep it liquid and safe is a great thing.”

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November 6, 2022
Dogwalker discovers errant alligator roaming rural Idaho

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It’s not uncommon for Idaho wildlife officials to be called for help when a moose, mountain lion, black bear or other wild animals wander into one of the state’s rural communities

BOISE, Idaho — It’s not uncommon for Idaho wildlife officials to be called for help when a moose, mountain lion, black bear or other wild animals wander into one of the state’s rural communities.

But Idaho Fish and Game officials are asking the public for help with a particularly unusual find — a 3.5-foot (1-meter) alligator that was discovered hiding in the brush of a rural neighborhood about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Boise.

Southwest Region spokesperson Brian Pearson told the Idaho Statesman that a New Plymouth resident was walking their dog Thursday evening when they noticed something moving in the brush. Further investigation revealed the alligator — a creature commonly found in the coastal wetlands of the southeastern U.S., but certainly not native to Idaho.

Pearson said the resident put the alligator in a nearby horse trailer until Idaho Fish and Game conservation officer could pick it up on Friday morning. The department has the animal in captivity for now, but Pearson said it will be euthanized or given to a licensed facility unless the owner is located.

Idaho Fish and Game officials are hoping members of the public will call the department if they have any information about the alligator’s origins.

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October 21, 2022
Genetic twist: Medieval plague may have molded our immunity

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Our Medieval ancestors left us with a biological legacy: Genes that may have helped them survive the Black Death make us more susceptible to certain diseases today.

It’s a prime example of the way germs shape us over time, scientists say in a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“Our genome today is a reflection of our whole evolutionary history” as we adapt to different germs, said Luis Barreiro, a senior author of the research. Some, like those behind the bubonic plague, have had a big impact on our immune systems.

The Black Death in the 14th century was the single deadliest event in recorded history, spreading throughout Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa and wiping out up to 30% to 50% of the population.

Barreiro and his colleagues at the University of Chicago, McMaster University in Ontario and the Pasteur Institute in Paris examined ancient DNA samples from the bones of more than 200 people from London and Denmark who died over about 100 years that stretched before, during, and after the Black Death swept through that region.

They identified four genes that, depending on the variant, either protected against or increased susceptibility to the bacteria that causes bubonic plague, which is most often transmitted by the bite of an infected flea.

They found that what helped people in Medieval times led to problems generations later — raising the frequency of mutations detrimental in modern times. Some of the same genetic variants identified as protective against the plague are associated with certain autoimmune disorders, such as Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. In these sorts of diseases, the immune system that defends the body against disease and infection attacks the body’s own healthy tissues.

“A hyperactive immune system may have been great in the past but in the environment today it might not be as helpful,” said Hendrik Poinar, an anthropology professor at McMaster and another senior author.

Past research has also sought to examine how the Black Death affected the human genome. But Barreiro said he believes theirs is the first demonstration that the Black Death was important to the evolution of the human immune system. One unique aspect of the study, he said, was to focus on a narrow time window around the event.

Monica H. Green, an author and historian of medicine who has studied the Black Death extensively, called the research “tremendously impressive,” bringing together a wide range of experts.

“It’s extremely sophisticated” and addresses important issues, such as how the same version of a gene can protect people from a horrific infection and also put modern people — and generations of their descendants — at risk for other illnesses, said Green, who was not involved in the study.

All of this begs the question: Will the COVID-19 pandemic have a big impact on human evolution? Barreiro said he doesn’t think so because the death rate is so much lower and the majority of people who have died had already had children.

In the future, however, he said more deadly pandemics may well continue to shape us at the most basic level.

“It’s not going to stop. It’s going to keep going for sure.”

———

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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October 19, 2022
California baker creates life-sized Han Solo out of bread

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BENICIA, Calif. — Han Solo may be a hunk. But “Pan Solo” is a hunk of bread.

That’s what a bakery in the San Francisco Bay Area has dubbed its 6-foot (1.8 meter) bread sculpture of the “Star Wars” character as he appeared after being frozen in carbonite in “The Empire Strikes Back.”

Hannalee Pervan and her mother, Catherine Pervan, co-owners of One House Bakery in Benicia, California, spent weeks molding, baking and assembling the life-sized sculpture using wood and two types of dough, including a type of yeastless dough with a higher sugar content that will last longer.

The two worked at night, after the day’s business was done. The lovingly crafted details show Han Solo’s anguished face and his hands straining to reach out.

Hannalee said she might have gotten a bit obsessed.

“Mom made me leave it because I was obsessing over the lips,” Hannalee Pervan told the New York Times. “She was like, ‘You need to walk away.’”

Creating Pan Solo was particularly meaningful, she told the paper, because she contracted COVID-19 in January 2021 and lost much of her senses of smell and taste.

“So just to find joy in a different part of food is really important,” she said.

The sculpture is now on display outside of the bakery, located about a half-hour’s drive north of San Francisco.

Pan Solo is the bakery’s entry in the annual Downtown Benicia Main Street Scarecrow Contest. The public will get to vote on their favorites from among more than two dozen creations entered by local businesses.

The Pervans, who are big science-fiction and fantasy fans, entered another “Star Wars”-themed creation in 2020 featuring the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda.

Unfortunately, Pan Solo won’t last forever. The dough eventually will be composted, not eaten.

So as a wise Jedi might warn: Don’t use the forks, Luke.

———

This story was first published on Oct. 15, 2022. It was updated on Oct. 16, 2022 to correct the spelling of baker Hannalee Pervan’s first name.

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October 16, 2022
Nigerian city celebrates its many twins with annual festival

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IGBO-ORA, Nigeria (AP) — Twins appear to be unusually abundant in Nigeria’s southwestern city of Igbo-Ora.

Nearly every family here has twins or other multiple births, says local chief Jimoh Titiloye.

For the past 12 years, the community has organized an annual festival to celebrate twins. This year’s event, held earlier this month, included more than 1,000 pairs of twins and drew participants from as far away as France, organizers said.

There is no proven scientific explanation for the high rate of twins in Igbo-Ora, a city of at least 200,000 people 135 kilometers (83 miles) south of Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos. But many in Igbo-Ora believe it can be traced to women’s diets. Alake Olawunmi, a mother of twins, attributes it to a local delicacy called amala which is made from yam flour.

John Ofem, a gynecologist based in the capital, Abuja, says it very well could be “that there are things they eat there that have a high level of certain hormones that now result in what we call multiple ovulation.”

While that could explain the higher-than-normal rate of fraternal twins in Igbo-Ora, the city also has a significant number of identical twins. Those result instead from a single fertilized egg that divides into two — not because of hyperovulation.

Taiwo Ojeniyi, a Nigerian student, said he attended the festival with his twin brother “to celebrate the uniqueness” of multiple births.

“We cherish twins while in some parts of the world, they condemn twins,” he said. “It is a blessing from God.”

___

Asadu reported from Abuja, Nigeria.

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October 14, 2022
2,560-pound pumpkin wins California contest; sets record

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HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — A horticulture teacher from Minnesota set a new U.S. record Monday for the heaviest pumpkin after raising a giant gourd weighing 2,560 pounds.

Travis Gienger, of Anoka, Minnesota set the new record and won an annual pumpkin-weighing contest in Northern California.

Gienger drove the gargantuan gourd for 35 hours to see his hard work pay off at the 49th World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.

Gienger, who also won the same contest in Northern California in 2020, broke a record set last week in New York where a grower raised a massive pumpkin weighing 2,554 pounds.

A grower in Italy holds the world record for the heaviest pumpkin. He grew a 2,702-pound squash in 2021, according to Guinness World Records.

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October 10, 2022
Silent films to live on in movie theater lobby card project

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By KATHY McCORMACK

October 6, 2022 GMT

https://apnews.com/article/silent-movies-lobby-cards-f5e267501f7de367b530f530279b28f5

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — “Missing Millions” is a 1922 silent film with a darkly prescient title — like the vast majority from that era, the movie all but vanished in the ensuing century, survived mostly by lobby cards.

The cards, scarcely bigger than letter paper, promoted the cinematic romances, comedies and adventures of early Hollywood. More than 10,000 of the images once hung in movie theater foyers are now being digitized for preservation and publication, thanks to an agreement between Chicago-based collector Dwight Cleveland and Dartmouth College that all started when he ran into a film professor at an academic conference in New York.

“Ninety percent of all silent films have been lost because they were made on nitrate film, which is flammable and explodable,” Cleveland told The Associated Press. “What that means is that these lobby cards are the only tangible example that these films even existed.”

The cards, traditionally 11 by 14 inches (28 by 35 centimeters) and arranged in sets of eight or more, displayed a film’s title, production company, cast and scenes that could convey a sense of the plot. Movie screen trailers didn’t become a common practice until the rise of the movie “studio system” era in the 1920s, said Mark Williams, associate professor of film and media studies at Dartmouth and the project’s director.

Often displayed on an easel or framed and meant to be seen up close, the lobby cards promoted current films that were playing, as well as coming attractions.

Today, the cards, many of them more than 100 years old, play an even bigger role, reflecting the stars, styles and storytelling of a bygone era. The legacy of the Paramount Pictures-released “Missing Millions,” for example, rests in an image of actress Alice Brady and her accomplice, who plot to steal the gold of the financier who sent her father to prison. Brady made the transition to talkies, but that film and a number of others she made during the silent era are lost.

Cleveland, a real estate developer and historic preservationist, became interested in the cards as a high school student in the 1970s. His art teacher had collected some, including one of Lupe Velez and Gary Cooper from the 1929 Western romance, “Wolf Song.”

“I just fell in love with the color and the deco graphics, and this romantic embrace, and everything about it, which just was incredibly appealing,” he said, “and it just sort of screamed out ‘Take me home!’”

The early lobby cards were produced using a process that produced black-and-white, sepia, or brown-toned images, with color added to some by hand or stencil, according to a post by Josie Walters-Johnston, reference librarian in the Moving Image Research Center at the Library of Congress.

By the 1920s, the images became more photograph-like and featured details such as decorative borders and tinting. They endured for decades, with production of lobby cards ending in the late 1970s or early 1980s, Walters-Johnston wrote. But in 2015, the practice was revived when Quentin Tarantino put out a special set for his Western, “The Hateful Eight.”

Cleveland has been shipping boxes from his collection to Dartmouth’s Media Ecology Project, where a small group of students is charged with gingerly removing each card from its protective sleeve to scan and digitize. The students, assembled by Williams, are also creating metadata.

Williams said the project — which began in September and is expected to be finished later this fall — will provide insight into how the films were promoted and what kind of design features went into the marketing of a film from a given studio, among other information that would be difficult to find.

“We’ll be able to restore access to a really fundamental visual culture related to these different performers and studios, and genres,” he said.

Williams said that the project is invested in both cultivating new scholarship, and an awareness about how endangered media history is.

“People, they link up to YouTube, and they think that media history is inexhaustible and eternal. And both of those statements are false,” Williams said.

When the movies now considered lost or surviving incomplete were produced, the art form’s shelf life was short, Williams said. Only over time did people start to appreciate film as a significant art and a force in popular culture worthy of preservation.

The lobby cards validate the existence of a range of movies — from major studios still in existence and smaller ones that only endured for a handful of years — and memorialize what Williams described as “a great number of stars — many of whom have been forgotten.”

“There’s so much media that is in danger of disintegrating, just literally turning to dust,” he added, extolling the importance of the endangered “historical, vulnerable, ephemeral, extraordinary material.”

Cleveland also had donated 3,500 lobby cards of silent-era Westerns — featuring stars such as William S. Hart, Jack Hoxie, and Buck Jones — to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. He arranged for their loan to Dartmouth for the project.

When completed, the lobby card collection will become part of Dartmouth’s Early Cinema Compendium, which will feature 15 collections of rare and valuable archival and scholarly resources. The compendium, which will be published online as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, will also include more than 7,000 frame samples from early and mostly lost U.S. films, plus access to more than 2,500 archival films across the genres of early cinema.

The ultimate goal, Williams said, is “so that people who are fans or casual fans or true scholars will have access to this material and catapult new interest in it.”

Cleveland — certainly no casual fan — once owned an archive that had 45,000 movie posters from 56 countries. He wrote a book, “Cinema on Paper: The Graphic Genius of Movie Posters,” in 2019. In addition to the Dartmouth project, his lobby card collection formed the basis for an exhibit in New York focused on the women who were prolific filmmakers, writers and producers during the silent-film era. He’s planning a book on the subject.

“I’ve loved finding and preserving and cataloguing these historical documents,” Cleveland said.

With Williams applying computer science, “it just takes it into a whole other realm in the future with metaverse and everything else,” Cleveland said. “I feel like I’ve been sort of stuck in nostalgia, if you will, and now I feel like I’m being propelled into the future with him and that’s a very exciting prospect.”

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October 6, 2022
Silent films to live on in movie theater lobby card project

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By KATHY McCORMACK

October 6, 2022 GMT

https://apnews.com/article/silent-movies-lobby-cards-f5e267501f7de367b530f530279b28f5

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — “Missing Millions” is a 1922 silent film with a darkly prescient title — like the vast majority from that era, the movie all but vanished in the ensuing century, survived mostly by lobby cards.

The cards, scarcely bigger than letter paper, promoted the cinematic romances, comedies and adventures of early Hollywood. More than 10,000 of the images once hung in movie theater foyers are now being digitized for preservation and publication, thanks to an agreement between Chicago-based collector Dwight Cleveland and Dartmouth College that all started when he ran into a film professor at an academic conference in New York.

“Ninety percent of all silent films have been lost because they were made on nitrate film, which is flammable and explodable,” Cleveland told The Associated Press. “What that means is that these lobby cards are the only tangible example that these films even existed.”

The cards, traditionally 11 by 14 inches (28 by 35 centimeters) and arranged in sets of eight or more, displayed a film’s title, production company, cast and scenes that could convey a sense of the plot. Movie screen trailers didn’t become a common practice until the rise of the movie “studio system” era in the 1920s, said Mark Williams, associate professor of film and media studies at Dartmouth and the project’s director.

Often displayed on an easel or framed and meant to be seen up close, the lobby cards promoted current films that were playing, as well as coming attractions.

Today, the cards, many of them more than 100 years old, play an even bigger role, reflecting the stars, styles and storytelling of a bygone era. The legacy of the Paramount Pictures-released “Missing Millions,” for example, rests in an image of actress Alice Brady and her accomplice, who plot to steal the gold of the financier who sent her father to prison. Brady made the transition to talkies, but that film and a number of others she made during the silent era are lost.

Cleveland, a real estate developer and historic preservationist, became interested in the cards as a high school student in the 1970s. His art teacher had collected some, including one of Lupe Velez and Gary Cooper from the 1929 Western romance, “Wolf Song.”

“I just fell in love with the color and the deco graphics, and this romantic embrace, and everything about it, which just was incredibly appealing,” he said, “and it just sort of screamed out ‘Take me home!’”

The early lobby cards were produced using a process that produced black-and-white, sepia, or brown-toned images, with color added to some by hand or stencil, according to a post by Josie Walters-Johnston, reference librarian in the Moving Image Research Center at the Library of Congress.

By the 1920s, the images became more photograph-like and featured details such as decorative borders and tinting. They endured for decades, with production of lobby cards ending in the late 1970s or early 1980s, Walters-Johnston wrote. But in 2015, the practice was revived when Quentin Tarantino put out a special set for his Western, “The Hateful Eight.”

Cleveland has been shipping boxes from his collection to Dartmouth’s Media Ecology Project, where a small group of students is charged with gingerly removing each card from its protective sleeve to scan and digitize. The students, assembled by Williams, are also creating metadata.

Williams said the project — which began in September and is expected to be finished later this fall — will provide insight into how the films were promoted and what kind of design features went into the marketing of a film from a given studio, among other information that would be difficult to find.

“We’ll be able to restore access to a really fundamental visual culture related to these different performers and studios, and genres,” he said.

Williams said that the project is invested in both cultivating new scholarship, and an awareness about how endangered media history is.

“People, they link up to YouTube, and they think that media history is inexhaustible and eternal. And both of those statements are false,” Williams said.

When the movies now considered lost or surviving incomplete were produced, the art form’s shelf life was short, Williams said. Only over time did people start to appreciate film as a significant art and a force in popular culture worthy of preservation.

The lobby cards validate the existence of a range of movies — from major studios still in existence and smaller ones that only endured for a handful of years — and memorialize what Williams described as “a great number of stars — many of whom have been forgotten.”

“There’s so much media that is in danger of disintegrating, just literally turning to dust,” he added, extolling the importance of the endangered “historical, vulnerable, ephemeral, extraordinary material.”

Cleveland also had donated 3,500 lobby cards of silent-era Westerns — featuring stars such as William S. Hart, Jack Hoxie, and Buck Jones — to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. He arranged for their loan to Dartmouth for the project.

When completed, the lobby card collection will become part of Dartmouth’s Early Cinema Compendium, which will feature 15 collections of rare and valuable archival and scholarly resources. The compendium, which will be published online as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, will also include more than 7,000 frame samples from early and mostly lost U.S. films, plus access to more than 2,500 archival films across the genres of early cinema.

The ultimate goal, Williams said, is “so that people who are fans or casual fans or true scholars will have access to this material and catapult new interest in it.”

Cleveland — certainly no casual fan — once owned an archive that had 45,000 movie posters from 56 countries. He wrote a book, “Cinema on Paper: The Graphic Genius of Movie Posters,” in 2019. In addition to the Dartmouth project, his lobby card collection formed the basis for an exhibit in New York focused on the women who were prolific filmmakers, writers and producers during the silent-film era. He’s planning a book on the subject.

“I’ve loved finding and preserving and cataloguing these historical documents,” Cleveland said.

With Williams applying computer science, “it just takes it into a whole other realm in the future with metaverse and everything else,” Cleveland said. “I feel like I’ve been sort of stuck in nostalgia, if you will, and now I feel like I’m being propelled into the future with him and that’s a very exciting prospect.”

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October 6, 2022