Gordon Berkow Collection

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David Pickard
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Gordon Berkow Collection

Postby David Pickard » Wed Aug 24, 2016 4:56 pm

I recently found out from a Laurel & Hardy magazine that it is possible that the Gordon Berkow collection could contain a number of 'The Boys' films besides 'The Battle Of The Century'. Apparently, there may even be a complete copy of 'The Second One Hundred Years' and other rarities. Does anyone actually know what is in this collection and what may happen to it?

Richard M Roberts
Godfather
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Re: Gordon Berkow Collection

Postby Richard M Roberts » Wed Aug 24, 2016 6:26 pm

David Pickard wrote:I recently found out from a Laurel & Hardy magazine that it is possible that the Gordon Berkow collection could contain a number of 'The Boys' films besides 'The Battle Of The Century'. Apparently, there may even be a complete copy of 'The Second One Hundred Years' and other rarities. Does anyone actually know what is in this collection and what may happen to it?



The Gordon Berkow Collection has been purchased and dispersed to a number of other collectors (a goodly number of prints now reside in the Roberts Collection). There were some other Laurel and Hardy prints, but I do not recall special material on THE SECOND HUNDRED YEARS there, though I do know other collectors who do have complete prints of it. The lovely one I got was Robert Youngson's printdown from the original neg of DO DETECTIVES THINK?, with all the original Pathe' titles and beautiful quality.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

Gary Johnson
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Re: Gordon Berkow Collection

Postby Gary Johnson » Thu Aug 25, 2016 9:09 pm

So do we revisit Youngson's modus operandi of the filmmaker who cut out the clips he needed for his compilations and tossed the rest of the reel, or did he try to make more printdowns than we had been lead to believe?

Richard M Roberts
Godfather
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Re: Gordon Berkow Collection

Postby Richard M Roberts » Fri Aug 26, 2016 1:09 am

Gary Johnson wrote:So do we revisit Youngson's modus operandi of the filmmaker who cut out the clips he needed for his compilations and tossed the rest of the reel, or did he try to make more printdowns than we had been lead to believe?


You can revisit it to the point where we indicate that that rumor is bullshit, Youngson loved film too much to ever throw it away, the problem where that has arisen in materials Youngson used lay with the labs or studios who housed the materials he utilized not bothering to return footage from prints or negatives he had asked to have fine grains or new negs printed up from. Studios were notorious in doing this (this is how we lost a chunk of THE CAMERAMAN when Keaton wanted to re-do the Admiral gag for WATCH THE BIRDIE, MGM never returned the sequence to their neg after they pulled the sequence to reprint for the Skelton pic), and no one treated their master materials worse than the Hal Roach Studio.

RICHARD M ROBERTS


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