A worthwhile project to save old B&W silent movie theater "Lobby Cards"

[gone]

I've never heard of movie lobby cards, but do remember that 25 cents used to buy a candy bar, a coke, and a ticket to the Saturday Matinee at the local movie theater. Got a nickle back in change too.

These original lobby cards, which are really works of art in their own, were apparently a big thing back when a theater lobby was a lot more formal. They appear to be of various mediums: B&W photographs, lithographs based on movie stills, offset B&W lithographs that look to be colored at the lith stage, etc.

I wanted to like this article, but it may need fact checking. It mentioned that 90% of silent films were lost because they were on silver nitrate........ but that's just the conservator's guess. Who, by the way, is also a realtor and historic preservationists, so those figures are, well, just figures.

A quick google search showed the amount of lost films were estimated to be from 70% to 90% (on the first page), and not all silent films were on silver nitrate. I guess they're scanning everything, some of the cards are over a century old. Hopefully that's not Realtor Speak for "They look old. Let's say they're a century old, just to be sure."

Silent films to live on in movie theater lobby card project

More than 10,000 lobby cards once hung in movie theater foyers are now being digitized for preservation and publication, thanks to an agreement between a collector and Dartmouth College

apnews.com

 

[ic-racer]

Fine now there are digital copies, who will preserve the digital archive. I wonder how much per year to keep it backed up?
Maybe he will be generating interest on the internet in preparation of a selloff.

 

[Daniela]

I'd never heard of lobby cards, either. I love the variety in design! However, I'm put off by the amount of fonts used in one single card...6/7 in some of them.
It sounds like a great conservation project to me.

 

[guangong]

I've never heard of movie lobby cards, but do remember that 25 cents used to buy a candy bar, a coke, and a ticket to the Saturday Matinee at the local movie theater. Got a nickle back in change too.

These original lobby cards, which are really works of art in their own, were apparently a big thing back when a theater lobby was a lot more formal. They appear to be of various mediums: B&W photographs, lithographs based on movie stills, offset B&W lithographs that look to be colored at the lith stage, etc.

I wanted to like this article, but it may need fact checking. It mentioned that 90% of silent films were lost because they were on silver nitrate........ but that's just the conservator's guess. Who, by the way, is also a realtor and historic preservationists, so those figures are, well, just figures.

A quick google search showed the amount of lost films were estimated to be from 70% to 90% (on the first page), and not all silent films were on silver nitrate. I guess they're scanning everything, some of the cards are over a century old. Hopefully that's not Realtor Speak for "They look old. Let's say they're a century old, just to be sure."

Silent films to live on in movie theater lobby card project

More than 10,000 lobby cards once hung in movie theater foyers are now being digitized for preservation and publication, thanks to an agreement between a collector and Dartmouth College

apnews.com

Not only get a nickel back in change, but on Saturday matinees audience made up almost exclusively of children from four to twelve years old, no violence except possibility recipient of tossed Milk Dud, no perverts in restrooms, ushers were teenagers (but to a seven year old kid, they seemed to be grown ups), and movies were made with simple plots with child audiences in mind.
For $0.10 or $0.15 we got: cowboy movie+detective move+travelogue + short subject+cartoon+serial. A day at the movies.

 

[guangong]

After distribution cycle, normally silver was retrieved from prints. I don’t see how a film print could be made without silver nitrate. The great Alaskan find was a theater so distant that shipping costs exceeded value of silver, so films in cans were Frizbeed haphazardly into cold outdoors and preserved.
Movie making, at the bottom line, is a business.

 

[pentaxuser]

Interesting bunch of cards and Hoot Gibson - now that's a name to conjure with as they say

pentaxuser

 

[Sirius Glass]

Geez now I have to start collecting something else. That will serve my children right.