TCM TO AIR PREMIERE OF MORE TREASURES FROM AMERICAN FILM ARCHIVES IN NOVEMBER
50-Film Collection Includes the Original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from 1910
Press release courtesy of Turner Classic Movies
San Francisco, CA (October 26, 2004)—Turner Classic Movies will feature the world television premiere of More Treasures from American Film Archives on Sunday nights in November. More Treasures from American Film Archives, 1894–1931 is the second collection of rare films presented by the National Film Preservation Foundation (www.filmpreservation.org), the nonprofit organization created by Congress to save America's cinema heritage. The collection, which was released through Image Entertainment in September as a 3-DVD box set with 200-page book, covers the years 1894–1931, when movies progressed from a peepshow curio to the nation's fourth-largest industry. More Treasures showcases features, serials, sound and color experiments, political spots, industrial documentaries, product ads, cartoons, newsreels, and avant-garde works preserved by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Scott Simmon, curator of the project and a professor of English at the University of California, Davis, will join TCM host Robert Osborne in introducing the films. Highlights include THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ (1910, Nov. 7, 10 p.m.), the earliest surviving film treatment of the L. Frank Baum classic that inspired the 1939 MGM musical. Dorothy is played by 9-year-old Bebe Daniels, later famous for 42nd Street. CLASH OF THE WOLVES (1925, Nov. 14, 10 p.m.) stars the original Rin Tin Tin in one of the canine action hero's enormously popular Westerns. RIP VAN WINKLE (1896, Nov. 21, 10 p.m.) with Joseph Jefferson in his most famous stage role, gives a fascinating glimpse of 19th-century theater and Ernst Lubitsch's witty adaptation LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN (1925, Nov. 21, 10 p.m.) brings the Oscar Wilde play to the screen without a word of dialogue. The silent films include new musical accompaniment created by Music Curator Martin Marks and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Turner Classic Movies, currently seen in more than 69 million homes, is a 24-hour cable network from Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner company. TCM presents the greatest motion pictures of all time from the largest film library in the world, the combined Time Warner and Turner film libraries, from the '20s through the '80s, commercial-free and without interruption. For more information, please visit the TCM Web site at www.turnerclassicmovies.com.
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