- Published on
Date of Release: Oct 26, 1929
Studio: MGM
Director: Nick Grinde
Leading Actors: Benny Rubin, Patricia Brox, Pietro Gentile, Myrtle McLaughlin
Apart from the AFI Catalogue listing, there is very little information currently available on The General. A different film from the 1926 Buster Keaton silent flick, The General appears to be a short, or “junior feature”, with a listed film length of just fifteen minutes.
Director Nick Grinde barely rates a mention in Barrios’ excellent history of early musical films A Song in the Dark, and the film is absent completely from the book. Grinde went on to direct 58 films, including Ronald Regan’s first film The Man they Could Not Hang. He was the co-writer on Laurel and Hardy’s Babes in Toyland.
The General may be a victim to MGM’s abysmal historical record. Over the years, MGM has literally thrown away files, film reels, props, and costumes. According to David J Hogan in his 2014 book on The Wizard of Oz, MGM hired people to “clean away the clutter”. If original set pieces from the land of Oz weren’t precious, then a 15 minute obscure short had zero chance of survival. In the 1970s, MGM auctioned off much of the costume store, and during MGM’s takeover by Turner in the late 1980s, miscommunication and thoughtless record keeping led to warehouses of archival material being discarded or destroyed. Even today, MGM does not have a fully centralized or comprehensive archive, though content is available at various libraries in the United States. For the studio most closely associated with movie musicals, this is utterly devastating.
It is believed that of all films made before 1950, over half are irretrievably lost. Just within the last five years, more and more efforts have been made to not only preserve what is left of early films, but to make them accessible to a wide audience. Warner Bros has a particularly impressive catalogue available to the public, and YouTube abounds in clips posted by vitaphone and talkie fans.
History is a fascinating and fickle thing. Without records, or access to verbal history, whole stories, and in this case, films are lost forever. For a whole host of reasons, including education, entertainment, and understanding, it’s up to us to preserve our past. In the meantime, I will be yelling like Leo the Lion (pictured above) at the tragedy of MGM's lost past.
Studio: MGM
Director: Nick Grinde
Leading Actors: Benny Rubin, Patricia Brox, Pietro Gentile, Myrtle McLaughlin
Apart from the AFI Catalogue listing, there is very little information currently available on The General. A different film from the 1926 Buster Keaton silent flick, The General appears to be a short, or “junior feature”, with a listed film length of just fifteen minutes.
Director Nick Grinde barely rates a mention in Barrios’ excellent history of early musical films A Song in the Dark, and the film is absent completely from the book. Grinde went on to direct 58 films, including Ronald Regan’s first film The Man they Could Not Hang. He was the co-writer on Laurel and Hardy’s Babes in Toyland.
The General may be a victim to MGM’s abysmal historical record. Over the years, MGM has literally thrown away files, film reels, props, and costumes. According to David J Hogan in his 2014 book on The Wizard of Oz, MGM hired people to “clean away the clutter”. If original set pieces from the land of Oz weren’t precious, then a 15 minute obscure short had zero chance of survival. In the 1970s, MGM auctioned off much of the costume store, and during MGM’s takeover by Turner in the late 1980s, miscommunication and thoughtless record keeping led to warehouses of archival material being discarded or destroyed. Even today, MGM does not have a fully centralized or comprehensive archive, though content is available at various libraries in the United States. For the studio most closely associated with movie musicals, this is utterly devastating.
It is believed that of all films made before 1950, over half are irretrievably lost. Just within the last five years, more and more efforts have been made to not only preserve what is left of early films, but to make them accessible to a wide audience. Warner Bros has a particularly impressive catalogue available to the public, and YouTube abounds in clips posted by vitaphone and talkie fans.
History is a fascinating and fickle thing. Without records, or access to verbal history, whole stories, and in this case, films are lost forever. For a whole host of reasons, including education, entertainment, and understanding, it’s up to us to preserve our past. In the meantime, I will be yelling like Leo the Lion (pictured above) at the tragedy of MGM's lost past.
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