David M. Massaro
Cleveland, Ohio

Mr. Hugh Hefner
Los Angeles, CA

Dear Mr. Hefner:

When future generations look back with gratitude upon your many accomplishments, it is hard to say what particular accomplishment may engender the greatest feelings of gratitude. Many will say that it will undoubtedly be your publishing empire and its entertaining magazines.

Move buffs like myself will always be grateful that your money and enthusiasm supported the making of such marvelous films as THE NAKED APE and Roman Polansi’s MACBETH. Both films I know intimately in my mind, shot for shot.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fans can never forget your major financing of restoration work on the negatives of Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films and the Eastman House restoration of the 1925 film, THE LOST WORLD, based on Doyle’s 1912 novel of the same name. It is your financial contribution on this very last project that creates the greatest feelings of gratitude on my part, bordering almost on feelings of religious appreciation for your generosity. Let me explain why.

The 1925 LOST WORLD is the first showcase for the stop-motion dinosaur labors of its chief animator, Willis O’Brien, who would go on to animate the 1933 KING KONG. As I believe there is a personal God behind the universe, it follows that the 225 million years of planetary existence for the dinosaurs is an expression of the divine will. Before the coming of computer animation, the labors of Willis O’Brien and his disciple, Ray Harryhausen, were our best opportunity to see this expression of the divine will in action! I am horrified at the thought that any of their work should be lost to posterity.

The negative of the 110 minute 1925 LOST WORLD was destroyed in the 1930’s. All that was preserved was a 50 minute edition of the film for schools known as the Kodascope version. Eastman House has a fine 35mm print of that. Eastman obtained on 35MM, two other things: A Czechoslovakian version of the film found in Europe and a priceless eight-and-a-half minutes of dinosaur outtakes. Now the fact that this animation labor is in the form of outtakes is not proof that these sequences were not in the finished film. The outtakes are outtakes solely because when a particular sequence was done and projected, it was found that an animator had accidentally been exposed on a frame with the models, thereby necessitating the complete reanimation of the sequence again. So, as if by a miracle, these chunks of storytelling were preserved for posterity.

Now Eastman House had three elements to put together for its restoration:

1. Eight-and-one-half minutes of dinosaur outtakes.
2. The 50 minute American Kodascope version (all that had survived until very recently).
3. The Czech version of the film (running not much longer than the Kodascope).

The gluing of these three elements into a coherent whole fell to Mr. Edward E. Stratmann, Assistant Curator of Film Collections at the George Eastman House of Rochester, New York. You would not believe what happened next! Terrible mistakes were made in the handling of all three elements.

Consider first the outtakes, an enormous amount of dinosaur footage under review, running well over eight minutes (a stop-watch timing of the animation in the 1933 KING KONG would give you under 15 minutes of actual animation footage). Consider the following statements from Mr. Stratmann, recorded by the famous Disney archivist, Scott MacQueen, in his article in the 70’th issue of Cinefex Magazine on these outtakes: “We have no way to be certain, shot by shot, what the original U.S. version was, but we are determined to make the fullest and most watchable version from the available resources...[on the outtakes], the quality of the animation is so high and the sequences are so good that they deserve to be seen, even if we can’t be certain that all of the shots were included in 1925.”

Right on Mr. Stratmann! Ah, but Mr. Stratmann changed his mind. He got hold of THE LOST WORLD scenario written by Marion Fairfax published by McFarland Publishers, and when he couldn’t find descriptions of the outtakes in the Fairfax shooting script, he left all eight-and-a-half minutes of this priceless footage out of his reconstruction (except for 20 seconds he used to plug a hole in his restoration), sharp, crystal-clear 35mm. footage at that!

Goodness gracious, I could write two very long paragraphs of description (but I will spare you, Mr. Hefner) of things O’Brien put in his film, which survive in the 50 minute American Kodascope version, that are NOT in the Fiarfax shooting script, for O’Brien, using his finger tips, was his own script, and animated all kinds of business Fairfax never dreamed up.

When Scott MacQueen visited Cleveland on March 12, 1997, to show rare Disney footage to eager film buffs, we had a long talk afterwards about Mr. Stratmann’s LOST WORLD restoration work. “When it comes to the outttakes, which are of a beautiful quality,” said Mr. MacQueen, “I would err on the side of CAUTION. If there is the remotest possibility they were in the 1925 film, put them in.” Obviously Mr. Stratmann defines “caution” the other way: if there is the slightest possibility they were not in, leave them out.

What is really tragic is Fairfax’s heavy, posthumous hand on the Eastman House reconstruction. According to Ray Harryhausen, O’Brien never forgave film scenarist Marion Fiarfax for saying to him that she was so constructing her script that if his animals didn’t work out, there would still be a great adventure melodrama for audiences minus the dinosaurs. Hence, her extensive cannibal scenes. Well, all her stuff about cannibals, though shot, never got into the finished film, but this woman, thanks to Mr.Stratmann’s decision, is able to reach out from her grave and do to O’Brien what she could never do while yet alive--rip out from the restoration many wondrous moments of dinosaur animation.

Mr. Stratmann doesn’t answer my letters or return my telephone calls. No one knows at this juncture what Eastman House plans to do with these eight-and-a-half minutes of incomparable dinosaur animation. Will they be offered as an addendum behind their restoration on tape or laser disk? Will Eastman House just sit on this footage? If anyone presently knows at Eastman House, he is not talking.

Having simplified matters enormously for himself, the only thing left for Mr. Stratmann to do was blend the American and Czech footage. Unfortunately, he accidentally dropped dinosaur footage from both elements to be combined (I cannot believe he did it deliberately).

When I saw the Eastman House screening of their restoration on August 8, 1997, Mr. Stratmann’s supervisor, who introduced the show, boasted to the audience that “all known dinosaur footage” was now in the Eastman print, including “many dinosaur scenes not seen for over 70 years.” In the question-and-answer period which followed the screening, I pointed out that it was a pity, since we had so many new dinosaur scenes not available for 70 years, that other dinosaur animation, which had survived for over 70 years in the Kodascope print, was now missing in Eastman’s new restoration.

In the American Kodascope print, a ferocious Allosaurus, looking for a meal, is driven away from the human explorers by rifle shot and burning log. [He then comes upon an animal that looks to me like a styracosaurus (five-spiked lizard) and has his belly torn open. The Allosaurus proceeds to die piteously in the mud]. This whole first part of the Allosaurus--Styracosaurus sequence I’ve enclosed in brackets is missing in Mr. Stratmann’s work, though the rest of the Styracosaurus footage, involving an encounter with a Tyrannosaur, is intact.

Mr. Stratmann told me personally, after the August 8’th show, that he would restore this sequence. Subsequent screenings of the Eastman print have been seen by my friends who tell me this marvelous sequence is still missing.

We know from the Lumivision laser disk of The Lost World that the UCLA Film and Television Archives owns a 35mm copy of a 1925 trailer for Doyle’s feature. Contained in this trailer are some 54 frames of the Brontosaurus, running amok in London, giving in that city one of the greatest dinosaur sneers in animation history. I wrote Eastman House, stating that if they were going to boast that “all known dinosaur footage” (excluding the outtakes, of course) was in their restoration, they should purchase the right to use the UCLA trailer, for the Brontosaurus sneer was too important to leave out of their restoration and the footage did not exist in the Kodascope. I mentioned this fact to Scott MacQueen in Cleveland.

He replied to me, “Eastman House does not need to purchase any footage from UCLA.”

“Why Not?” I asked.

“Because,” he replied, “they already own that footage. I know exactly the shot you are describing. It’s in their Czech footage. Stratmann missed it.”

I was practically struck dumb by this revelation.

There is a scene in the Kodascope where an Allosaurus, riding on the back of a Brontosaurus, is pulled off by the Bronto’s teeth. The Allosaurus, now on the ground, snaps back at his tormentor. I do not remember seeing this in the Eastman restoration. It MAY be there. I was so bludgeoned visually by new, magnificent dinosaur fire footage that it was hard to take everything in on a first screening. The point I am making is that Mr. Stratmann should pour over every foot of the Kodascope and every foot of the Czech material and miss not a single frame of indispensable, irreplaceable dinosaur animation.

To sum up, what a great restoration job Eastman House could have done, stoked by the engine of your money which was making it all possible. Instead, the work presently being shown to audiences is unbelievably botched. Dinosaur work that has survived for over 70 years in the Kodascope is accidentally left out; dinosaur work in the Czech footage that should have gone in is accidentally left out, and the entire eight-and-a-half minutes of brilliant dinosaur outtakes is completely left out (except for about 20 seconds). It is a tragedy to bring tears to the eyes of dinosaur lovers everywhere.

Is there anything you can do to make matters right?

If audiences are not to be privileged to see these outtakes where they readily fit, according to Mr. MacQueen, because of Mr. Stratmann’s decision, can they not be tacked on at the end of the restoration or at least offered as an addendum on any tape or laser disk release of this longer version?

And cannot the Allosaurus Kodascope footage and Czech Brontosaurus footage be restored to the finished work that was accidentally eliminated?

Willis O’Brien fans all over the planet will be eternally grateful to you (in this world and the next one) if you step in to correct these God-awful mishaps in the Lost World restoration. And Eastman House should listen to you. After all, it was your money which mostly helped to fuel this restoration project in the first place.

Most sincerely yours,

David M. Massaro

P.S.

I met at the Monster Bash 1998 in June at Pittsburgh one A. Boyd Campbell, who runs the Willis O’Brien website. A copy of this letter is being sent to him. He promised not to publish your home address which a friend gave to me from a private directory. A copy is also being sent to Ray Harryhausen and one to Scott MacQueen.

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