CHICAGO — It played in Peoria, and everywhere else.
Then, the world’s only remaining copy of a 1923 silent melodrama produced by Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle, presumed lost by film historians, remained stashed for decades in a box of unmarked and highly flammable nitrate film reels. The box sat perilously close to a hot-water heater in a closet, in a house, in Peoria.
Now, Chicago Film Archives has digitally transferred and restored the rarity titled “The First Degree,” about a sheep farmer with a secret and the climactic courtroom confrontation that spills the beans. Directed by Edward Sedgwick, best known for Buster Keaton’s “The Cameraman,” the film is not yet available for general viewing, online or otherwise.
CFA director of film transfer operations, Olivia Babler, hopes that a public screening with live musical accompaniment can be arranged as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic abates, and allows others to make the discovery for themselves.
“It’s pretty amazing it’s survived,” Babler says. “All five reels.”
Like most silent films considered lost and then, miraculously, found, “The First Degree” tells a story of near-misses and pure chance.