Universal Sifts Its Ashes

Last week's devastating fire at Universal Studios, which destroyed the company's vault holding thousands of prints of movies and TV shows, may have been more serious than originally believed, Daily Variety reported today (Thursday). The trade paper noted that while studio executives had stated following the fire that the prints were replaceable since the original negatives were stored elsewhere, striking prints from older films is no simple matter. "There might be issues with the negative fading, or it could have shriveled," George Eastman House curator of Motion Pictures Patrick Loughney told Variety. David Schwartz, chief curator of the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, observed that some of the movies may have been shot in Technicolor, which used a printing process rather than a chemical one -- a process that no longer is used. "You're not going to get a print of the same quality," he said. On the other hand it was reported that many copies of the prints had been stored at other locations and some of the Universal City collection were in circulation or in the studio's shipping depot at the time of the fire. Moreover all of the films were reportedly insured.


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