The Lost World (movie 1925)

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia
The Lost World (1925)

The Lost World is an American silent movie premiered on 8 february 1925 at the Astor Theatre (New York, USA) produced by First National Pictures starring Wallace Beery as Professor George Challenger. 68 minutes.

The movie is the first adaptation of the Conan Doyle's novel The Lost World. In the original version, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was introducing the movie with a 4 verse poem.

The story of the movie is quite eventful: the original movie was 90 minutes long. When Warner Brothers purchased First National Pictures, 30 minutes of the movie were cut. The new 60-minutes version was licensed to Kodascope Libraries. Thus, many sequences were removed: the introductory sequence with Gladys Hungerford (played by Alma Bennett) as the Malone's fiancée, the meeting of Challenger with the expedition team in South America, and several London scenes. In 1948, Encyclopedia Britannica purchased the 60-minutes movie and made further cuts resulting in another short version of 5-minutes long intended for English classrooms and retitled A Lost World, as Told by A. Conan Doyle. The short began in the drawing rooms of 1912 London with an actor portraying Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the 1990s, with the renewed interest about dinosaurs resulted in some spectacular new finds, and a restored version was released in 1991 by Lumivision Laserdisk, with some bonus (the movie trailer and a commercial for the Bob Sherman's' The Lost World Puzzle presented by Bessie Love herself... see videos below). In 1992 was discovered a nearly complete print of the full film in the Filmovy Archiv of the Czech Republic, and additional footage was uncovered in a pair of private collections and in the Library of Congress. This resulted to a new restoration in 1997 based on the original Marion Fairfax 1925 script by George Eastman House. Since they refused to release the completed version to home video, the silent film publisher David Shepard utilized the same materials as George Eastman House to compile and restore his own version of the film that was released on DVD by Image Entertainment in 2001. However, the George Eastman House version was released as a bonus of the 1960 remake with Claude Rains. Thus, there is currently two version of the movie:

  • The David Shepard version: includes almost every scrap of film possible, but less smooth in the flow.
  • The George Eastman House version: less parts but more edited for a better flow.

More details about the movie history



Photos


Lobby Cards


Posters


Promotional


Promotional advertising
French promotional advertising in Mon Ciné (november 1925)
French program from Limoges including "Felix the Cat in The Lost World" (november 1925)

Videos

Full Movie (92 min version)

Trailer

Commercial: The Lost World Puzzle


Cast

Uncredited

Added in the 1948 "Lost World, As Told By A. Conan Doyle"

  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle : an actor playing Conan Doyle


Crew

  • Director : Harry O. Hoyt
  • Screenplay : Marion Fairfax
  • Producer : Earl Hudson, by arrangement with Watterson R. Rothacker
  • Cinematography : Arthur Edeson
  • Set Decoration : Milton Menasco
  • Film Editing : George McGuire
  • Special Effects : Willis H. O'Brien
  • Model Construction : Marcel Delgado, Ralph Hammeras
  • Chief Technician : Fred W. Jackman
  • Technician Staff : Homer Scott, J. Devereaux Jennings, Hans Koenekamp, Vernon L. Walker


Plot summary

The story mainly follows the original Conan Doyle's novel but with some modification, like the love story between Malone and Paula White... this daughter of Maple White doesn't exist in the novel. In the novel, Malone marry Gladys when he comes back from The Lost World. In the movie, Gladys changed his mind while Malone was in The Lost World and she married with a store clerk, Mr. Percy Potts, which has never been out of London !