Skip to main content

Iron Mountain Collection

Image
Iron Mountain Collection

The Iron Mountain Collection came to the Archive in January 1998 and contains approximately 1,840 cans of film from Iron Mountain Film & Sound Archive Services in Hollywood, California. The collection consists of materials that originally lay unclaimed in the Iron Mountain nitrate vaults. Dating from the 1920s to the 1950s, the items include features, shorts, trailers, production elements, newsreels, and German World War II footage. Elements include original camera negatives, dupe negatives, fine grains, and prints. Among the varied components of the collection are prints of “Stage Door Canteen” (1943) and “The Cowboy and the Prizefighter” (1949); outtakes from “Stella Maris” (1925) with actress Mary Philbin; actor Hobart Bosworth’s home movies; and ground and aerial combat footage from World War II taken by German forces. Of particular note is one of the oldest known pieces of nitrate in the Academy Film Archive’s collection, Louis Lumière’s “Querelle Enfantine” (1896).