Jas, there are several reasons for their absence. One of the main ones is lack of preservation: many of them are lost forever. Here are some shocking facts:Jas1 wrote:Can I ask all you big time film buffs out there where the plethora of old films are? When you look at the vaious film books, The Warner Bros/ MGM, RKO Story etc and all the films that were made each year, yet you see so few of them on TV etc, wonder what has happened to them all?
80% (minimum) of all silent films are lost forever. Their negatives and prints have totally dissolved and fallen apart. Of the 40 films Theda Bara made, only 3 and 1/2 survive today.
40%-50% of all sound films made prior to 1949, the year safety film was widely introduced, are likewise lost forever.
Of the remaining films, both before 1949 and those after, only the major or minor hits or classics seem to be kept in a position to be exhibited in any form. So many of the non-hits or non-classics would require a huge amount of work and research to bring them to TV or the home video market (searching for the best elements, restoring those elements to a watchable condition, etc.) that most rights holders feel it isn't worth it to spend the money for what would be a modest return.
Until the last few of decades, film preservation was not a priority even among studios and filmmakers. Richard Brooks told me that when he filmed the tent-fire scene in Elmer Gantry that he used old films taken from the vault to hang in the folds of the tent to make the fire burn more quickly and spread more dramatically. He said he never even gave it a thought as to what those films might have been that were forever burned that day. Of course, this was in the 80's when he was telling the story and he felt awful about it, but the damage was done.
Another major reason is the surplus of film product today. Some of those older studio films used to be shown on TV up through mid-1970's. Then with the explosion of made-for-cable television and the home video market there was always something "newer" or "fresher" to screen. No need to dip into the old stock. Especially nowadays when you hear so many young people say they will never watch anything in Black & White.
The positive side is, many of the older films are being preserved today and several studios are actively putting out as much of their (restored) catalogue on DVD as possible. Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox are both leading the way in that regard.
But even still, many of the films listed in those books will never again see the light of day. Not enough people want to see them to warrant the work it would take, even if they (miraclulously) still exist in some cases.
Purely in the interest of research of course, as the Japanese say about their whaling. 