Grahame Newnham's Collection

[Maurice Leakey]

At last, here are details of what happened to the collection of the late Grahame Newnham. It appears that it was donated to the Hugh Heffner Moving Image Archive at USC (University Of Southern California.)
‘The Little Apparatus’ : 100 Years of 9.5mm international conference draws attendees from 18 countries! – Film Archives UK

[Mike Newell]

That’s good news that it will stay together and be archived and access should be available.

[Melvin England]

The only thing that puzzles me is what on earth is Hugh Heffner doing having a moving image archive ? I would have thought the only moving images he was interested in were wriggling bodies !

[Mike Newell]

The only thing that puzzles me is what on earth is Hugh Heffner doing having a moving image archive ? I would have thought the only moving images he was interested in were wriggling bodies !

Yes, that confused me too but quite often rich folks want to leave a legacy. One of the most generous moguls in Hollywood for film restoration was Harvey Weinstein. He likely got tax breaks for it too.

Andrew Carnegie was a hard nosed business man but towards the end of his life gave away millions maybe billions to charitable and educational beneficiaries to take the edge of his reputation.

Alternatively, if you want to be cynical the latest wheeze of billionaires to avoid taxes is to set up charitable foundations to give their money away. Keeping their descendants on generous salaries as executors / directors plus still controlling the empire. Bill Gates was giving all his money away 10 years ago and is now worth double what he was originally worth despite an expensive divorce.

Rockerfellers, Gettys and Kennedys have been doing it for decades. Every ex president sets up a foundation. Makes it impossible to see what really belongs to the individual.

Us poor people are just dumb.🤪

[Maurice Leakey]

I see that a well-known Forum member from the USA is associated with the project. I am sure that he will be able to give his guidance.
I have purposely not mentioned his name. If he does read this posting perhaps he may enter a comment.

[Ken Finch]

Mike, you have ‘hit the nail on the head’. Why is it that we Brits have a penchant to give all our assets away? It is a bit ironic that historically 9.5mm did not take on in the U.S. It is so true that the ‘rich get richer and the poor get poorer’ throughout the world. Ken Finch😏

[Chris Bird]

Hi Maurice, Dino Everett appeared on a panel with me for the University of Southampton's 9.5mm Symposium back in June. At the time he was going through doing an inventory of Grahame's collection, and showed it to everyone at the event via zoom. He did a more detailed piece about the collection for the Lichtspiel 9.5mm three day event recently, which I viewed online.

Regarding Hugh Hefner, he was a massive film enthusiast, and supported various film projects. He even co-funded the first documentary I ever worked on, Kevin Brownlow's 'Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces' in 2000 (I was associate film editor).

I know some people were not in favour of Grahame's collection leaving the country, but his family said that those were his wishes, and I think Dino's archive is one of the very few that could have shown interest in it anywhere in the world. I can't imagine the BFI taking an interest in such a collection, and I think Dino has done an extraordinary job taking it all in.

[Maurice Leakey]

Many thanks, Chris.
Your very interesting details have now named the prime helper who has obviously done a lot of work on the project.
Perhaps fellow member, Dino, could now give us his comments.

[Dino Everett]

Hello all. I used to be very active on the old 8mm forum, but life and work has greatly interfered with my "fun" film activities so it seems that I have vanished per se, but I am just busier than I used to be.

First a few bullet points
1 - I have never met Hugh Hefner and don't run his Archive. He has an archive and a separate archivist, but I know nothing about it. I run the USC cinema school Archive which carries the name HMH Foundation Archive. Mr. Hefner had a long running relationship with the school funding a class on cinema censorship and at one point donated 2 million dollars to set up an endowment to fund the Archive for the oldest film school in the US which started the same year as AMPAS in 1929.
2 - No the US did not take to 9.5 mainly because of the fact it arrived in 1925, 2 years after 16mm, where Kodak had already brought all the companies on board so that no one else could really make 9.5 equipment or films..Fault Kodak fighting Pathe not the people or the country.
3. I was not the first choice of the family. They tried to keep it in the UK, but none of the entities wanted the entire collection, they just wanted to cherry pick. This is not unique to the UK, but a big archive problem in general, in that they usually only want what they want and have little to no respect for small format material.
4 I know nothing about Weinstein giving money to film restoration or film archives.

OK why me, why us?
The USC archive was started in the 1940s by a gentleman named Herb Farmer who was firmly dedicated to small format/non theatrical film. He was a SMPTE life fellow and was responsible for a lot of the SMPTE 16mm standards over the years. He built up a museum quality technology collection that I was put in charge of 12 years ago. The bulk of which is small format cameras and projectors and many 35mm cameras, including many British made cameras such as Moy & Bastie's, Prestwich, Newman Sinclair, and many others. I have been a long time 9.5 fanatic starting for many years before I even had any films or equipment, just from reading about the films that were available in the books and articles by Kevin Brownlow, Gerald McKee, Maurice Trace, David Shepard and others. Thankfully the Internet made it possible for me to build up a huge collection of films and projectors. I am well aware that the US did not take to 9.5, but that was because it never had a chance here. No one has written about this but Kodak and Pathe were rivals and Kodak squashed all hopes of Pathe in the US when they first squashed 28mm by getting all of the companies and individuals supporting 28mm to sign on to support their new 16mm format. This simultaneously killed 28mm in the US and prohibited 9.5 from breaking through until 1925 at which point 16mm was in full swing and Pathe(x) had only themselves to support the format, because all other equipment manufacturers were working with Kodak. So it is really Kodak to blame and not the US.
Personally I have regularly done public and academic 9.5mm screenings and presentations over the past 2 decades. My favorite being a silent film conference with all of the heavy weights where I followed a well known archivist who was promoting the FIAF silent film database by informing them all that I would be showing clips of 13 different films considered LOST by FIAF because they exist on 9.5. I spent over 1 thousand dollars to travel to New jersey with my Specto in hand and a couple of reels of silent comedies to do a show at my old friend John Black's 2nd Wildwood film get together. I slept on the floor of his sotel room because I spent all my money on the plane ticket....I once carried the Specto again on a plane along with some reels of film to Oakland the weekend of the Napoleon screenings. I rode a couple of buses to an unfamiliar location and walked about 15 blocks to run some 9.5 for a fellow forum members' monthly cine club shows. I have done many shows here in Los Angeles, presentations on 9.5, John Cunninham's 9.5 Kinemacolor, I have a running Pathe Monaco Duplex that I took to Austin Texas to do a presentation on 4.75 and projected some film. I am probably the only person in the US who can easily project 9.5 sound prints on a 110volt 60Hz modified Elf. When my old co-workers at UCLA archive asked me to play on their softball team they made up a jersey for me with the number 9.5. If you search my name on this forum you will see the many posts I have made over the years about 9.5. You will see my name listed in the thanks sections of the great David Wyatt / Garth Pedler Encyclopedia, and in Maurice's Pathex guide and on Grahame's site because I have been researching and filling in various gaps in the overall 9.5 history. It is a shame because I finally filled out a great deal of information on Japanese 9.5 after restoring a lost Baby Peggy short from a Japanese 9.5 print, but it was too late to make it into the book. I flew over and attended the Group 9.5 50th annual get together in 2011 and it was Grahame who told me that I was the first American to ever do so. The point of all this is not to say "Look at me I'm great" but to show you that even though I am an American I am one of the staunchest supporters of 9.5 you will meet, and I have been flying the flag for quite sometime now...Besides being friends with him for many years I worship people like Grahame, Warton , Maurice Trace, David Wyatt, Garth Pedler, Patrick Moules, Martyn Stevens, Larry Pearce, Harold Bailey, John Burgoyne-Johnson, Harold brown and A.K. Dawson - I still kick myself for not purchasing his specially modified suitcase baby when I saw it on ebay a decade ago...and of course Ken Valentine. I even took his little paper dinner name tag off the table at the end of the night from the 50th cuz I was in such awe that he worked for Pathescope.

Not to be disrespectful but the truth is the UK had a chance to keep the collection as I was not the first choice of the family. The problem is that like with many collections the entities that the family reached out to wanted to cherry pick items from the collection rather than take it as a whole and when they reached out to me I didn't even hesitate to say that it should really be kept together, because he spent his life creating a collection and the way to respect it and him personally is to keep it together and to maintain his online legacy...BUT the fact that it is coming to the US should not be seen in a negative light in this day and age because we tend to share lots of things online these days which means they can live anywhere. Also I run a film archive and we regularly ship prints all over the world for screenings and I have said multiple times that if GROUP 9.5 wants to set up regular screenings somewhere again like they did with the Pimlico ones where Grahame used his prints often, that I personally would cover the costs of shipping the prints back and forth because I know that the group does not have the funds to spend a hundred plus dollars for a screening... In the case of the prints I intend to digitize all of Grahame's and any other group members films that he made and make them available online. Same thing with the paper documents. I just started updating the website by beginning to fill in the reports from the rest of the annual get togethers and created a new section where I intend to scan all of the GROUP 9.5 magazines (since I have a near complete run) and make them available like I have done for all of the Blackhawk catalogs...I may not be a British citizen but I assure you that I may be one of the best people that could have inherited the collection and will do right by Grahame, the 9.5 community and film collectors.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Dino,

Thank you for the post and thank you for all the work you do in film preservation and archivism.

I had the pleasure of being in Wildwood for Dino's 9.5mm presentation. It was spectacular.

[Graham Ritchie]

Dino

I hope you don't mind me going of topic a we bit, but did you have something to do with the recent film "The Fableman's"? the reason I mention this, is that I am sure I saw your name mentioned during the end credits.

[Dino Everett]

Yes, I spoke to the writer Tony Kushner about the first scene of the father explaining how the movies work to his child....

[Dominique De Bast]

Thanks for that long explanation, Dino, it is a kind of relief for me as I was told in the UK that Grahame's reperfor machine went to the US and is in a cave where it will never be used again. I'm happy this precious machine went in good hands.

Out of topic : I read that 9.5 films went to the American market on a unique (as far as I know) form : silent copies with 78 tpm records. Have you ever seen one of those films + records ? Another question, if I may, :have you ever met the American ninefiver who made an Internet site (sadly closed, now) ? He travelled once to meet the French 9.5 club but eventually stopped giving news (probably for a sad reason).

[Maurice Leakey]

I am sure that fellow members will join me in giving grateful thanks to Dino for all he has done, and is still doing. It's great news that Grahame's website is to keep going, it is so full of details that Grahame collected over the years.

We will never forget Grahame's activities and now, to be kept going by Dino.

I am also a nine-fiver with 223 silent and 146 sound films. Projectors are, Specto, Gem, 200B, Vox, Sons. Buckingham conversions, and a Eiki Slimline SNT-3 conversion which will also play and record on magnetic 9.5mm.

At last, an update on Grahame's website:-
GRAHAME NEWNHAM (9.5MM / 17.5MM / 28MM HOME MOVIES etc) (pathefilm.uk)

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi!

What happened to Grahame's „film production“ facility? If I remember correctly, he used to have a perforator, a splitter and several empty, reloadable cartridges, so that he was able to turn 35mm and 16mm into 9.5mm.

Jörg