Re: Isn't it about time for The African Queen?
I really hope with WINGS that someone at Paramount goes to the motion picture academy library and consults the cutting continuity that the Special Collections department has. It is missing reel 1, but the list of intertitles for the rest of the film is there, along with the tinting for each shot and even where the gunfire from the plane's machine guns was to be hand colored! As I recall, it even listed the Magna(scope? -vision?) sections, where the screen was to open up and the picture was to become HUGE. If you watch the home video version you'll notice that for the last half hour of part one the intertitles lettering is quite smaller. This is where the image was to be enlarged and the letters are smaller so they would't be jarring and actually match the size for the other titles.
I had the VHS, then the LD (autographed by Gaylord Carter and Buddy Rogers before it was lost in the Northridge earthquake to a TV falling on it and getting water damaged-damn!) and now an R7 DVD which are all the same version. The Academy showed the film a few years ago with live accompanyment and said it was a restoration, but that is all I know about it (out of town-2nd damn!).
I got tired of waiting for Paramount to release DVDs of those silent films they reissued in the 80's on VHS so I have been doing my own transfers and they look quite good. Since I don't think we'll ever get THE WEDDING MARCH with the original Vitaphone score, I'll settle for Gaylord Carter's, which is still a nice piece of work. Maybe they should farm these films out like they did HOUDINI and RHUBARB. . .
). 
