The Rogue Song - Lost Film Status

Lost Film Status

• Despite extensive searches, no complete print of the movie has been found. One reel features a ballet sequence by Albertina Rasch and survives intact at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Another surviving reel features Lawrence Tibbett singing to Catherine Dale Owen survives at the Czech Film Archive in Prague. In addition, a short fragment exists which features Lawrence Tibbett and Catherine Dale Owen as they are caught in a storm. This fragment also features a short comic segment with Laurel & Hardy hide in a cave in which a bear has taken shelter. An almost complete print of the original trailer also survives at UCLA -- the first sixty seconds are lost, due to deterioration, but the sound survives complete as it was recorded on Vitaphone disks, rather than MGM's usual usage of Movietone. In the trailer, Lawrence Tibbett sings White Dove to Catherine Dale Owen. A short segment featuring the comics Laurel & Hardy is also seen in which Laurel has apparently swallowed a bee. In addition to these film fragments, the complete soundtrack survives because it was re-recorded on Vitaphone disks for theaters that did not have optical sound systems. Prints made in the early two-color Technicolor processes proved especially unstable due to the color dyes used, compounded by the instability of the nitrate film used for the negatives and prints. Digital restoration processes have been employed to transfer many early Technicolor films to more stable "safety" stock.

• The Lawrence Tibbett Estate held a color copy of the entire Rogue Song for many years after his death. Tibbett liked the film and showed it frequently to his friends. The late Allan Jones was a regular visitor and friend and reportedly gained possession of the print, which his son Jack Jones unfortunately had to junk because of nitrate film decomposition.

• MGM held the negative of reel 4 until the early 1970s. It is believed that the entire film was stored in their Vault No. 7 but was destroyed in the fire that occurred there.

• A recent discovery in the former East Germany has provided evidence that a German two-color print of the film was copied, dubbed into Russian, and sent to the Soviet Union.

• Lawrence Tibbett recorded some of the songs from the film in studio recordings released by RCA Victor on 78-rpm "Red Seal" discs.