Rumors of Negative Damage
When asked about the possibility of striking a new print of Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, May said at that time that the Grimm negatives had sustained some water damage while in storage, and that the costs of making a new print were prohibitive.
In subsequent years a good deal of lore and speculation evolved regarding the extent of damage to the Grimm negatives. Some reported the damage as "extensive" while others claimed it a total loss. Many believed that West and Grimm were stored with Pacific's Cinerama titles under less than ideal conditions, and it was often assumed the water damage to Grimm had happened there. The Turner/MGM film library was eventually sold to Warner Brothers, but the actual elements had been very carefully stored by the Turner organization for many years.
As the DVD market grew to include Blu-ray, Warners painstakingly remastered How The West Was Won from the original 3-strip Cinerama negatives, but an interview with George Feltenstein of Turner/Warner's home video unit repeated "extensive water damage" (which he said had occurred in MGM's storage facility before Turner acquired the library) as a reason for not releasing Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. Feltenstein did point out that, having been shot in IB Technicolor, the Grimm elements included protection separation elements of the 3 primary colors, all of which are in fine shape, and can be used to create a new negative. There was not enough apparent sales potential for Grimm, he said, to justify the substantial cost at that time.
As film negatives are often stored horizontally and stacked in boxes, it seems unlikely that the entire negative (3 strips for every reel) could have been water damaged unless there had been a rather serious flood. The director of a Cinerama documentary has said he has actually examined the Grimm elements, and - far from being "extensive" - the water damage to the 3 strip negatives was limited to only the far edge of one of the three panels, and even then only on some reels.
Read more about this topic: The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm
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