Library of Congress: United Artists Collection

American films, 1913-1948

These films are probably not available for rent but may be useful to researchers.

In 1969 the United Artists Corporation presented to the Library the earliest surviving preprint material for approximately three thousand motion pictures from the pre-1949 film library of Warner Brothers pictures. The collection contains fifty silent features (1913-30), 750 sound features (1927-48), 1,800 sound shorts (1926-48), and 400 cartoons, among them Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. While consisting largely of Warner Brothers releases, the collection includes nearly two hundred sound features released by Monogram Pictures Corporation and a number of Popeye cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios. Most motion pictures exist in the original black-and-white or Technicolor camera negatives. The Library is converting the nitrate film to acetate safety stock and has obtained reference prints for seventy of the better known Warner Brothers features, such as Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935), High Sierra (1941), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), The Jazz Singer (1927), and Little Caesar (1930).

All titles are recorded in the collection shelflist in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division and in a catalog published by the American Film Institute. United Artists has donated 16mm reference prints of most Monogram and Warner Brothers films to the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in Madison. Go to the Special Collections Home Page. Go to the Library of Congress Home Page.