BMM0000012 Hal Roach 
BMM0000031 Charlie Chaplin 
BMM0000088 Buster Keaton 
BMM0000097 Mary Kornman 
BMM0000117 Mary Pickford 
BMM0000149 Mickey Daniels 
BMM0000204 Clara Bow 
BMM0000262 Gloria Swanson 
BMM0000343 Rudolph Valentino 
BMM0000401 Lon Chaney 
BMM0000512 Louise Brooks 
BMM0000598 Theda Bara 
BMM0000664 Harold Lloyd 
BMM0001667 Ray McDonald Every print here was published without the copyright notice the law then required and has passed into the public domain. Where a credit survives on the file we reprint it as it stands. On most of them there is none.
The file
BMM0000012 Hal Roach 1892–1992 Founded the studio behind Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy. Worked from the 1910s to the 1990s. BMM0000031 Charlie Chaplin 1889–1977 The Tramp. The most reproduced face of the silent era, and the most photographed. BMM0000088 Buster Keaton 1895–1966 Physical comedy, inventive stunts, and a face that never once gave anything away. BMM0000097 Mary Kornman 1915–1973 The leading girl of the silent Our Gang, and the daughter of the man who photographed it. BMM0000117 Mary Pickford 1892–1979 America's Sweetheart on screen, and one of the four who founded United Artists off it. BMM0000149 Mickey Daniels 1914–1970 Signed by Hal Roach at seven. Freckles, and a laugh the studio wrote into the scripts. BMM0000204 Clara Bow 1905–1965 The It Girl. Made the jump to sound in 1929 and left the business anyway. BMM0000262 Gloria Swanson 1899–1983 Dozens of silents in the 1920s, then Norma Desmond in 1950 and a third Oscar nomination. BMM0000343 Rudolph Valentino 1895–1926 The Latin Lover. Dead at thirty one, and the funeral made news for days. BMM0000401 Lon Chaney 1883–1930 The Man of a Thousand Faces. Built the makeup himself, and it cost him. BMM0000512 Louise Brooks 1906–1985 The bob. Left Hollywood for Germany, made two great films, and was written off for it. BMM0000598 Theda Bara 1885–1955 The Vamp. A publicity department invented her, and then most of her films burned. BMM0000664 Harold Lloyd 1893–1971 Nearly two hundred comedies. Hanging off the clock, with two fingers missing. BMM0001667 Ray McDonald 1920–1959 Vaudeville with his sister, then Broadway, then MGM. The films did not keep him. Silent era
Eleven of these files come from before sound. Almost all of Theda Bara's films are gone, which makes the photographs the whole surviving record of her work.
Our Gang
The silent Pathé run with Mickey Daniels and Mary Kornman is a different series from the Little Rascals that ran on television, and much less seen.
What a still is
Publicity photographs were made by the hundred for every contract player, sent to newspapers and exhibitors, and almost never credited to the photographer.
What is held here
The files run from Charlie Chaplin, whose 1914 Keystone stills are among the most reproduced photographs of the century, to Ray McDonald, an MGM tap dancer whose leading roles lasted about two years. Eleven of the fourteen worked before sound. Two were children at the Hal Roach studio. One, Hal Roach himself, ran the place.
A search engine will give you a birth date and a list of credits. A file here gives you the print: its year where the record carries one, the credit exactly as recorded, and a note on what the photograph does and does not show. Theda Bara made 43 films and complete prints of six survive. For her, the stills are most of the record.
The lot itself
A back lot was the land behind the stages where a studio built streets that led nowhere. A New York block, a Western main street, a Paris corner, most of them three walls and a roof with the fourth side open to the crew. The same facade was repainted for a dozen pictures. Nothing was sacred. At RKO's Forty Acres in Culver City the standing Jerusalem set was torched to clear ground for the Atlanta of Gone with the Wind, and the lot went on to serve as Mayberry for The Andy Griffith Show before it was razed in 1976.
Nothing on a back lot was built to last, and almost nothing did.
The stills photographers worked on the same lots. Portraits were shot between setups, printed by the hundred and mailed to newspapers and exhibitors. Studios sent out tens of thousands a year and put no copyright notice on them, which is why the prints here can be shown at all. Roach's lot in Culver City was demolished in 1963. MGM's Lot 3 was razed after the company changed hands in 1969. The photographs outlasted the streets they were made on.
Questions people ask
what is a back lot in movies
A back lot is the open land behind a studio's sound stages, holding permanent exterior sets: streets, storefronts, whole town squares, most of them built as three-sided shells with no back wall. The same facade was redressed for picture after picture. By the early 1970s most were considered obsolete and the land went to developers or theme parks. Universal's became a park. MGM's Lot 3 was razed after Kirk Kerkorian bought the company in 1969.
how many silent films are lost
The Library of Congress estimates that 75 percent of all silent films are gone for good. Nitrate stock, used for nearly every 35 mm negative and print made before 1952, burned easily and decayed when stored badly. Whole vaults went at once: a 1937 fire at Fox destroyed the original negatives of the studio's films from before 1935. For performers whose work was at Fox, the photographs are often what remains.
who is in the backlot movie archive
Fourteen performers so far, eleven of them from before sound: Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Pickford, Swanson, Valentino, Chaney, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks and Theda Bara, plus the two leading children of the silent Our Gang, Mickey Daniels and Mary Kornman. The studio side holds Hal Roach, who produced Our Gang from 1922, and Ray McDonald, an MGM dancer of the early 1940s. Each file carries an accession number and at least one print.
what is the difference between a film still and a publicity still
A scene still is taken on the set during production by a stills photographer working beside the movie camera, and shows a scene roughly as it appears in the picture. A publicity still is a posed portrait made in the studio's gallery for newspapers, fan magazines and handouts. Both went out in quantity: studios mailed tens of thousands of scene stills and portraits a year. As many as five stills photographers could be assigned to one film.