Kit Parker has been working on a history of The Weiss Brothers’ Artclass Pictures. As he described it, “Figured if no one wrote their story it would be lost to history. It took a lot of research, and their story is interesting, even if the majority of their movies are not.”
Part One can be found here. Good stuff.
Interesting article, part auto-biography of Kit Parker and also story of Weiss. Seems the films Weiss were involved in were all unknown extremely ancient films, though I’d like to know more about “Global-Weiss” which I remember seeing that logo at the end of TV shows or movies. But “Global-Weiss” didn’t come about till much later, these original Weiss films are really really old, the dawn of film age, and most or all of them un-memorable and unknown and with unknown actors. I can see why the “Weiss” catalog is not exactly a cash cow for Kit Parker. Question I have, why buy their “catalog” if it isn’t worth anything? I believe in what you buy or invest in should be something you are actually interested in yourself. Well, maybe I just aswered my question, I guess Kit Parker is interested in those films, but outside of historical scholars no one else would ever want to watch those ancient films. Here’s another good question, how come a film like “Dakota Lil” or “Fighting Man of The Plains” or any number of other more recent films are either disintegrated from the ravages of time or only very few poor copies left while these 110 year old Weiss films from the turn of the century are still unhappily with us?