The Lost World – A Movie Time Machine Adventure

In February 1925, a movie audience in Boston, Massachusetts, sat down for the world premiere of The Lost World, First National Pictures’ epic adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s rip-roaring adventure novel. During the screening, their minds were comprehensively boggled by the astonishing sight of prehistoric beasts rampaging through a primeval wilderness. The silent-era film became one of the biggest money-spinners not only of that year, but of the following year, too. Dinosaurs were back … in a big way.

Make no bones about it, The Lost World was the Jurassic Park of its day. Can you imagine the excitement surrounding its release? If only there was a way to travel back through time and experience that buzz for ourselves.

Good news – there is! Our special laboratory, lavishly equipped with cutting-edge chronoscopic technology, has the power to whisk us all the way back to the 1920s. Read tantalizing tales leaked to the press during the production of The Lost World. Experience the thrill of anticipation as the date of the premiere draws near. Marvel at the promotional ballyhoo surrounding the film’s nationwide roll-out.

All aboard the Movie Time Machine!

Tuning our chronometric scanners to the early decades of the 20^th century, we hear the first faint rumble of dinosaur footfalls in 1920, when industry journal Exhibitors Herald reports a meeting between film producer Watterson R. Rothacker and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. During the encounter, Rothacker buys the film rights to Conan Doyle’s novel with a view to adapting The Lost World for the silver screen. Rothacker’s partner in this prehistoric endeavor is producer Cathrine Curtis, who throws her hat in the ring on the understanding that the dinosaurs will be brought to life by stop-motion wizard Willis O’Brien, whose reputation stems from his work on the pioneering 1918 feature The Ghost of Slumber Mountain.

The partnership doesn’t last. In the summer of 1922, an issue of Camera! reports a rather messy legal business triggered by a presentation of The Lost World test footage to the Society of American Magicians, during which “dinosaurs and other terrible prehistoric monsters wandered and frolicked in perfect abandon.” Soon after the show, Herbert M. Dawley, the animation pioneer behind the 1918 dinosaur film The Ghost of Slumber Mountain, sues Rothacker and Doyle for patent infringement. Doyle distances himself from the whole business and, ultimately, Rothacker prevails, but not before he and Curtis have parted company.

Fast-forward to December 1923. Rothacker has finally got his ducks in a row and the movie is heading towards production. In its pre-Christmas issue, The Film Daily announces The Lost World will be released by First National Pictures in 1924, and that “the story will be filmed by one of the company’s own producing units.”

In light of this splendid news, we lock the Movie Time Machine’s temporal twizzlers confidently on 1924, the year when Calvin Coolidge sits in the White House and Ramsay McDonald is set to become the UK’s first ever Labour Prime Minister. The big films of the year will be “The Sea Hawk” and “The Thief of Bagdad.” But never mind pirates and flying carpets. We’re here for the dinosaurs.

So, when does filming actually begin on The Lost World? The Movie Time Machine finds the answer in the April-May edition of First National’s in-house magazine. “After preliminaries that occupied a period of several weeks,” the magazine proclaims, “actual player production work has been started on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s sensational story.” The cast is announced over the coming months. A copy of Moving Picture World from Jun 1924 confirms that “First National Pictures has selected three leading men … Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery and Lloyd Hughes. Bessie Love is the leading woman and others in the cast are Arthur Hoyt, Bull Montana and Margaret McWade.”

In the same month, Exhibitors Herald publishes First National’s first big press release about their upcoming movie: “An explorer of note discusses with friends the possibility of finding in the uncharted wilds of South America a ‘lost world’ where the much-sought ‘missing link’ of science may be found. As a result of his theories and his enthusiasm an expedition is fitted out … Entering vast expanses of jungle and swamps … they accidentally come upon a great plateau. As by a miracle they scale the steep sides of this plateau and find themselves in the ‘lost world’ of the explorer’s dreams.”

Are we excited yet? Movie-goers of 1924 certainly are. Ever since the so-called ‘Bone Wars’ of the late 1800s, during which paleontologists competed ferociously to dig up as many new prehistoric species as possible, interest in dinosaurs has gone through the roof. In 1923, the Gobi Desert yielded up the first fossils to be confirmed as dinosaur eggs, supporting the idea that these ancient behemoths weren’t monsters but living, breathing creatures.

Slowly but surely, dinosaurs are becoming real.

Now our appetites have been whetted, let’s ask the Movie Time Machine to retrieve some juicy behind-the-scenes details about the making of the movie. These start appearing in July, beginning with a Variety article that teases us with the following: “A miniature forest and jungle of the period have been erected which covers an acre of ground. There one sees mountains, lakes, ravines, etc., all in miniature and giving a realistic perspective. All sorts of mechanical contrivances give the setting realism with fans working on the water to make the waves of the two-foot-in-depth lake ripple. Animals of the prehistoric period are used plentifully in this picture and they are all of the mechanical variety. Among them are the dinosaur and the armadillo rhinoceros.”

Wait a second! What the heck is an “armadillo rhinoceros?” Is this some hitherto unknown species, or just the reporter’s best attempt to describe a Triceratops? Even the Movie Time Machine can’t answer that one. However, it can bring us this eye-opening snippet from the Variety piece, revealing the epic scale of the production: “One evening a mob scene was taken on the set and 1,125 extras were used. It is said several other big scenes are yet to be taken and call from 600 to 1,000 extras per scene. For the mob scene which was taken 25 cameramen were employed.”

A July issue of Moving Picture World focuses on yet more big numbers. “Two thousand persons went through a most strenuous night at the United Studios this week,” it enthuses. “Director Harry Hoyt had the help of twenty-five assistant directors, with Earl Hudson in general command. Eighteen cameras and the maximum lighting capacity of the studios, augmented by all the portable generators that could be borrowed from other producers, were called for in this night scene, which lasted from dark until daylight.”

Meanwhile The Film Daily is wowed by a scene that “deals with the rampage of a 120 foot brontosaurus right through the heart of London. For this portion of the picture, a street set about an eighth of a mile in length representing Piccadilly Circus was constructed at the United studio.” The same article drops an early hint about when we might finally get to see the finished movie: “Production of ‘The Lost World’ will probably be completed in the fall. It is planned to send the first print on to New York about the middle of November. The picture will be released by First National as one of its highlights for the winter season.”

Hurrah! It looks like we’ll get to see the movie by Christmas. I always wanted a Stegosaurus in my stocking!

The optimistic timeline holds true into September, when The Film Mart reports “the principals … have completed their roles in ‘The Lost World.’ The production is now entering upon its second phase, the highly complicated and technical process of photographing the prehistoric animals.”

Hold on! The Movie Time Machine’s patented Pinch-of-Salt Alarm just jangled. Are we really to believe Willis O’Brien’s special effects team is only just clocking in? Isn’t it more likely they’ve been slaving away all summer, and still have a mountain of all-nighters to climb?

As 1924 rolls on, The Lost World breaks out of the workaday industry journals and into Hollywood’s glossier fan publications. The Movie Time Machine finds the following bit of whimsy in the October issue of Motion Picture Magazine: “From the appearance of the props that have been collected … ‘The Lost World’ will be one wild picture. Skeletons of giant dinosaurs are scattered all over the First National lot. Boa-constrictors and gorillas and other strange critters have been collected for the filming. Bessie Love … says that, whatever else happens, she can always cling to the recollection that she is the first girl ever to have a fight with an allosaurus.”

A month later, the same magazine publishes a fascinating article exploring how silent film-makers use live music to conjure a suitable atmosphere on set. Here’s how the McCarger Quartet contributed to the shooting of The Lost World: “The scene was a deep forest, three hunters and a girl came in looking about them with interest. Suddenly they saw something in the distance which froze their very souls in terror! Every expression must change from calm investigation to one of transfixed terror. The music played an even-toned march up to the time that the director yelled, ‘See it!’ Immediately the musicians broke forth with a great clamor, staccato notes, and thunderous chords. But, tho the atmosphere was charged with excitement, nothing about the entire scene had changed. There was nothing for the actors to see, but somehow the music made them feel the tenseness of the situation.”

The end of October brings bad news, dashing our plans for a prehistoric Christmas. Reporting on First National’s efforts to book a suitable movie theater for the film’s premiere, Variety lets it slip that “the picture will not be ready for its New York premiere until about Jan 15.”

The studio is still dithering at the beginning of December, with Exhibitors Trade Review reporting “Earl Hudson hopes to okay the final scene within one to two months — depending on the screen conduct of the prehistoric dinosaurs.” Moving Picture World elaborates with a frankly dubious claim that “production progress was delayed a time owing to an injury to the leg of one mighty monster, reincarnated from the Jurassic Age of 10,000,000 years ago [sic] into the twentieth century.” As excuses go, this is only marginally better than “the T-Rex ate my homework.”

There’s cause for celebration as the Movie Time Machine sweeps us into 1925, the year that will see the births of Sam Peckinpah, Honor Blackman and Paul Newman. In the middle of January, Moving Picture World announces “First National Pictures has completed arrangements for the showing of its big special production, ‘The Lost World’ … at the Tremont Temple Theatre, Boston. The engagement, of indefinite length, will begin on February 2. It will play at $1 top admission price, with two shows a day.” The film’s New York run will begin the following week at the Astor Theatre on Broadway.

Not that the film is actually ready, even now. Towards the end of the month, Exhibitors Herald advises “the Rothacker laboratory, Chicago, has received the first print of ‘The Lost World’ … and work is progressing on cutting and assembling it.” Editors Cora Baldridge and Bertha Moore pull out all the stops in the cutting room and the film is ultimately completed before the deadline.

As the February premiere draws near, the Movie Time Machine picks up plenty of buzz in both Boston and New York, as the studio deploys what Moving Picture World describes as “one of the most ambitious exploitation and advertising campaigns ever put back of a feature picture shown on Broadway.” The ballyhoo includes dinosaur-themed crosswords in the major newspapers, a tie-in song composed by Rudolf Friml with lyrics by Harry B. Smith, and fleets of trucks carrying giant advertising placards through the streets.

Finally the big day arrives. Don’t worry if you can’t get tickets for the premiere – the Movie Time Machine finds the splashiest coverage you could imagine in the pages of Moving Picture World. Attending the premiere “by special arrangement with Watterson R. Rothacker” (remember him?), editor Robert E. Welsh is giddy as a schoolgirl about his close encounter with the prehistoric past.

“You think you can imagine the thrill of seeing prehistoric monsters one hundred and ten feet long,” gushes Welsh in his review of the movie. “So you can, to an extent. And when they first flash on the screen in ‘The Lost World’ you admit that your imagination has been satisfied. But wait until you catch yourself fearing for the fate of an intrepid group of humans marooned on a plateau literally swarming with fearful beasts of tremendous size. One stamp of any of the mammal’s feet and the party would be wiped out. Can you compare that thrill with anything in your experience?”

After continuing in this vein for some time, Welsh concludes: “There is inherent suspense in almost every foot of the picture; there is an admirably handled comedy vein running throughout. ‘The Lost World’ is a credit to all concerned, from Watterson Rothacker, who saw the showmanship possibilities of the story, to Earl Hudson, who supervised the production, to Harry Hoyt and Willis O’Brien, to all the players concerned, down even to the dinosaurs.”

Following the film’s nationwide release, the Movie Time Machine finds more positive reviews than you can shake a stick at, with various critics calling The Lost World “an entirely new departure in the cinema art,” “the best ‘stunt’ picture we ever saw” and “the most marvelous film of all time.” The Boston Globe sums it up: “‘The Lost World’ is a truly marvelous revelation of what the art of photography can accomplish and it has all the thrills which could possibly be packed into a single evening.”

There’s no doubt about it. Dinosaurs were as big in the 1920s as they’d ever been in real life.

As its chronometric circuits gradually wind down, the Movie Time Machine zooms out to give us a final wide shot of The Lost World playing to packed houses through 1925. The ballyhoo continues unabated, with independent theater owners pulling out all the stops to convince punters of the film’s prehistoric appeal. Spectacular lobby displays abound. Meanwhile one enterprising manager in Colorado builds himself a wheeled dinosaur float and drums up business by driving it around the local neighborhood.

In this way, The Lost World secured its place in cinema history. But what did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle make of the movie? Taking one last tour of the temporal vortex, the Movie Time Machine presents us with the April 1926 edition of Motion Picture Classic, in which journalist Henry Albert Philips puts this very question to the renowned author.

“Oh, the films did it very, very well,” Doyle acknowledges, before dismissing the dinosaurs in favor of a subject that has obsessed him since 1920, when he became obsessed with a set of photographs taken by two young girls in the Yorkshire village of Cottingley, apparently recording a series of close encounters with denizens of the fairy realm (the pictures were later discovered to be artful fakes). “What I am looking forward to is the appearance of moving — that is, animated — photographs of the fairy and spirit world. They are bound to come!”

In the penultimate chapter of The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the narrator, Edward Malone reflects on his adventures by remarking that ‘our eyes have seen great wonders.’ He might as well be referring to the experience of the modern moviegoer, in a world where visual effects artists routinely conjure fantastical images of fairies, spirits, and dinosaurs so utterly convincing you’d swear they’re about to bite your head off.

Despite this, we now rarely see the kind of hysteria that accompanied the 1925 release of The Lost World. Perhaps, in an age filled with cinematic wonders, what we’ve really lost is the ability to wonder at all.