Long-lost silent film from 1923 resurfaces in Omaha

March 8 (UPI) -- A long-lost silent film from 1923 will be shown publicly for the first time in decades after being discovered at an auction.

Gary Huggins of Kansas City said he went to an auction in Omaha last year to look for rare or antique films.

"There was a distributor that had been in Omaha for decades that had gone out of business a while ago and this auction house had some of their films and so I drove up just for that just to see what was up there," Huggins told WOWT-TV.

He paid $20 for a stack of film reels because one of the included pieces was an old cartoon that caught his eye.

"It was the best 20 I've ever invested, for sure," Huggins said.

He used his projector to go through the stack and see what he had purchased and was surprised to see Clara Bow, one of the biggest stars of the silent film era.

David Stenn, a Hollywood historian and Bow's official biographer, said the reel Huggins purchased was The Pill Pounder, a comedy short that was thought to be long-lost.

"When someone said to me, 'Would you be interested in a print of The Pill Pounder?' I assumed they were making fun of me because I thought, 'Would I be interested? It would be a miracle,' and it is a miracle," Stenn said.

He said the film starred a 17-year-old Bow and is the oldest of her works to have been rediscovered.

Stenn, who purchased the film from Huggins, said film strips in the 1920s were made using nitrate, an unstable and combustible chemical.

"So, I thought, 'We'll never find this film,'" Stenn said.

The film reel was in good condition and Stenn paid to have it restored. It will be shown on the big screen for the first time in 101 years at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in April.

"This is why I do what I do, though I never dared dream this one would resurface," Stenn wrote on social media. "Miracles really do happen."