Her Husband’s Trademark is a 1922 silent film starring Gloria Swanson and directed by Sam Wood, which was partially shot in El Paso in 1921.
It debuted in El Paso in 1922 and will “re-premiere” at this year’s Plaza Classic at 1 pm Sunday, July 27 that will feature the performance of a newly commissioned score by El Paso composer Enrique Ponce.
The film is in the archive of the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. The El Paso Community Foundation, the Plaza Classic Film Festival and Allen Gilmer arranged to have it digitally restored. GEM Laboratory Manager Chris Crouse, who worked on the restoration, will attend the screening.
What follows is an email interview with Eastman’s Anthony LAbbate, preservation manager of the Eastman Museum’s Moving Image Department. You can learn more about Enrique Ponce’s score on Season 4, Episode 1 of the Plaza Classic Podcast.
How did the George Eastman Museum come to acquire the film? GEM acquired the print of Her Husband’s Trademark from Paramount.
From what did you source the restoration? Her Husband’s Trademark was restored from a black and white preservation negative made circa 1970 at the John E. Allen Laboratory. That negative was made from a 1922, tinted, nitrate release print. It was standard practice in the early 1970s to preserve tinted films on black and white stock as there was no way to preserve the tinting other than making a color negative and prints. Because of color film fading issues at that time, it was considered better to make black and white preservation elements.
In what kind of condition was the film? At the time preservation was done in the early 1970s the original nitrate print was beginning to show the early stages of nitrate decomposition. Since then, the nitrate print has decomposed even more. In 1991 the entire reel-3 was destroyed due to decomposition and from then on sections of each reel have been removed because of decomp.
What kind of processes did the restoration entail? Because the preservation negative was made before any of the nitrate print had decomposing sections removed it was the element we used for scanning. What was left of the original 1922 nitrate print was used as a reference for grading the new scan and as a color reference for the tinting. Once the film was scanned at 4K, it went through digital restoration where all age-related wear was removed, such as dirt and dust spots, scratches and tears.
Anything else you want to add? Until preservation was done in the early 1970s, the nitrate print of Her Husband’s Trademark was the only known element to exist. And until this collaboration with the Plaza Classic Film Festival the only copies of the film were black and white. Now for the first time in 103 years Her Husband’s Trademark is available in a version that is very close to the way audiences saw the film back in 1922.
