posted 02-07-2017 01:28 PM                    

quote: Jonathan Turner, qconline.com

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David Shepard, a nationally acclaimed film preservationist, is being fondly remembered for helping put Davenport on the map as a leading restorer and distributor of classic silent films.

Mr. Shepard, 76, recently the head of Film Preservation Associates, died Jan. 31 after a battle with cancer. Former vice president of Davenport-based Blackhawk Films, he was a professor at the University of Southern California film school 34 years; headed its Louis B. Mayer Film & Television Study Center; was a friend to such eminent directors as King Vidor, and counseled a generation of contemporary filmmakers (including Alexander Payne), according to a Hollywood Reporter piece.

"He was quite the deal," Doug Miller of Davenport, film and media consultant, said Monday of Mr. Shepard. "He was one of the pioneers of film preservation and acquisition. He became known for that."

"How many people would pick up stakes and move to Davenport, Iowa to pursue a job?" film critic Leonard Maltin wrote Feb. 2 on his blog. "David did, when Kent D. Eastin, the founder of Blackhawk Films, offered him a position there. Working for the country’s leading distributor of movies for the collector market, David brokered a number of great deals, including home-movie rights to the Fox Movietone newsreel library. He uncovered countless gems, including the long-lost Robert Benchley short 'The Treasurer’s Report.' "

Blackhawk Films started in 1927 in Galesburg, as a producer of film advertising and a distributor of regional newsreels. Aided by the 1933 advent of 16mm sound film, Blackhawk gained success in the non-theatrical distribution market and established several regional offices before World War II, according to Oscars.org.

In 1934, founder Kent Eastin moved the company to Davenport, and began a rental library that flourished until it was discontinued with the impact of television in 1957, according to reelclassicdvd.com. Mr. Eastin chose Davenport as an "efficient junction for rail shipping and because it was something of a 'film town,' as home to the Victor Animatograph Corporation, a pioneer motion picture equipment manufacturer," the site says.

In 1947, Blackhawk expanded into the sale of used film and began distributing new 8mm and 16mm prints of comedies, the Oscars site says. After working five years for the American Film Institute, David Shepard joined Blackhawk as vice president of product development from 1973 to 1976 and, after founding Film Preservation Associates in 1986, acquired the Blackhawk Films library, which now comprises 5,000 titles.

Mr. Shepard restored or made available many silent films now found in DVD and video libraries, including 12 shorts that Charlie Chaplin made for the Mutual Film Corporation in 1916 and 1917, all of Buster Keaton’s independent films of the 1920s, and Soviet silent films from the same decade, according to a Sunday New York Times article.

“If you’ve seen a superior print of a film by Chaplin or Keaton, Griffith or Murnau, chances are David had a hand in restoring it,” Leonard Maltin wrote on his blog.

"David’s passion for film heritage was an inspiration to Flicker Alley from the very start, and remains so as we continue to work on the films he loved and saved," said the team at Flicker Alley, publisher and distributor of high-quality digital editions of classic, silent, and avant-garde films.

"Never one to take credit for his incredible accomplishments, his memory will nonetheless live on, in the films he worked tirelessly to save, restore and make available for future generations, and in the hearts of those he touched along the way," according to flickeralley.com.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, among classics Mr. Shepard helped restore were "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1917), "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920), "City Lights" (1931), "The Gold Rush" (1925), "Intolerance" (1916), "The Great Train Robbery" (1903), "The Kid" (1921), "Nanook of the North" (1922), and "Nosferatu" (1922).

In 1975, Kent Eastin and Martin Phelan sold Blackhawk to Lee Enterprises, the Davenport-based newspaper and broadcasting conglomerate. "Basic decisions to emphasize mail order sales instead of unique product line and heavy investments in the Betamax and CED (RCA mechanical video disc) formats proved very costly," the reelclassicdvd.com site says.

Lee then sold the company to its Blackhawk management team; in 1985, Los Angeles-based Republic Pictures bought it for direct marketing of their home video line. Republic discontinued film sales and closed the Davenport facility in 1987.

"Lee didn't get it. They were still thinking like print people," Doug Miller said. Blackhawk Films had been at 1235 W. 5th St. At its closing, it was known as the oldest mail-order supplier of films and videocassettes, according to a 1987 Dispatch article.

Mr. Shepard, a New York City native, was teaching theater and film at Pennsylvania State University in 1968, when the American Film Institute hired him to find historically significant films with the aim of having them donated for preservation and archiving, the New York Times story said.

An "early coup" was getting Paramount Pictures to turn over 200 silent features it had in storage in Fort Lee, N.J., the piece said.

Mr. Shepard also served 12 years at the Directors Guild of America, where he helped compile an extensive series of oral histories with its members, the Hollywood Reporter said.

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