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September 22nd – Top Ten Things I Learned During My Trip To The USC Cinematic Arts Library

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bruce11

  1.  Los Angeles traffic sucks!  I left Las Vegas at 4:00 AM….got back to Las Vega at 11:30 PM.  Drive should have taken 4 hours each way for a total of 8 hours.  Thanks to Los Angeles traffic I spent almost 14 hours in the car.
  2.  Doing this trip with out WoC or the kids was not as much fun…..though Samantha requested we take photos of her Woody doll…whereever we went….so Woody did the research with me.

bruce-123.  The USC Cinema Arts Special Collection has a Cecil B. DeMille Conference Room…..this is where I was sent to do my research.

4.  In my 5 hours in the Cecil B. DeMille room….I found box office numbers on almost 600 Warner Brothers movies.  That puts my Warner Brother ledgers tally to over 1,000 movies….thank you Laurent.

bruce-13 5.  There are some very strict rules in the DeMille “conference room”.  No cameras, no pens, no bags and there somebody in the room with you 100% of the time.  They supply you with some index cards and a pencil.  The room has 6 desks….5 for research…one for the guard.  My desk was the one with the green lamp.

6.  The Warner Brothers ledgers looked nothing like I thought they would.  They came out in one cardboard box…..and were typed papers that were stapled together.  Overall there were 17 different collections of box office grosses.

bruce-14

7.  This seemed like a perfect room for Steve Lensman…..as there were plenty of photos of Charlton Heston….including these two Heston collectibles that I sat beside for 5 hours.

8.  As I was packing up to leave I got permission to use my camera in the archive room…..after all the archives were put away..of course.   So this picture is inside the secured room.

bruce-99.  USC’s Edward Comstock and Samantha (not my Samantha) were very very helpful…..and I greatly appreciate their help.

10.  And finally the big finds……(1) Lots of John Wayne worldwide box office grosses.  (2) Lots of Alfred Hitchcock worldwide box office grosses.  (3) A Sayorna box office for domestic and worldwide….hey Bob….the gross will be going up.  (4) A Story of Mankind box office total….yeah I know the movie sucks….but I have been searching for that number for years.  (5) As stated before….box office grosses on almost 600 more movies.  Going to crash….now….that was a long day.

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20 thoughts on “September 22nd – Top Ten Things I Learned During My Trip To The USC Cinematic Arts Library”

    1. Hey Brandon…..you are just upset that the RFL football commisioner is so far away….lol…..but I will be back tomorrow night.

  2. Hey, good talking to you on the phone twice. So sorry that you had such a terribly long trip and that the “traffic sucked” that is always talked about – how awful the traffic is there……..
    sounds like you enjoyed your stay but a very very long day. It will be interesting to hear your story when you get back home. Thanks so much for keeping in touch with me. LOL

    1. Hey Bern1960….yep it was glad….but I am bouncing around all happy to day. Yep I will do a page that takes a closer look at that day. Thanks for checking out this new post.

  3. BRUCE:

    1 I see you are enjoying yourself and really it is but right that YOU of all people should have access to these places. We are of course missing you “at your desk” but accept that if the mountain would’n come to Muhammad he had to go to the mountain !

    2 I have in my database about 15 reasonably comprehensive lists of worldwide grosses thanks to you – looks as if ti’s gonna expand! Can’t wait to see the Hitch/Sayonara/Duke ones

    Enjoy the rest of your trip! BOB

    1. Hey Bob.
      1. Well as I continue to recovery today….the issue with the traffic is quickly fading away…..after years of searching for those ledger numbers….I have now seen and held them with my own eyes and hands. I had to sign a bunch of paperwork….so I do not think I can release the actual rental numbers….but I feel I can safely release my adjusted box office numbers…which use those rentals……though are hard to work back to the actual rental numbers.
      2. Yep….every movie I found yesterday had domestic and worldwide box office rentals…so yes your list of worldwide is about to go up….between the close to 600 I got yesterday and the 400 plus ones Laurent sent me…..that is almost a 1000 movies with box office rentals for one studio.
      3. Know my attention falls to the rumored United Artist ledgers in Wisconsin….lol.
      Thanks for the good wishes.

  4. Glad the trip turned out so productive Bruce, impossible to find box office info on 600 films is impressive, Hitchcock too! making your website even more unique and fascinating. Congrats.

    Those ledgers should have all been indexed and digitized by now, making it easier to research. Hey great photo of DeMille with Heston and I’d love to have that Ten Commandments poster on my wall. 🙂

    1. Hey Steve….thinking I found worldwide box office on about 10 of his movies…which is about a third of his USA movies. I am going to have a lot of work to do when I get home. I laughed out loud when they put me by the desk by Heston……I thought “Steve would think this is the best desk in the room” thanks for the visit and the comment.

  5. Thanks to you Bruce. You made a great catch, congratulations !! It’s very very interesting, but I was very surprised by the number of The Sea Chase !

    1. Hey Laurent….thanks again for your WB ledger numbers….I used them a lot before I went to the archives…..which let me concentrate on ones I/you did not already have. I was really surprised how many John Wayne movies I found..I got 7 from the 1930s…and lot of his movies in the 1950s….thinking I will have to do a Wayne additional page…because my Wayne page is already very long. Thanks again for your help in this movie adventure.

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