On September 21st 2016, I actually got a chance to see with my very own eyes the William Schaefer Warner Brothers ledgers. How I ended up traveling 6,000 miles to see some movie ledgers from many moons ago might be interesting…at least to my mother (BERN1960), who requested I write about my cross country trip to the Edward Doheny, Jr. Memorial Library on the campus of the University of Southern California. But to understand how I ended up there…. maybe a little background is needed.
I first started movie blogging at HubPages.com in 2011. Our first subjects were all current movie stars like Bruce Willis, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington. Our movie pages were getting some attention but most of the views came from the HubPage community (Steve Lensman/Flora) and from my family and friends. Well one day I was talking to my mother-in-law and she asked, “Do you have a Clark Gable page?”
I responded…”Clark Gable?….no I do not have a page on him….and I do not really think many people would be interested on a page on him.” Later I told my wife, Wife of Cogerson (WoC), about her mother’s crazy suggestion of writing a Gable page. WoC said….”You ought to do a page on Gable….at least ONE person will enjoy the page.” I told her…”But they do not have box office numbers from back then….it will be IMPOSSIBLE to find that information.” Well since I strongly believe in the rule…Happy Wife, Happy Life….I started to write a Gable page.
So I started the research….and other than some box office information on Gone With The Wind…I found “a whole lot of nothing” on Clark Gable box office grosses. What to do, what to do? Well….back in the 1980s, I actually wrote down all of Variety’s Top Rental Movies of all-time in a red folder. So I dug that folder out of a box in the attic and started to actually find some box office rental information on 25 or so of Gable’s movies. So thinking 25 Gable movies were pretty impressive….I published my first classic movie page using Gable’s box office rentals as the box office gross total.
Thinking I had made my mother-in-law and wife happy….I went back to writing movie pages on current stars. Then something funny happened….I started getting some very angry comments on my….drumroll…..Clark Gable page! Even more surprising was the fact that the comments were coming from outside the HubPage community. Turns out that listing most of Gable’s movies with a box office gross around $4 million….and that my ranking system said he only made one good movie (Gone With The Wind) really really upset his fans.
As I digested the angry comments….I realized many things. (1) Boy, was I wrong about thinking nobody would be interested in a Gable page. (2) Wow….people outside of HubPages found my page. (3) Box office rentals can’t be used as box office grosses. (4) I need to figure out a way to get a more accurate box office gross using box office rentals. (5) I need to fix the Gable page…and fix it quickly. (6) And finally….my wife and mother-in-law are way smarter than me.
What happened next? Lots of stuff. (1) We (WoC) came up with a calculation that turned rentals into grosses…and then grosses (using ticket prices) into adjusted grosses…so it would be easy to compare movies from different years. (2) We (WoC) ordered a subscription to Variety and pulled out 1000s of rental numbers from their archives. (3) I did massive amounts of internet searches on box office information of yesteryear…which led us to the Holy Grail of classic box office information…the ledgers of MGM, RKO and Warner Brothers. The ledgers are located and can be viewed at USC and UCLA. (4) In my mind, I was becoming the Indiana Jones of classic movie research….no offense to Dr. Mark Glancy, who has been writing about the ledgers for many years now.
Since that Gable page….I have become obsessed with classic box office grosses. Over the years, I was able to find and secure lots of classic box office information. Big finds? MGM ledger numbers from 1928 to 1947. RKO ledger numbers from 1929 to 1951. Warner Brothers Top 10 hits from 1930 to 1944. 20th Century Fox box office rental numbers and production costs from 1935 to 1970. So even though I had about 150 Warner Brothers ledger numbers…I wanted more! So when WoC told me we were going to Las Vegas….I scheduled an appointment to see the Warner Brothers ledgers that are located at USC. Which gets us to September 20th, 2016.
Obstacle One: About 2 weeks before the our trip…I identified 1,128 Warner Brothers movies that I hoped to find box office information on. So I printed up these 6 sheets with 47 movies on both sides. I then spent many days listing the movies that I already had box office numbers on (thanks Laurent) so I would not spend time doing research on movies I already had. All looked good…then on the day before my appointment, I was verifying directions to the library when I found these “archive viewing rules”. No bags, no pens, no cameras, no food, no drinks and the big one….no notes are allowed in the room. I was allowed to bring in a laptop computer and they would provide a pencil and index cards. No notes are you kidding me? So with 2 weeks of work going down the drain….Plan B was hatched and implemented. I spent the rest of that day creating a excel spreadsheet that transferred the information on my notes to the laptop.
Obstacle Two: Woke up at 3 AM in the morning in Las Vegas. The directions to Los Angeles said it would take 3 hours and 56 minutes to get to the USC library….my appointment was at 10:00 AM. So around 3:30 AM I start the trip. At 6:15 AM things are looking great…..my GPS (ok, it was my daughter’s GPS) said I would arrive at 7:50 AM. As I am driving through the California desert, I am thinking I will get some breakfast, maybe go look at the Hollywood Walk of Fame (it is 8 miles from USC). Then I found out why Los Angles traffic is considered the worst in the United States. To make a long horrible traffic story short, I did not arrive at USC until 10:15 AM.
Obstacle Three: After dealing with some issues of where to park? and where is the library?, I arrived inside the Doheny library at 10:30 AM. At the front desk, they tell me the special collections archive room is number 206. I bounced up the stairs….after years of searching, I was going to see the ledgers with my own eyes. I got to room 206, with a big smile on my face, I saw the viewing room….I thought…”This is going to be awesome!” A lady looks at me and asks….”Are you here for an appointment in the viewing room?”…..I replied….”Yes ma’am…I traveled over 3,000 miles to get here to see the Warner Brothers ledgers.” She looked down at her schedule with a confused look, said….”All of our appointment people are already here….what is your name again and you are looking for the Warner Brothers what?”
Needless to say….panic spread through me. 
So after a quick check she informed me that I was not on the list of people scheduled today to be in the archives. Had I really come 3,000 miles to be told….sorry there is no room for you in the room? After about 15 minutes of terror, she realized I was in the WRONG ROOM. And that I needed to be in the Cinematic Arts Library that is down in the basement. So down to the basement I went…..and I was so relieved when heard, Edward Comstock, the Senior Library Assistant say….”Are you Mr. Cogerson?” The time? 10:52 AM…..it had taken 7 hours and 22 minutes to finally be in the right place!
Obstacle Four: I followed Mr. Comstock to the Cecil B. DeMille sitting room and he showed me the desk I will be working at….and right beside my assigned desk were the William Schaefer Warner Brothers ledgers! He let me unpack my laptop and then took away everything except my laptop and my prepared notes which I had placed on the desk. As I sat down I thought….”Cool….that no notes rule made no sense at all”. So I grabbed the first pile of ledger numbers and a pencil that was on the desk and started writing the box office rental numbers down on my prepared notes.
I got about 4 movies done, when Samantha (the USC lady that was in the room with me) asked….”Are those your notes?” when I confirmed that they were my notes she said….”I’m sorry, those are not allowed in here.”….and she took my notes away. Thankfully my laptop had a file ready to use…as I waited for it to load up…..I grabbed one of their index cards and I started writing down rental numbers. Once the computer was up and running I started to type in the numbers.
Obstacle Five: After about 45 minutes of frantic box office rental transfer…something strange started to happen. It felt like the entire room was spinning…..and I felt like I was going to pass out. It was then that I remembered….I had not had breakfast and I had not had lunch. Then when you factor in the 3 hour time change, you realize my body was saying….”Hey dummy we need food.” So I figured I would have to STOP and get food. That was not part of the plan….but I felt if I did not stop….I would soon being lying on the floor.
At that point I started running across the USC campus looking for any food. I felt like a zombie looking for fresh meat. Finally I found a place to eat and I ate. Soon after the room stopped spinning around. When I returned to the archive room….there was a new USC person in the room. After about 5 minutes she came to my desk and handed me back my notes. She said…”I think these are yours”. At first I was glad to see my notes back….but then I thought….”This could be a test…and I don’t want to be caught with the notes again…they might kick me out”…..so I went to the USC person’s desk and handed her back my notes saying….”I am not supposed to have any notes in the room”. That turned out to be my last obstacle.
My appointment was for 6 hours….and even though I felt I had wasted a third of that time….I got on a roll after getting food….and was very happy with my data collection when I left. Of the 1,128 Warner Brothers films I was looking for, I found box office rentals on 75%. When I got done….I thanked everybody for their help…..took some pictures and headed back to Vegas. Traffic sucked again…..but I was a pretty happy camper. My mission had been accomplished.
After trying to see the ledgers for so many years…I had this visual image of the ledgers in my head.
The reality of how the ledgers looks is closer to this…..this is not the Warner Brothers ledgers…just me trying to recapture how they looked.
Now what?
So now that the Warner Brothers ledgers have been seen….what is next?…..well according to Laurent…..it is possible that somewhere in Wisconsin there are some United Artist film ledgers…..maybe there is a trip to Wisconsin in my future.
Wild story! Well written. Entertaining and funny,
Love this story.
Thank you Kevin. Wow…that was more than 6 years ago. At this point I am so glad my mom got me to put this on paper. Thanks for checking out my story.
Very interesting and congratulations. I see someone has already posted the United Artists info. I live about an hour from Madison and have been at the WHS film archive three or four times. I have managed to copy down the domestic box office for the 1920s so far. The Wisconsin Historical Society is nowhere near as fussy as USC is. The microfilm is in an accessible back room in the genealogy room. Second floor, I believe. You can pull the reels yourself, if you want. The microfilm number is P84-4978. Its the section call “Played And Earned Figures.” If you want, you can view them on scanning viewers. You can make pdf copies of the pages and download them onto a memory stick. As you probably know, the info is sorted years, so totals for a given movie increase over time. Usually, each increase is smaller than the last. For example, D. W. Griffith’s BROKEN BLOSSOMS went from 586K to 608K to615K to 626K. It gets repetitive. Also, I see someone asked about foreign accounts. Just to let you know, some of thee UA totals include Mexico and the Caribbean. As for USC, it sounds like you are pulling numbers from the ledgers and not from a microfilmed copy. Was it easy to find the info in the ledger? And have you accessed the MGM ledger yet? I thought I read that it was at the Herrick Library. Is that true? Also, I read that the First National Pictures info only starts with Warners’ buyout of the company in 1928. Is that true? If so, do you know where the older First National numbers are? I thought that the Wisconsin Historical Society would have that info, as they own some WB archival material, but they do not seem to have First National info. Can you let me know if you find anything out on that? Thanks. and congrats.
Hello Alan S Linquist,
The Warner ledger contain First National’s data since 1922. So, saddly, there’s not included Chaplin and Pickford’s movies.
All United Artists box office data is on one reel (P84-4978) ? That is true ?
I ask because I have been trying to access his data for several years. But asI live in France, it’s extremely complicated for me. Between the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 I had corresponded with someone who lived near WHS, and he went there to put the microfilms on USB stick. But he didn’t understand exactly what I wanted and sent me all the accounting which took way too long and I found myself “drowned” in all these sheets. Especially since pure accounting is not easily accessible to me. Finally, we stopped, when we had only done the years 1919 to 1920.
That is why what you say interests me very much.
I personally have the entire MGM ledger (Eddie Manix ledger) if that interests you. It is actually located at the Margaret Herrick Library.
Hey Laurent….good to hear from you. Good comment. The part of the comment I found the most interesting was ….”I personally have the entire MGM ledger (Eddie Manix ledger)”…well that interests me…..I have a lt of MGM rentals….not sure I have the “entire” amount. Do you have that information on a file that can be shared? Glad to see you have survived our pandemic. One day I will make it to that library in Wisconsin. Good stuff as always.
Hello Bruce,
I’ve just sent you and email.
Have a good day.
Hey Alan. Thanks for the feedback. Of course my big question is….are you willing to share some of that research? As for First National…the Warner Brothers ledgers have alot of that information. I need to do a return trip there. Good stuff.