Forgotten Treasure (1943)

John Nesbitt: Narrator

Quotes 

• [first lines] 

  Narrator : Out of the Passing Parade we take again some of the rarest moving picture film in existence. Moving Pictures with a mighty story to tell.

• Narrator : Ever since man learned how to make shadows move, we have been shooting hundreds of millions of feet of film. Nearly every great event of modern history has gone on to celluloid. Yet, only recently, it was realized pictures fade, that celluloid wears out, shrinks and in a dozen years or so most of the priceless films have been lost to us for all time.

• Narrator : In New York City, however, the wide-awake Museum of Modern Art began one of the greatest salvage hunts of our time. A hunt to find and rescue what remained of this rare film.

  [calendar shows: February 1 1999] 

  Narrator : So, that long years from now, our grandchildren can actually see some of the things that are already becoming memories to us. Perhaps understand us better. And in new and wonderful moving picture history classes, learn the triumphs and heartbreaks which you and I must go through today.

• Narrator : The Yankees were at last making good in digging the Panama Canal. This may have been the first moving picture of the work, when the Canal was just a muddy ditch in the tropics in 1910. Plump, ever-genial President Taft comes down to take a look for himself. These were happier days when America was friends with the whole world.

• Narrator : [at Edward VII of England's funeral in 1910]  No camera will ever again record such meeting of kings. For the world is about to pass into darkness as Europe becomes the land of terror that it is today.

• Narrator : For years we'll probably be laughing at these rocket ships. Unsuccessful now. But, which one day, may soar out to touch the stars.

• Narrator : Whatever the future will hold for us, one thing at least is certain, that if we can preserve the film we have or even discover an indestructible film, in 1999 the boys and girls, now unborn, will see the crushing struggle of our lives in this day as the ancient history of theirs. Even this war will be to them just another lesson in history.