thenationofartists.com

First printed at www.movingpicturesnetwork.com

By Elliot V. Kotek
(Moving Pictures special Cannes issue, May 2008)

Leonard Schrader was many things – Oscar-nominated writer of Kiss of the Spider Woman, director, teacher – but, when he passed away on November 2, 2006, he could no longer hide the extent of his fascination with cinematic ephemera and, in particular, with the lobby cards that had graced fine theaters for decades from the 1910s that filled his own private “House of Usher” in the Hollywood Hills.

The older brother of screenwriter and director Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ), Leonard was the first American screenwriter to have two films screening concurrently in the Official Selection of a single Cannes Film Festival (1985 – Spider Woman and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters). A product of Michigan’s Calvin College and the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Schrader taught screenwriting at the University of Southern California, Chapman University and, finally, chaired the Screenwriting Department of the American Film Institute. He wrote in both English and Japanese, and worked or interacted with many of the greatest talents of his (or any) generation: Sidney Pollack, Robert Mitchum, Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, John Belushi, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, to name a few.

“Leonard Schrader was most definitely eccentric,” says longtime friend and collaborator, Spider Woman producer David Weisman. “He never told a single soul what he had amassed – not me or his brother, not even his wife. About nine months after his death, I discovered 189 prime Buster Keaton cards so well hidden, I could almost hear him chuckling while I was digging through the house: ‘Tellya what, Dave - if a thief ever came in here and shot my wolves, then shot me, and spent the whole damn night looking, he still never woulda found my Buster Keatons.’”

“Len kept most of his collection in large, black photographers’ binders – seven full binders dedicated to John Ford, six for Fritz Lang, five for Tod Browning… A large number of these lobby cards are from unpreserved movies that have otherwise vanished in any physical form. These beauties are veritable cinematic ghosts, the only remaining evidence those films ever existed. It truly is Hollywood’s buried treasure.”

In reference to the collection, the executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Bruce Davis, stated previously, “It’s a massive collection, yes, but it also has been meticulously selected. This is the largest private collection of lobby-card material that we’re aware of, assembled by a filmmaker with a keen appreciation of particular directors, actors and genres.”

Indeed. In trying to convey the size, scope and sheer aesthetic brilliance of the collection, over the next few pages we’ve selected 16 of the 8,400+ cards. To see more of this literal legacy to amazing film artists like Ernst Lubitsch, Lon Chaney, Pola Negri, Norma Shearer, Fatty Arbuckle, Greta Garbo, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, Charlie Chaplin, Barbara Stanwyck, Lionel Barrymore and innumerable others, pay a visit to www.leonardschradercollection.com.