INFORMATION ON THE RESTORATIONS FROM UNIVERSAL PICTURES King of Jazz When first released in 1930, this musical revue starring Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra ran 105 minutes. With the advent of the Production Code in 1934, the film was trimmed to 93 minutes. For this restoration, Universal’s intent was to recover as much of the original version as possible. This proved difficult as the film and sound elements still in existence do not reflect the original version….with perhaps one exception. Universal holds a soundtrack negative that is 105 minutes long. This soundtrack served as the “template” to which the four different picture elements used in this project were conformed. About 60% of the picture comes from the original Technicolor two-color negative held by Universal. Most of the remaining 40% of the picture comes from vintage 35mm prints held by the Cohen Film Collection and the UCLA Film and Television Archives. One hard to find sketch was discovered on a print obtained from the Danish Film Institute. In order to retain as much sound as possible, any remaining short sections of missing picture were filled in using production stills from Universal’s archives. Once the film was digitally scanned and the structure of the restoration was locked, Universal’s restoration team performed extensive color correction, dirt removal, scratch repair and image stabilization in a high resolution 4k workflow. MoMA’s presentation of the film will be the restoration’s world premiere. Last Warning Research on this film’s available elements worldwide began in earnest in March 2015. After an extensive search, a 35 mm nitrate dupe negative was located at Cinematheque Francaise, currently on loan to Universal. This became the base element. Of course, being a French element, this negative features French title cards. In order obtain the English title card segments, Universal Studios staff located and scanned a 16 mm English print loaned to us by the UCLA Film & Television Archive from the Packard Humanities Institute Collection. The English title cards from this element were used to replace the French title cards in the base element. The newly restored version of The Last Warning premieres at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival on June 4, 2016, and will have its New York premiere at MoMA. .