1967 MGM vault fire
| Date | 13 May 1967 |
|---|---|
| Location | Vault #7, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, Culver City, California |
| Cause | accidental ignition of stored nitrate film |
| Outcome | destruction of archived silent and early sound films |
| Deaths | 0 |
| Non-fatal injuries | 0 |
The 1967 MGM vault fire was a major fire that erupted on Saturday, May 13, 1967, in Vault #7 at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's studio in Culver City, California, resulting in the loss of many silent and some early sound films of which no copies now exist.
An electrical fire ignited the nitrate film stored in the vault and destroyed hundreds of silent films, including The Black Butterfly, The Divorcee, A Blind Bargain, The Big City, The Divine Woman, London After Midnight and The Actress.
Among the losses were rare examples of two-color Technicolor, including an original print of the pioneering 1922 Technicolor feature The Toll of the Sea (later incompletely restored from surviving reels of the negative) and the part-Technicolor silent So This Is Marriage?; Technicolor sequences from the early musicals The Broadway Melody and Chasing Rainbows; what was long believed to be the only surviving Technicolor print of The Mysterious Island (another copy was found in Prague in 2013); and the last known print of the all-Technicolor musical-drama The Rogue Song, which included comedy relief bits by Laurel and Hardy (only fragments from other prints and the trailer have definitely survived).
...
Wikipedia