This is why we do what we do (save orphan films)

Over at the Center for Home Movies, Dwight Swanson is reporting that the Hartford Courant is reporting that after Robbins Barstow's amateur film Disneyland Dream (1956) was named to the National Film Registry, Dr. B got an e-mail from someone who is as certain as one can be that he can be glimpsed on-camera in the film.

At age eleven I worked at Disneyland. I sold guidebooks at the park from 1956 to about 1958. I am as positive as one can be that I appear about 20:20 into your film, low in the frame, dressed in a top hat, vest, and striped pink shirt, moving from left to right, holding a guidebook out for sale.

So writes Steve Martin

(the actor/comedian/banjoplayer/writer/art collector/wild-and-crazy-guy; not the guy who made the 1994 documentary Theramin: An Electronic Odyssey).

I like the cinematic specificity with which Mr. Martin describes the film. He cares.

Here's a low-fi blow-up of a frame from Disneyland Dream.

You be the judge.

P.S. Did you know . . .that the University of Texas at Austin's Humanities Research Center is the repository for the Steve Martin Collection? He's from Waco, TX, you see. Nice to think of Steve Martin's ephemera right there alongside those of David O. Selznick, Gloria Swanson, James Joyce . . . not to mention the world's oldest photograph (by Niépce).