Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1937 Fox vault fire/archive1

1937 Fox vault fire

 * Nominator(s): Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:27, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Imagine if you woke up one morning, and overnight, essentially every movie produced by one of the major American film companies in the last 20 years had entirely ceased to exist, forever. In the age of digital preservation, that seems impossible, but in 1937, that's exactly what happened when a fire at a New Jersey storage facility all but erased the silent-film era productions of Fox Film. Despite the cultural significance of the loss, most discussions of silent films only give a passing reference to the fire itself. I've sifted through both modern treatments of the film industry and contemporary reporting of the fire to craft this article. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:27, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

SN
Nice one Ossifrage, this is really interesting, and totally gutting. I've got a couple of things, just at first glance, but it's nice and tight.
 * Could the lead be slightly more expansive? It's true that, per MOS:LEADLENGTH, one or two paragraphs suffices for an article this size; but in this particular case, that's also only a few (short) sentences.
 * Lead writing is probably my worst skill as an article editor. Improved a little, hopefully?


 * IB: perhaps swap out the map with one of the B&W images further down? I'm not sure the map suits—I think an image of devastation links better with the article title, and if the map is further down, it can be expanded slightly (using the |upright= parameter).
 * Swapped for the image of the gutted building and piled film cans. I'm not sure I have much room to play around with upright while avoiding sandwiching problems.


 * "Local truckdriver"—is that one word? It may well be an Engvar thing.
 * Nope, it's a typo thing. Corrected.


 * "all of the film in the vaults" —I know what you mean by this, of course; all the film as a single material, which is accurate. But, instinctively, I think most people might read that as "films"—i.e., the discrete items rather than the material—and you'll spend much of the rest of your career here correcting well-meaning typos!
 * Technically, both are correct. All of the films were destroyed because all of the film was destroyed.


 * "followed on December 9"—9 December?
 * Personally, I prefer DMY dates (and wrote this article that way). Along the way, they were swapped to MDY dates per WP:DATETIES, which I admittedly find hard to argue with. So, I believe these are correct as currently written.


 * "a fire in Kansas City, Missouri"—does MI need linking too, in the context of its capitol? (On the other hand, I acknowledge that "When Little Ferry, New Jersey" is fine)
 * Written that way to distinguish Kansas City, Missouri (which isn't actually the Missouri capitol) from Kansas City, Kansas. We Americans are very creative when naming cities.


 * "and warm nights"—slightly vague; Any chance of a figure? But perhaps this is all the source limits itself too? (WP:OR--->I ask because I was in NJ many years ago, also in July, and it was baking. And not a heatwave either!)
 * When New Jersey has a heat wave, it doesn't do half a job. But unfortunately, that's all my source provides. Publicly searchable weather archives go back to 1945. I'm sure it would be possible to pull contemporary news sources to determine just how warm those nights were, but I'm not doing so would be strictly helpful.


 * Again "July 19"
 * As above.


 * To avoid duplication, suggest "film prints burned to ashes inside their cans" (or, of course, "prints burned to ashes inside their film cans").
 * Tweaked. And added a little bit more to the section while I was working there.


 * ""recent and rather extensive film fires""—also an inline ref.
 * Not sure what's wrong here. Both quoted phrases in this sentence are attributed in-text to the source, which is cited at the end of the sentence.


 * It might just be me, but it looks like you're using a mixture of sfn and (an)other system?
 * Book-format sources are listed in the bibliography and referenced using short-form citations (sfn and Harvard linking). Sources in other formats are directly referenced using their appropriate cite template. I think this should be copacetic; I've used the same standard in several other FAs.


 * I'm also wondering about the audio article; since this is now quite different to the original, is it fair for it to remain? I literally do not know the answer, hence the question :) on the one hand, removing it may be wanton destruction, and that anything is better than nothing, or, conversely, that it's misleading as to what people are actually listening to?
 * Honestly, I have no idea. I wasn't involved in its creation, and know approximately nothing about the relevant policies. That said, I do believe it's based on the article version after its GA promotion, so it's probably still useful even if not strictly current.
 * Like I said, though, nice article and an interesting read of something that I bet hardly anyone outside the industry has ever heard of.  ——  SerialNumber  54129
 * Followed up on most of these, although I'll probably try to take another stab at lead revision here shortly. I know I'm bad at it. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:37, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
 * No worries ; as I may have said before—and will probably say again—the lead isn't just summary style, but summary style of summary style. Wow. ——  SerialNumber  54129  17:51, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Source review

 * I have to agree with Serial Number about the ref format. I think it would be all right to mix web cites (inline) with print sources (sfn) but as it stands there are several journal articles referenced inline, which just looks wrong, as well as leading to longer page ranges than would otherwise be necessary. So I would suggest moving the journal articles and book chapters to the Bibliography section.
 * I'll agree that the newspaper article cited as a reprint within a book-format source was... awkward. The reference had been structured that way largely to avoid a (spurious) error in the Harv reference templating system. However, to solve that problem completely, I found the original newspaper article and cited that directly (coincidentally allowing me to correct the pagination, which was incompletely reported in the reprint).
 * However, the general request to move journal articles to the Bibliography is not done. I've had 5 silent-film history articles promoted to FA (and a related list to FL) using this citation formatting system, and have supported the promotion of several others referenced precisely the same way. I'm sorry that you're not as fond of it, but per WP:CITEVAR, I believe this request is non-actionable. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 16:06, 25 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Other than that, I am not seeing any issues with the ref format.
 * All sources appear reliable.
 * I'm not seeing any additional sources that could be used to expand the article. buidhe 00:15, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Image review

 * File:Little Ferry facility after fire.jpg, File:Diagram of the 1937 Fox vault fire.jpg and File:361 Main Street following the Fox vault fire.jpg: I take we did check for copyright renewal, yes?
 * Yep. I searched pretty exhaustively for renewal notices associated with these, so unless it was filed in some truly nonstandard manner, I'm pretty confident there was no renewal.


 * File:1937 Fox vault fire footage.ogv: I admit that I am a little unclear about what steps were taken to secure permission and whether this file adds enough information to the article.
 * I think the historical value of the video is very high. In 1969, Representative Henry Helstoski gave remarks honoring William Zabransky, Jr., which included an acknowledgement, originally published by the Sunday Record Call that the "great fire of 1937" had been "recorded on film" by Zabransky [see ]. So far as I am aware, no other major film fire was itself caught on film. That this is color footage is also unusual for 1937; Kodachrome movie film had been commercially available for only about two years at the time of this disaster. As to the rights issue... I've looked a bit further. Fuchs noted (in documentation for a different film, admittedly), that the historical films he digitized and uploaded were donated to the Little Ferry Centennial Celebration Committee (of which Fuchs was the coordinator) by the Zabransky family. With that said, I'm willing to concede that it is impossible to know for certain what rights, if any, were actually intended to be transferred by Zabransky's family (William Zabransky, Jr. himself had died in the early 1990s). However, I don't think there's any realistic chance that the YouTube publication was not made "by (or with permission from) the copyright holder" as WP:NFCC #4 requires. Is that sufficient to satisfy the policy?
 * Probably yes, might want to expand the rationale a bit though. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:08, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Expanded. Hopefully that squares the licensing issues away; I'll be happy to get back to writing about pre-1923 film where pretty much everything is already PD! Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 16:59, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

All images seem to be reasonably placed. Some don't have ALT text. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:47, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I've tried to respond to the above concerns. Also, ALT text added (based on my reading of WP:ALT, I think "refer to caption" should be adequate for the map, although I can do a more detailed text transcription if that's required instead). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:52, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

FunkMonk

 * Looks interesting, will review soon. FunkMonk (talk) 14:34, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Nitrate fires burn rapidly, and cannot typically be extinguished, they are capable of burning even under water." I'm not a native speaker, but shouldn't the "and" be moved to after the last comma?
 * Comma removed, conjunction added.


 * "and rented it to 20th Century Fox to store the silent films acquired from Fox Film Corporation when the two production companies merged" This seems slightly iffy, since 20th Century Fox was only named so after the merger. Could it be worded differently? How about "after the merger of Twentieth Century Pictures and Fox Film"?
 * I've attempted a slightly different solution here, which I hope reads better.


 * I wonder if the alignment of the images under Legacy could be inverted, to prevent the white space that is now below the lower image.
 * Swapping the two images appears to make the problem worse, not better (because the currently-first image has a longer caption).
 * Oh, I didn't mean their order, just their alignment. FunkMonk (talk) 16:01, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This could perhaps still be tried. FunkMonk (talk) 14:10, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see what you mean. Agreed, and done. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:34, 29 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't the first letters in the footnotes be capitalised?
 * Somehow I had convinced myself that there was an MOS rule about this regarding endnotes that were not complete sentences; however, I appear to be crazy. Capitalized.


 * "For some actors, the fire destroyed all of their work" Could we get some examples?
 * So, Kehr is by no means the only person to make that claim, and it is in fact an accurate one. The challenge is finding a reliable source that objectively states that an entire actor's body of work was lost – much less one connecting it to the 1937 fire. The canonical example is Valeska Surratt, who is mentioned (and sourced) already. But I'm struggling to find an RS stating that the fire got all of her work (although, unquestionably, it did). Let me see if I can dig up anything... Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:01, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Changes look good, I will support once you conclude something on this last point. FunkMonk (talk) 16:05, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I've added a reliable source that explicitly identifies Suratt's entire filmography as being lost, and reordered that section a little bit accordingly. I'd like a source that ties up all the connections with a bow, but I think this is the best I can do; very few sources are willing to commit explicitly to stating exactly what the fire destroyed (because there's never been any publicly-acknowledged accounting of what was in there in the first place). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 18:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Support - looks nice to me now. FunkMonk (talk) 19:05, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Support from Ian
Recusing from coord duties, I know a bit about the early history of the American film industry but wasn't familiar with the impact of this event... Well done, SO -- good to see you back. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:20, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Been through twice now and copyedited -- assuming no concerns with my last round, I'm happy with prose, comprehensiveness, accessibility and structure.
 * Happy to defer to Jo-Jo re. media licensing and Buidhe re. source reliability and coverage (formatting is also okay AFAIC; I just spelt out the dates in the journal citations).

Support from SchroCat

 * Support. Nice article - small but perfectly formed, I think. You may just want to check that you've got the date formatting consistent in the sources - you've got "Retrieved 2019-01-25" and "Retrieved January 18, 2019" formats in there, and you should choose one and stick with it. That's about all I can come up with in an excellent piece otherwise. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 20:42, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * This was originally all in ISO dates, but was moved over to dmy because everyone but me seems to greatly prefer that for US-centric articles (as "friendlier"). The handful of ISO dates that were still present were the result of an editor running the IABot process to provide archive links for web sources. I hadn't noticed that those archive dates were posted in the wrong format, but everything should be tidy now. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:26, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Support Comments from Usernameunique
Lead
 * Perhaps worth mentioning the switch from nitrate film that occurred afterwards, and to what extent that was occasioned by the fire(s).

Background
 * they are capable of burning even under water. — Is this because they produce (release?) oxygen as they burn?
 * Yes. Does this need to be more clearly connected? As to the secondary point here, a quick survey of sources on the topic does suggest that "produce" is preferred here. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:30, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Three semicolons in the second paragraph feels like overkill.
 * Semicolons are a badly-neglected form of punctuation; I try to give them good, loving homes. On a more serious note, culled a couple of these. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:23, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * the potential of nitrate film to self-ignite may not have been recognized before 1933. — What happened in 1933?
 * Went back to the source for some much-needed clarification.


 * Despite the potential for fire — To what extent was the potential recognized? It's not entirely clear if the design was to protect against external or internal sources or fire.
 * Went back to the sources to clear this up, hopefully. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 18:14, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Fire
 * Despite 150 men employing 14 hose streams — Does one employ a hose, or employ a stream?
 * "Hose stream" is a term of art in firefighting for the stream of water produced by a fire hose. I believe this usage is correct. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:23, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * The building itself was also badly damaged — You could probably drop either "itself" or "also."
 * Corrected. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:23, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Legacy
 * more than 75% of Fox's feature films from before 1930 are completely lost. — Is there any sort of authoritative itemization of what films in the archive were lost?
 * None whatsoever. I know that some film historians suspect that Twentieth Century Fox had such a list, but no reliable source seems willing to make that claim. In any case, no actual itemization of what was lost – authoritative or otherwise – has ever come to light.


 * Atherton Productions, Peck's Bad Boy Corporation, Principal Pictures, and Serial Producing — Worthy of red links?
 * I've redlinked Serial, for which at least a meaningful stub can probably be written. Atherton was a Poverty Row western studio that only ever produced about a half-dozen pictures. I've opted not to redlink it, because the best it can probably hope for is inclusion in a list in a hypothetical better-quality version of our Poverty Row article. Peck's Bad Boy was even smaller and has absolutely no hope of an article. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:23, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Archival material intended for the Museum of Modern Art's Film Library — Why was it in the Fox vault if it was intended for MOMA?
 * My personal guess is that it had been earmarked for MOMA but not actually transferred yet, but the sources don't clarify, so I'm not sure I can say anything here that wouldn't be original research. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:23, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * as was further research into improving the quality of cellulose acetate film to encourage its use as a safer replacement for nitrate film. — When was nitrate film eventually phased out?
 * Sourced and added.

References
 * #10 — Retrieval date not strictly necessary, since you're citing the underlying source, not the website on which a copy happens to appear.
 * Agreed. This was actually added by a semi-automated process that checks for dead links. Personally, I don't even think the archive URL is necessary (it is archiving the newspapers.com digitization of the print-source original), but it seems others disagree? Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:23, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * #17 — Same.
 * Disagree on this one. I'm not sure whether or not this appeared in the WSJ print edition or not; in any case, I am in fact directly citing the article as it appeared online. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:23, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Overall
 * You might consider switching from lettered notes (e.g., [a], [b], [c]) to the [note 1], [note 2], etc. format. The former tend to blend in with the numbered citations, and are thus easy to overlook.
 * Contrariwise, I've always found the NoteTag notes distractingly long. I've swapped the footnotes to uppercase to distinguish them from references with multiple backlinks as a compromise, if that's acceptable? Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:34, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * May as well update notes b and c to 2019 dollars, if possible.
 * Not yet available. These are handled by templates and so will automagically update to 2019 figures once that data becomes available and the templates updated. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:23, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Looks pretty good. Minor comments above. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:50, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * , happy to support. I added a comment above about the lead, and there's one that you didn't respond to (not sure if you missed it/didn't think it was an issue/are still looking into it), but these are minor. Nice article, I enjoyed reading it. --Usernameunique (talk) 19:59, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Added a line to the lead to hopefully address that request, and tidied up that last bit in §Little Ferry after re-pulling the relevant sources. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 18:14, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Support by Jens Lallensack
Interesting stuff, and I'm very close to supporting outright, just one question:
 * you write: and interior partitions destroyed by the initial explosion. – This explosion is not mentioned before, yet you take it as granted. Maybe specifically mention that the fire resulted in an explosion? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:40, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Hmm, let me re-pull some sources tomorrow and see what the conflict is here. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 23:39, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the catch. That absolutely needed rewording. Clarified the situation based on the QNFPA account of the fire, which should clear up the contradiction. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:32, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Great! Supporting now. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:33, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

-- Laser brain  (talk)  01:13, 26 February 2019 (UTC)