Coffee Break from How to Suceed

I'd love to see it as well as the Stereo mix for the film see the light of day again. I find it hard to believe such materials could have been lost, they just are being kept in a closet by some old miser.

I hate that they didn't take better care of cut footage back in the day. The fact that we will never see the Jitterbug number from The Wizard of Oz that audiences allegedly saw incorporated into the completed film at the first screening still breaks my heart. How does that footage just disappear?!?

Back then there was little incentive to save that kind of stuff. The idea of a home video market and people wanting to see cut footage was undreamed of. Then you add in the logistics of cataloging and storing it, not to mention keeping it from deteriorating while in storage, and the idea of saving cut footage had even less merit. Hollywood used a cellulose nitrate film until sometime in the late 40s, which was extremely flammable and deteriorated fairly rapidly if not stored properly, which also increased the flammability. And even the less flammable cellulose acetate that they switched to still did not do well in long-term storage unless it was in ideal conditions.

Many of the movies that are considered lost are lost due to fire or decay, as studios at the time really had no way in knowing how the film stock would actually age.

At least some stills exist from the filmed number:

First of all, the film was not shown anywhere in stereo. I am one of the few who DID hear the mag tracks when it was previewed many months before the release, but there were no stereo release prints. I also saw Cabaret at an early sneak and that, too, had the mag tracks in interlock. As to Coffee Break, never say never. These things show up magically when someone actually bothers to look for them.

I am more sorry about the 3 or 4 other numbers that were cut from the Broadway score .

Another "holy grail" of missing footage is from 1963's "Cleopatra" starring Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. 20th Century-Fox originally envisioned two complete movies, one centering on Cleopatra and Caesar (Rex Harrison), and a sequel detailing Cleopatra and Marc Antony. Apparently they not only scripted them out, but did much filming on location in Italy. Fox, which was breaking under the financial weight of "Cleopatra," finally put their foot down and demanded the project be wrapped up. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, brought in to salvage the project, put together something like a 6-hour "director's cut", but naturally Fox wouldn't consider releasing one movie at that length, and ordered massive cuts to pare it down to about 4 hours. Yet so far (and despite some effort by Fox and other interested parties), the missing footage has never been located. From what documentation is available, and the recollections of surviving cast and crew (such as Martin Landau), there's at least a couple hours worth of film missing, and probably much more. We can only hope Fox didn't destroy it at some point, and it turns up!