Where are the 'lost' Mosconi videos?

[L.S. Dennis]

I know this topic has been around forever but indulge me if I'm being redundant and ask it once again...
What the hell ever happened to the old videos of Mosconi's matches from the period of 1945 to say early to mid 1950's? This was a period when a prime Mosconi went through his opponents like sh*t through a short snake. Oh there were other greats during that period, Jimmy Caras and Irvine Crane and the like but it was the Mosconi show in those years. I've heard (read of anyway) those who opine "Oh they were all stored in some warehouse that caught fire and they were lost forever" This is BS and anyone who believes this I've got some good beach front property in Arizona I'd like to sell you!

I know they exist (or at least did exist) because I remember seeing clips from them during the early 60's on network television (that's all we had back then). It's possibe that the Mosconi family has them or the rights to them who knows. The only video that even remotely gives a glimpse of Mosconi in early time is the old 'I've got a secret show, hosted by Gary Moore (it's on YouTube) where he asked Mosconi to throw out some balls to show the audience how to run a rack of balls. It's in black and white and filmed sometime in the early to mid fifties I think.

I was lucky enough to see Willie in person two or three times, something I'll never forget!

 

[NevadaP]

Even magnetic tape degrades.

I ran across this video about archiving and preserving audio tape recordings at the Smithsonian. While watching it I noticed what looks like Eastman film reel cans at the bottom of a box of audio tape recordings.

It just made me think how some films we might value could be randomly stored somewhere, mixed in with other media. It could be somewhere like this archive, or in someone's garage or attic, or in the closet or basement of an old editing studio that's now a Chinese restaurant.

It could be in a drawer in the President's desk next to a copy of the 18.5 minutes of missing audio from 1972.

View attachment 838483

That 18.5 minute recording isn't 'missing'. It's archived with many other documents in the basement of the Alamo. You can go there and listen for yourself if you know the secret codes!