The movie James V. D'Arc would most like to find during his lifetime is "One Hundred Years of Mormonism," a silent, feature-length look at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was released in 1913.
"It was a very positive film in its portrayal of the church," says D'Arc. "It was 90 minutes long and was sent around with the director (Norval Mac Gregor) telling the film's story as it was shown."As curator of archives and manuscripts at Brigham Young University, D'Arc has successfully brought to BYU a number of large collections of historical movie material. But he seems most fascinated with the treatment of the LDS Church in cinema, especially in the early silents.
In the BYU archives he has copies of "A Trip to Salt Lake City," "Trapped By the Mormons," "A Mormon Maid" and bits and pieces of "A Victim of the Mormons." And he'd like to uncover any of the dozens of others that seem to have been lost or destroyed.
But tracking down "One Hundred Years of Mormonism" is something of a quest.
The film was subsidized by the church in response to the many negative films of the period, produced in Los Angeles (with some location shooting in Utah) and took its title from a popular history book.
Today, the only physical evidence D'Arc has been able to track down is a poster on the back of a 1913 "Photoplayers" program for a Valentine's Day inaugural ball.
A publicity photograph shows Joseph Smith being attacked in his home and above it is a statement from "Roosevelt," presumably Theodore Roosevelt after his presidency, quoted as saying, "The story of the trials, persecutions and triumphs of the Mormon pioneers is the most tragic page of American history!"
"This is the one I want to find before I die," D'Arc says.
So, the search continues.
Meanwhile, D'Arc is as content as an archivist can be with the many collections he has assumed for BYU, including those of writer-director Howard Hawks, producer Merian C. Cooper, composer Max Steiner, etc. Plus, a pair of major coups, which really put BYU on the map - the complete papers of both James Stewart and Cecil B. DeMille.
The DeMille collection is particularly noteworthy for its size - one of the largest in the country - with letters, diaries, photographs, tapes, etc., unearthed from from more than 1,200 boxes. The material covers the writer-producer-director's long career, which began in the silents and ran through the mid-'50s.
"DeMille was a real collector - he kept everything," D'Arc says, adding that it literally took him years to get through the wealth of material. And the resulting register, which specifically details each element, is a hefty book.
Meanwhile, D'Arc is in pursuit of a number of other collections he'd like to bring to BYU, though he declines to say which ones. "Bad luck," he says.
And the one that got away?
Frank Capra.
Before Capra's death - and after the prolific director of such films as "It's a Wonderful Life" and "It Happened One Night" saw his good friend James Stewart donate his papers to BYU - D'Arc felt confident that he had Capra's papers in the bag.
But circumstances lured Capra into another direction, and they are now in an archive in a Pennsylvania university.
Still, D'Arc isn't bitter. He's an archivist, he says, and as such is just happy to see Capra's history in a place where it can be made available to researchers. - Chris Hicks