Collection Highlight: A Rare Hand-Lettered Title Card

A very rare artifact in the Stills, Posters and Paper Collection is this original hand-lettered title card for an episode of The Silent Mystery, a 1918 serial directed by Francis Ford. Title cards were filmed for insertion into the completed film to add narrative structure, display credits, and, in this case, to identify and keep the film reels in order. These cards were simply disposable records of the motion picture production process, and so there are very few traces of them and the process of how they were created. If anyone can identify the film for which the title card is being made in the second photo, please let us know!

Shared by Nancy Kauffman, archivist in the Stills, Posters and Paper Collection at the Eastman Museum