THE KING OF SILENT ANIMATION

Guess you could say I hoard, said Tommy José Stathes as he maneuvered around the shelves of his storage unit. Large enough to accommodate a minivan, it was stuffed with thousands of film canisters stacked floor to ceiling, arranged by studio and labeled with Sharpie. Bray: Farmer Alfalfa Sees New York, one read. Another said: Fleischer: Adventures of Popeye (1935).

Oh, he muttered absently as he paused before a tower of brass movie cans, what do we have here?

Once a week, Mr. Stathes heads from his small studio apartment in Queens to his enormous collection of vintage cartoons: a celluloid library of around 4,000 reels, some of the prints more than 100 years old. It is certainly one of the largest collections of early animated films anywhere in the world — and that accounts for the holdings of the Library of Congress, according to an archivist who does restoration there.

His devotion to silent cartoons — the very birth of the form — is unrivaled. In fact, he has helped the Library of Congress identify some of its own collection. George Willeman, who oversees the nitrate film vaults for the library, recalled being amazed when Mr. Stathes, then in his 20s, took a seat in the archive and identified reel after reel of unidentified cartoons made decades before he was even born.

As far as I know, Mr. Willeman said, Tommy is the king of silent animation.

As for how much his archive is worth today, Mr. Stathes is reluctant to venture a guess. Films don't have standardized valuations like coins or other regularly traded collectibles, he said. It's a very niche, specialized field concerning objects that are more utilitarian than anything else.

To read the complete article, see:
You Need Felix the Cat? Early Popeye? Talk to the King of Silent Animation. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/nyregion/stathes-vintage-cartoons.html)

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