the boy who wouldn’t grow up (12. 122)

Released almost twenty years to the day after the stage adaptation on this day in 1924, J M Barrie’s novelisation of Peter and Wendy, the Paramount feature—then called Famous Players-Lasky, was considered to be a lost film for decades. The only known fragment of footage was in the promotional compilation, The House that Shadows Built, put together by the studio in 1931 to celebrate its twentieth anniversary and exhibit movies that never had a proper theatrical release which featured scenes from several silent-era pictures that only are extant as clips, sort of like the lost plays of Ancient Greece that only are referenced in footnotes. A well-preserved copy was found, however, in 1950 and prompted the Disney animated version a few years later. With fidelity for the original story, the Darlings ultimately adopt the Lost Boys and Wendy is allowed to return to Never Never Land once a year to assist with Spring Cleaning. Peter is played by Betty Bronson and George Ali acts as Nana the Dog (a Doug Jones, Andy Serkis of that time and a far better nursemaid than the Lost Boys had) and Crocodile.