[Robert Gitt of the UCLA Film and Television Archive] is concerned about "orphan" films that have gone into public domain or were enmeshed in ownership issues and are unprotected.

"That's a major concern for us," he said. "Here, we don't have big sponsors. Our funding is shrinking. The labor costs and film stock costs are rising. The nitrate films of the teens and the '20s and the talkies are deteriorating. Somebody will always take care of a Casablanca or a Maltese Falcon, but who will help so many other films that may disappear forever?" . . . .

There's more than feature movie "orphans" that concern Gitt. There are in the UCLA archives 27 million feet of pre-1960s newsreel film from a Hearst company, a virtual visual history of half a century, plus a kinescope and 2-inch tape collection of television shows from the 40s through the 60s that have to be preserved.