Too many classic films remain buried in studios' vaults

A Touch of Larceny - From the Paramount Vault:

Will McKinley, a New York film writer, is dying to get his hands on a copy of"Alias Nick Beal," a 1949 film noir starring Ray Milland as a satanic gangster. For classic film blogger Nora Fiore, the Grail might be "The Wild Party" (1929), the first talkie to star 1920's "It" girl Clara Bow, directed by the pioneering female director Dorothy Arzner. Film critic Leonard Maltin says he'd like to score a viewing of "Hotel Haywire," a 1937 screwball comedy written by the great comic director Preston Sturges.

Produced by Paramount Studios, these are all among 700 titles assumed to be nestled in the vaults of Universal Pictures, which inherited Paramount's 1930s and 1940s film archive from its forebear MCA, which acquired the collection in 1958. They're frustratingly near at hand but out of reach of film fans and cinephiles.

Like most of the other major studios, Universal is grappling with the challenging economics of making more of this hoard accessible to the public on DVD, video on demand or streaming video. Studios have come to realize that there's not only marketable value in the films, but publicity value in performing as responsible stewards of cultural assets...