The Rejected is believed to be the first-ever made American TV documentary about homosexuality. It was released by PBS to little fanfare in 1961 then went missing for more than five decades. Now a team of determined archivists have unearthed the long-lost film and made it available for viewing online.
The footage was discovered by archivists Robert Chehoski and Alex Cherian after an exhaustive six year search.
“It just became that unicorn that I was looking for,” Chehoski tells KQED. “I get a little obsessive I guess.”
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“There was no treasure map,” Cherian says. “All I knew was in 1961, KQED had made this film. Where the hell was it?”
First, they combed through KQED’s archives. When they couldn’t find anything, they tracked down the documentary’s original producer, Irving Saraf. He told them, “Oh yeah, I made that film in 1961 but I haven’t been able to find it. It’s probably lost.”
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Determined to find it, the men did some more research. They learned that KQED didn’t actually own the documentary. It belonged to WNET, a TV station in New York that had provided the it’s original funding. From there, they were able to locate the one and only physical copy of The Rejected, hiding in the one place so obvious nobody thought to look: The Library of Congress.
“There’s that cliched phrase, did you look down the back of the sofa?” Cherian jokes.
After convincing the library and WNET to let them clean up, digitize and upload the one-hour film to the internet, The Rejected is now available to view online, via San Francisco State University’s DIVA Film Archive.
Cherian tells SFist that his next project is “working with the Library of Congress and the film’s copyright holder WNET to try and produce a better video copy.”
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SteveDenver
Bummer… links to DIVA aren’t working.
Kangol
So interesting to see material like this from the past.
enfilmigult
Oh man, I live for stuff like this. Thanks for posting about it! This is the only place I’ve heard of it so far.
Bob LaBlah
I searched high and low till I found this. I saw it about seven or eight years ago and almost forgot about it. This is a must see for all who don’t know what life was like back in the Leaver it Beaver days when things like being gay was not discussed in the homes of the majority of Americans, under no circumstances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2zikCUPPxw
blackberry finn
Get past the “Viewer Discretion Advised” preamble and the program’s substance content is quite progressive.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead’s moral relativist view could be presented today without drawing objections. Both pros and cons of the legality issue are discussed, but de-criminalization is favored throughout the commentary, even in the remarks by religious leaders. The Mattachine Society representatives, in their push for social acceptance, try to put a “straight face” on their movement at the expense of the abject “queens”, from whom they distance themselves. Eight years later those “queens” kicked down the barriers at Stonewall and changed things forever.
The picture quality is abysmal for about 2/3 of the program.
blackberry finn
substance/content
Bauhaus
@Bob LaBlah:
Wow. How is the message [propaganda] of this film any different from lots of clergy and right-wing politicians today?
Bob LaBlah
@blackberry finn: “The Mattachine Society representatives, in their push for social acceptance, try to put a “straight face” on their movement at the expense of the abject “queens”, from whom they distance themselves.”
I keep trying to tell everyone the queens who get married, adopt kids and move to the suburbs are todays Mattachine society.
@Bauhaus: Pretty “powerful” message, huh? Did you notice the woman wearing high-heels as she watered the grass with a hose? There was also something about the pants the boys wore that left nothing to be desired sexually. Strait outta Leave it to Beaverville. And to think Wally Cleaver was a last minute replacement for the original guy picked to play Wally because of his figure from being a local champion swimmer.