It’s a regular Monday afternoon in Orem inside the D’Arc residence. It looks like an ordinary house, but inside, movie magic awaits.
As you move downstairs to the home theater you find the personal screening room of James V. D’Arc, the former film archivist at Brigham Young University, whose contributions have left a lasting impact in Special Collections. It might be a little hard to make your way down because of all the original movie posters from famous films from the golden age of Hollywood adorning the walls of his residence including “The Robe,” (1953), “El Cid,” (1961), “Union Pacific,” (1939) and more.
The home theater is equipped with 7.1 Surround sound, an 8k projector, and more films than one can fully process. However, there is a special item inside the theater that brings back memories for D’Arc, an 8mm home movie projector.
“That's what my father used to show us,” D’Arc said. “Home movies that he would take and 8mm movies, some that you could buy in the 1950s.”
One of these items is an 8mm film reel of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, a famous comedy duo from the 1930s that D’Arc enjoyed watching on television growing up in Glendale, California in the 1950s and 60s.
In fact, television is what exposed him to hundreds of classic vintage movies. Back then, television stations had a lot more independent programming than today.
“In Los Angeles, as well as New York and Chicago, the large stations would have huge film libraries and in the 50s and 60s, these were 16mm film libraries, so they could show just about anything they want whenever they wanted,” D’Arc said.
It was these motion pictures that introduced him to art, literature, film and the function of film in movies, so much so that film dominated all of his hobbies.
“That was just an abiding interest, an obsession, if you will,” D’Arc said.
When he got to BYU in 1968, there was not much going on in film education at BYU. As a result, he chose to be a history major.
“I figured that'd be the closest thing, because I'd always been interested in American history and American politics as well as film,” D’Arc said.
It wasn’t until he got back from his mission in 1971 that he began to be more involved in film.
It was at this time that film studies became popular at universities like New York University, Boston University, Columbia University, UCLA and more.
“Film books and film studies were quite the rage in academics, so students at BYU caught on to this,” D’Arc said. The BYU Film Society (now the BYU Student Film Association) was established at that time.
It was not long before D’Arc found a profession that would suit his interests.
In 1975, he took a student job working 20 hours a week in the archives and Manuscripts Department. It opened his eyes to the importance of original archival collections.
His interest caught the attention of the late Dr. Dennis Rowley, director of the archive.
“Doctor Rowley saw my interest and began training me to be an archivist,” D’Arc said.
He got the opportunity of a lifetime a year later when the department secretary resigned from her position. He told Dr. Rowley he would like to apply for the job.
In his proposal, he said he could do those kinds of functions needed for the job and at the same time learn more about archival science.
Dr. Rowley thought of adding a collection specialty to those already in place for the department. That specialty became American Cinema.
“I was hired on full-time in 1976 as an undergraduate and I never left until the summer of 2017,” D’Arc said.
One of the first collections he received for BYU would be the most consequential and it traced back to his exposure to a memory he had growing up on Hollywood movies.
“When we would as a family drive into Hollywood to see movies, we would always pass a street sign that intrigued me,” D’Arc said. “It said DeMille Drive Private.”
The name DeMille in that street address referred to Cecil B. DeMille, one of the most influential filmmakers in history and widely acknowledged as a founder of the Hollywood film industry. He is best known for religious epics such as “The Ten Commandments,” (both the 1923 and 1956 version), “Samson and Deliah,” (1949) , “The Sign of the Cross” (1932) and more.
D’Arc saw this sign multiple times and he grew intrigued about the legendary Hollywood Figure, leading him to make an important suggestion that will change the course of his life.
“The Cecil B. DeMille Papers have not gone anywhere, to my surprise,” D’Arc said. “Let's go after that.”
He and Dr. Rowley went up to California to meet with members of the DeMille estate. They made their proposal to them on how they would preserve his papers.
“We would process them in an accelerated manner and publish a very thorough guide to the collection,” D’Arc said.
The entirety of the collections, big enough to fill three library shelves, was in the basement and the upper floors of the DeMillie house. The collection contains decades of storyboard art, correspondence files, publicity books and still photographs.
“It was amazing and voluminous,” D’Arc said.
During the next year and a half, he and Dr. Rowley maintained regular contact with the estate to answer questions regarding the DeMille papers and to go down and see the entirety of the collection.
Finally, in 1977, the DeMille estate announced BYU would be the repository for the collection. However, that was not the only collection in Hollywood that was going to BYU.
Rowley and D’Arc also made contact with Howard Hawks, a famous Hollywood director who directed a variety of classic films in different genres including westerns (1959’s Rio Bravo), screwball comedies (1938’s Bringing Up Baby) and crime (1932’s Scarface).
On that same day Dr. Rowley and D’Arc took a 20-foot truck to the DeMille house to pick up his papers, Hawks was ready for them to pick up his papers.
The journey from Provo to California and back was documented in the BYU Daily Universe which had a publication at the time called the Monday Magazine Special Supplement. D’Arc wrote the articles for it and that helped garner attention for the BYU Archives.
“Two very significant anchor collections like that form the basis for my going out and persuading actors, directors, producers to kind of snowball these collections and that's how it grew incrementally for what became 41 years,” D’Arc said.
D’Arc and Rowley did not face much opposition because according to them, no one had asked for their papers.
As word got around about the acquisition, film institutions primarily in Los Angeles began to murmur, saying that doesn’t make sense and that these films collections should not be going to Utah
“There was probably some mild enmity from the other institutions of these things being, quote, carted off to Utah, of course, the innuendo is no one would ever see them again,” D’Arc said. “But that's why we were intent on organizing these collections such that scholars could use them in a timely manner.”
The acquisition of the DeMille and Hawks collection started a long line of acquisitions that cemented D’Arc’s legacy at BYU.
D’Arc would subsequently acquire the collections of important figures in cinema history such as Max Steiner, a famous film composer in the golden age of Hollywood known for composing the scores for classics like Gone with the Wind (1939), three-time Academy Award Winner Ken Darby and Merian C Cooper, producer and creator of King Kong.
Not every donor is easy to persuade.
“When persuading donors. You're dealing with very different people each time,” D’Arc said. “Some of them warm to the idea and it's an easy decision to make. Others take a lot longer.”
When he visited Cooper’s widow, Dorothy Jordon, she was very concerned about what would happen to the legacy of her husband. It ultimately took eight years for BYU to acquire the Cooper papers.
“I'm sure she wanted to go over the stretch of time to assure herself and check with others as to the reliability of the institution,” D’Arc said.
During that time, D’Arc kept in touch with Jordan on BYU’s interest in her husband’s collection, how they would preserve the collection, how they would be made available, how they could be used in courses, and to share their reputation for preserving manuscript collections as well as films.
In the meantime, he acquired the papers of one of the most decorated Hollywood actors of all time, James Stewart, best known for his role as George Bailey in 1946’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” That was accompanied by a visit to campus by Stewart and his wife and a four-day James Stewart film festival.
This attracted a lot of publicity and questions about why he would choose to donate his papers to BYU.
“When people asked him, Newspaper editors, magazines. Why? Are you Mormon? Why did you give this to BYU?” D’Arc said. He said Stewart responded with “No, I'm a Presbyterian, but no one else ever asked.”
With all the 16mm film prints coming to the BYU Archives. D’Arc came up with a new way to screen classic films coming from donors.
“I thought, you know, we really ought to have a platform where these films could be regularly enjoyed, especially by the student body and faculty,” he said. It would also serve as an outreach to let students know about the collections and to give them ideas on projects, articles, senior papers, master thesis and doctoral dissertations.
He inaugurated the L. Tom Perry Special Collections Motion Picture Archive Film Series in 2001. The series continues to this day.
“I programmed it, wrote the program notes and hosted it from 2001 right up to the time I retired in 2017,” D’Arc said.
By the time he retired from the program, the motion picture still archive contained over 100,000 images, thousands of posters in various sizes, lobby cards, window cards and motion picture heralds used for publicity purposes.
“I was pleased to have a good 41-year run at it and there is great satisfaction in seeing all those collections preserved,” D’Arc said, referring to the collections that are still at BYU.
His colleagues at the BYU Library are grateful for his efforts
“I learned from Jim is that he is a curator first above anything in all things, and that means that you can't just be about collecting, You can't just be about promoting” Trevor Alvord, curator of 21st Century LDS and Western American collection. “You've got to do all of it and fit it all together.”
He also remembers an experience with D’Arc that has helped him in his career. They went to New York to pick up the collection of John Held Jr, a famous Latter-day Saints artist credited with designing the look of the 1920s Jazz age.
“We worked with the dealer to box up the collection, took us a couple of days to survey it, inventory it, make sure it was all there for all that we were purchasing from it,” Alvord said.
They had a delivery service lined up to pick up the collection from the apartment building they received it from. However, when they got a hold of the delivery service the day of, they told them they couldn’t go to that building and pick it up for them.
Alvord panicked because he and D’Arc were going to take six boxes full of art and precious historical research through six blocks in Manhattan, New York and do it a way that does not cause any damage.
He remembers how D’Arc took in the situation.
“Jim was just calm and collected,” Alvord said. “He'd been there before he'd done that. He knew what to do, how to pack it up just right and how to help shuttle it from us all.”
Everything worked out fine, but he learned an important lesson from this experience.
“No matter what you prepare, how much you prepare ... there will always be wrinkles and that's just going to have to be accepted,” Alvord said.
This story is a testament to the kindness D’Arc showed to those around him in and outside of BYU.
“They all have such nice and kind things to say about how warm he is and how easy to work with he is and how much they appreciate what he's done here at BYU.” Ben Harry, the current film archivist at BYU Special Collections.
Harry was hired to D’Arc’s position in April 2018. Even though he was not directly chosen by D’Arc to succeed him, he still received help from the archivist.
“He has visited me and he's been very supportive,” Harry said "When I call him on the phone and have questions about things, he's been very helpful.”
D’Arc also has steered Harry to records and help him understand how things are organized.
Each year, he and D’Arc talk less not because of a fallout, but D’Arc is going his own way.
“He's continuing to work, he's still very active,” Harry said. “Every time I call him, he's in another country or state or has a trip planned where he says, yes, I can come and see you. But it has to be this time.”
D’Arc is still very active post-retirement. He recently updated a book he wrote seven years before he retired from BYU, “When Hollywood Came to Utah,” in time for Utah’s 100 anniversary of filmmaking, which includes a new foreword by Kevin Coster.
He also continues to attend film-related activities such as going and speaking at film festivals.
When he is not traveling to film festivals, he enjoys watching movies downstairs in the basement and having people over in his home movie theater in his house.
He screens the classics including "Casablanca" (1942), "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) and more.
“It's a great deal of satisfaction when they take interest in these things and are introduced to facets of them that they probably wouldn't be anywhere else,” D’Arc said.
Looking back at his career, the most cherished relationships over the years are each of the donors from Stewart to “all the way to a location manager who had wonderful materials when he would scout locations for a movie and donate them to BYU.”
“The people I met were probably the greatest satisfaction I had in getting to know these people and their interest in seeing these things preserved,” D’Arc said.
Those relationships and the collections he brought to BYU are why the university is mentioned with UCLA, USC and other film institutions as a place where people can come in and study film history.
To think it all started with one man’s obsession.