Video: Lost 1926 MUTT AND JEFF Silent "Playing With Fire"

(Above: a cleaned up screencap created by Jeff Levine.)

Here is a rare 1926 silent short animation that was "lost" and has now been discovered and shown for the first time in many decades by YouTuber Silencebound  It's on highly flammable nitrate film, which posed a challenge.

My thanks to Jeff Levine who graciously created the above screen capture. He wrote:

"I happened onto your blog page and thoroughly enjoyed the 'Playing with Fire' Mutt and Jeff Cartoon. For the fun of it, I did a screen capture and cleaned it up a bit... and you can see what the cartoon 'might' look like if a decent safety print had existed."

Thanks Jeff!

Here's the video:

Thanks to Silencebound who adds:     

I am very extremely proud to showing a  recently found long-lost oldest 35mm cartoon classic starring Mutt and  Jeff. I bought it from the States thru eBay few years ago, but I've not  joined YouTube during at that time. But it is the big opportunity to  expressing my discovery of the lost films and here's the one that is  awaiting for the YouTube presentation. This public-domain B/W 35mm film  is Nitrate element, and is very dangerous to be projected by a  conventional 35mm movie projector (due to the excessive screening light  which is very deadly) and left the theatrical-released film almost  unscathed which is widely unseen for more than 80 years. Nowadays, very  few Mutt and Jeff cartoon shorts is existed today, most notably it can  be found on DVDs, but doesn't mentioned about this newly-founded 1,000  ft film, 'Playing With Fire'. I used my 35mm Steenbeck editing machine  to playback this lost film along with low-stressing projection light  which is major recommendation for Nitrate films. Watch this nice  animated-paced funny masterpiece to experience yourself at the focusing  element of the lost film classics. Rated far much better than Walt  Disney's 'Steamboat Willie' (1928) which is two years away.