In July 2020 it was announced by the Chicago Film Archive that they have a complete (5 reels) nitrate print of this film in their collection. It is part of a collection of films originally owned by a Caterpillar Inc. marketing executive named Charles E. Krosse. (It consists mainly of agricultural films from C.L. Venard Productions made for Caterpillar.) This collection had been in the possession of the CFA for quite some time, but the reels of this film were only recently properly examined. The film has now been digitally scanned and preserved.
This movie was listed in the American Silent Feature Film Database as a lost film. Per TCM, this film disappeared after its initial release and was considered lost for 97 years. In June 2020 during the beginning of the Pandemic, Olivia Babler, the digitization manager at Chicago Film Archives, discovered a 35mm nitrate print of the film. Incredibly, this partially-tinted nitrate distribution print had suffered only minor damage over the course of a century. All five reels were almost completely intact, missing only about nine minutes of footage. Some scenes end abruptly, and some intertitles appear to be missing.
This movie was part of a series of nine films produced by Universal between Christmas 1922 and February 1923. Studio chief Carl Laemmle personally endorsed this group of films calling them the "Laemmle Nine". Unfortunately all of them, except for this one, are considered lost. Of all the Hollywood studios that were making films in the Silent Era, Universal has the poorest survival rate, with only 15% of their silent pictures surviving today. That's because the Studio destroyed its archive of silent film negatives in 1948.
Prologue to 2021 preserved film: "The First Degree was produced by Universal Pictures and released in the United States on February 5, 1923. The length of the film at the time of the original American release was 4,395 feet (5 reels)." "The only known surviving element of the film is a partially-tinted 35mm nitrate distribution print in the Charles E. Krosse Collection preserved at Chicago Film Archives (3860 feet, 5 reels). It was designed as designated as a lost film by the Library of Congress prior to its rediscovery in 2020." "Chicago Film Archives digitally preserved the film in 2021."
The main character's name is Sam Purdy, not Sam Bass,,