Raymond Rohauer

Raymond Rohauer ( 1924 – November 10, 1987) was an American film collector and distributor. Rohauer first started his career by curating films at the Coronet Theatre. In the 1950s, he came to prominence as a distributor and reissuer of Buster Keaton movies which he partnered with Keaton for. Rohauer would later acquire various films, such as silent films, which expanded into a film library better known as the Rohauer Library. Rohauer often used tactics to secure the distribution of these films, protect his library by exhibiting low-quality copies of such, and licensing them, which were often contested by his contemporaries and the subject of his controversy. He died on November 10, 1987, with his film library estimated to have 700 titles. Since then, his library has been integrated into the Cohen Film Collection.

Early life and career Raymond Rohauer was born in 1924 and raised in Buffalo, New York. He moved to California in 1942 and was educated at Los Angeles City College. Rohauer made a five-reel 16mm experimental film Whirlpool (1947), which was not successful. He subsequently became active in film exhibition at the Coronet Theatre from 1950, Films shown at the Coronet were generally copied illicitly, occasionally to the irritation of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City because Rohauer often neglected to remove identifying features present in their prints. Rohauer in that same article recalls: "I was in the projection room. I got a ring that Buster Keaton was in the lobby. I go down and there he is with Eleanor. The next day I met with him at his home. I didn't realize we were going to join forces. But I realized he had this I-don't-care attitude about his stuff. He said, 'It's valueless. I don't own the rights.'" Rohauer, undaunted, created the new legal entity Buster Keaton Productions, with himself and Mr. and Mrs. Keaton as executive officers. This entity gave Rohauer legal access to the Keaton titles held by the Academy.

Raymond Rohauer was known for claiming rights to films under dubious pretexts; he pursued court battles over The Birth of a Nation, eventually found to be in the public domain, and other classics.

Later career By the early 1960s, Rohauer was known within the motion picture industry as a leading source for silent films. Television producer Jay Ward licensed Rohauer's silent footage for his satirical Fractured Flickers series.

During the 1960s, Rohauer returned to the East Coast and became the film curator of the Huntington Hartford Gallery of Modern Art in New York City, Such was Rohauer's reputation in this field that Kevin Brownlow, the co-producer of this series and the earlier Hollywood (1980), had not previously allowed his production staff to use Rohauer's resources. while William K. Everson preferred the term "freebooter", as it implied the "certain cavalier charm that Rohauer possessed". Later sources say he died from AIDS. Cohen has since issued four volumes of Keaton films on home video.