Contained herein is evidence from the trail silent film comedian Billy B. Van left across the earliest days of what we now call “show-business”- a snapshot in time at the birth of making movies. 

As an aid in the hunt for the lost films of Billy B. Van, this curated collection of contemporary trade press coverage serves as the foundation everything we know about one of New England’s most prolific filmmakers. It is drawn from research on Lantern at the Media History Digital Library, a project of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which provides access to over three million pages of digitized trade journals, books, and magazines documenting the histories of early twentieth-century motion picture production, distribution, and industry activity as it occurred. 

Through them, we are able recreate the definitive filmography and timeline of Billy B. Van’s  filmmaking career, as well as to gather a few remaining and yet-to-be-uncovered hints as to where the lost films of Billy B. Van may be, and who might find them…