TServo4 wrote:
If I had my "one pick," it would be WANDERERS OF THE WASTELAND (1923) — Irvin Willat's western epic, shot entirely in Technicolor and based on a story by Zane Grey. Willat apparently had the last known print, which unfortunately decomposed. Bob Birchard said that when he interviewed Willat's daughter, she mentioned that she remembered the day when he had first discovered that WANDERERS had decomposed. She said he went upstairs to his bedroom, closed the door and cried for three hours.

People rarely (very rarely) questioned William K. Everson's honesty.  If Bill said he saw a film, even though the last known print of said film vanished 50 years ago, people believed him; but when he said that he had seen WANDERER OF THE WASTELAND, more than a few film scholars called him a fibber.