author

Howard Lamarr Walls

b. 1912

Best known for compiling early film and copyright reference works, this mid-20th-century researcher helped preserve records from cinema’s first decades. His books remain useful to historians tracing American motion pictures and copyright history.

1 Audiobook

Motion Pictures, 1894-1912

Motion Pictures, 1894-1912

by Howard Lamarr Walls

About the author

Born in 1912, Howard Lamarr Walls is credited as the author of several reference works connected to film history and copyright research. One of the best documented is Motion pictures, 1894-1912: identified from the records of the United States Copyright Office, published in 1953, a work that organized early motion-picture records from the Copyright Office.

Library and bookseller records also associate him with other copyright-focused publications, including The Copyright Handbook for Fine and Applied Arts. Based on the sources available, he appears to have worked in the world of bibliographic and copyright documentation rather than as a novelist, creating practical books that helped scholars, librarians, and researchers locate hard-to-track historical material.

Reliable biographical details about his personal life are scarce in the sources I could confirm, so much of his public legacy seems to rest on the reference books he produced. Even so, those books point to a careful researcher whose work supported the preservation and study of early American film and copyright records.