Convention City
A hit pre-Code comedy became too indecent to reissue, then its studio negative was marked for destruction.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A Warner Bros. ensemble comedy directed by Archie Mayo and set around a chaotic company convention.
Convention City received a normal theatrical release in 1933. After stricter enforcement of the Production Code, Warner Bros. could not obtain approval for a reissue and withdrew the film, while later studio disposal of nitrate materials eliminated the known negative.
Existence timeline
Warner Bros. distributes the film to ordinary cinemas.
The film is withdrawn from circulation as censorship hardens.
A proposed censored release fails to receive approval.
Studio records mark the known negative for disposal.
Warner Bros. finishes the pre-Code comedy before its theatrical distribution.
Why it ended
No complete print is known. Studio records list the negative as junked in 1948, although later foreign-screening evidence means a copy could theoretically remain undiscovered.
Last confirmed trace
The screenplay, pressbook, still photographs, advertisements and a small amount of related location footage survive.
What it left behind
Its absence magnified its reputation as an exceptionally transgressive pre-Code film and made it a recurring target for archivists and collectors.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer available in its original public form.
The archive unit reached normal public availability, so Arrival Score V1 assigns 100.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.