If you recall, Roll II ended with "TIME SPACE" #75 Roll2-40.htm (see the paragraph under the picture!) ... but Roll III commences with #80!
Mysteries abound in the oft-revised Antheil manuscript, for there is an unmarked page of material, between #75 (end of Roll II) and #80 (start of Roll III), certainly not enough to cram in 5 more movie scenes ... but ... the "TIME SPACE" numbers don't exist on page 58, where 16 bars of music are provided.
The answer could lie in motion picture censorship --
-- for we must remember that the Paris "expatriate" set, of which George Antheil was a part, included a variety of composers, writers, painters and personalities who were very free thinking, at that time. Heavy drinking, hashish and 'free love' were often in the realm of their social life during that decade. Shocking people was refined to a high art, so Antheil's BALLET MECANIQUE fit right into the Cubistic paintings and social manifestos of the period. The Léger-Murphy movie allegedly had scenes of the photographer's wife "topless" along with 'blackouts' featuring Man Ray and his gay lover popping in and out of shrubbery. This was all in keeping with the Salon parties of the times. However, when an expanded 'orchestral' version made the transition from private showings for an elitist group of patrons to public theatrical presentations, the editing scissors probably came out.
Anders Wahlgren, the movie director who commissioned the initial ARTCRAFT reconsruction of BALLET MECANIQUE for a Stockholm TV-Radio broadcast in 1991, told of a book about Man Ray, in French, which described some of the missing scenes. Today's existing movie is something like 7½ minutes short of the original 30 minutes of music, no doubt to revisions that influenced the movie "half" of the audio-visual project. (Remember, silent speed is 50% slower than sound film speed, so videotapes of today are rushing the images along at a faster speed than what was probably imagined back in 1924.)
Thus, for whatever reason, the Pleyel score and the rolls (old and new) all begin with #80 ... and the real reason is probably lost to history.
What's next? Click the link below and you'll find out!