Question

[Emmanuel Cruz]

When the a.a.p. bought their share of WB cartoons in the 50's, did WB give them the original negatives of the cartoons they bought, or a copy of the negatives were made for them? Also this question complies with Sunset Productions, Castle Films, etc.

[Matthew Hunter]

I'm pretty sure they gave them copies. Several are Blue Ribbon rereleases, and the blue Ribbon is absent on the original negatives, (which is why restoration from the negs is important.)Warner probably gave them the Blue Ribbon reels they had, and whatever they hadn't rereleased, they sent AAP a new duplicate. I don't know a lot about the Guild films folks, but some of their stuff I've seen really sucks, so they may have used secondhand copies.
-Matthew

[Thad Komorowski]

Castle Films owned the rights for making home movies of the Walter Lantz cartunes and Terrytoons. Castle Films used black and white prints, and that's why some of the Lantz films in the trading rotation ("Mother Goose on the Loose", "The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B") are in B&W.


-Thad

[Jack]

I think Matthew is right, WB gave a.a.p. either Technicolor prints or duplicate negatives of the cartoons. a.a.p. then made even more duplicates of those to distribute to TV stations. There hasn't been a pre 1948 cartoon struck from an original negative since WB owned the cartoons.

Selling its huge back catolog of films was sort of a stupid thing for WB to do, IMO. Keep in mind that they didn't just sell off their pre-1948 cartoons, they sold thier live action films too. Had WB at least kept the cartoons, they would have had more unique cartoon packages to syndicate to TV stations, and probably would have made more money. I guess the up side is that the pre-1948 cartoons didn't have to suffer from quite as much editing as the post 1948 packages did.


Jack :D