Flip the Frog

[Gossamer]

I keep reading posts that say Flip the Frog was an MGM cartoon series. It was not MGM: MGM handled distribution of the catoons for Ub Iwerks and Celebrity Productions. While they are most likely PD at this point (just out of curiousity, how often does Cartoon Network air PD material?), they are not MGM cartoons any more than Disney cartoons are Columbia, UA, RKO or Buena Vista cartoons.

[Pietro]

We know, we know.
The Flip cartoons, BTW, are
all not in the public domain.
Only two are.
CN airs Pubic Domain cartoons rarely.
However, they air the PD Betty Boops on
Late Night Black and White very often.

BTW, one more thing did you know that
the company that owns the Flip cartoons
offered to sell them to CN?

-Pietro

[Gossamer]

Considering that you yourself specifically referred to them in a post as MGM cartoons and someone else said that Flip the Frog was MGM's first cartoon star, I thought that my post was both appropriate and necessary. As to whether or not CN acquires broadcast and /or other rights to Flip the Frog, that's another subject altogether. No, I was not aware that they had been offered to CN. Given CN's past efforts in programming acquisition, I suspect Flip the Frog is not likely to be high on the list. I'd much rather see the Pink Panther and related cartoons come back, myself. A package of no more than 37 cartoons doesn't really thrill me all that much.

[Joe Tully]

I think it would be great if CN got them, I would love to see them even if there aren't a whole lot of them. It sounds like an interesting series. Unfortunately, the chances for this are probably pretty slim. CN would only show them on LNB&W, so it's probably not worth it to them.

Just to remind you, the Schlesinger toons were just distributed by WB. So by your reasoning, the earlier LTs and MMs weren't WB cartoon series. What you call them is mostly just a matter of semantics. Call 'em whatever the heck ya want.

[Sogturtle]

Gossamer and all~

I've said it before and I'll say it again... The Flip The Frog cartoons were COPYRIGHTED by the MGM Distributing Corp.. As such it is impossible to argue that they are or are not MGM cartoons... They fall in a special category!

MGM considered the cartoons to be theirs to the extent of affixing the roaring Leo, and advertising them as their cartoons. But the ultimate owner was of course Pat Powers. As I said before it is an exact parallel to the MGM/Hal Roach Laurel and Hardy films. But of course we are all welcome to believe or disbelieve whatever we want.

[Nelson]

Flip The Frog was indeed MGM'S very first cartoon star, whether you want to admit it or not, MGM never had any kind of cartoon releases during the silent film period, and Louis B. Mayer wanted to sign Dinsey to a contract back in 1929, but backed off with the ugly dispute between Disney and Powers.

The Flip The Frog series was the first cartoon series for MGM PERIOD!!!, and it was a minimal success for the studio, just like with Hal Roach providing two reelers fro the studio.A good majority of the Flip films that surface today, has the MGM logos and eveything else.Even though the studio was distributing Iwerks cartoons they still were an MGM picture.

Flip The Frog was MGM'S very first cartoon series, just like when Hugh Harmon & Rudolph Ising was distributing their cartoons the same way like Iwerks and Powers did for MGM.As a matter of fact, MGM didn't have their very own cartoon studio until the late 30s or early 40s, so this should tell you, that even Harmon & Ising's cartoons were being released through MGM for distribution, and their cartoons are being shown as of this very minute on Cartoon Network. So to simply put it, YES Flip The Frog "SHOULD"
be on CN because the films were an MGM picture just like Harmon & Ising's cartoons also.

[Gossamer]

Some final comments from me on this anent some comments made on this string:
Flip the Frog was in production and there were at least two cartoons in the can before the distribution deal with MGM ws entered into. Iwerks would have made Flip the Frog regardless of who handled distribution-so long as someone did. The studio existed before the deal. Harman-Ising and Leon Schlesinger began production of their cartoons after securing agreements from MGM and Warner Brothers, respectively, for those studios from the start. Harman-Ising were essentially hired by MGM after they left WB. Schlesinger essentially entered into a partnership with WB. He approached them with the idea of doing cartoons, where he would produce the cartoons and they would distribute them. The cartoons were produced on the WB lot, used WB music and were basically funded by WB. Had Schlesinger not had a deal, he would not have produced cartoons. They were essentially made for WB.

Sogturtle is probably right in saying the Flip the Frog cartoons are a special case. The way copyrights are obtained, particularly back almost 70 years ago, has to be understood. Copies of all materials must be sent to the Library of Congress along with all appropriate fees for assignment of copyright protection for a requisite time-frame (then, it was 28 years, I believe) and, given the nature of things, it was easier for the distributor to do this for everything it had distribution rights to, as they had copies of everything anyway. Magazines, particularly fiction ones, routinely, even today, copyright the contents of an issue all at once and copyrights revert to the author. In all liklihood, that's what was done with Flip the Frog.

As to Flip the Frog being MGM's first star, if I disagree with that statement at all, it would be calling him a star, not the MGM part of the statment. I never said he shouldn't be on CN. I have no great feeling either way. But he isn't in the MGM catalogue, CN does not currently have the rights to air most of them and at the present, it's a moot point. BTW, the Our Gang Hal Roach series, distributed by MGM, are not in the MGM catalogue either, else they would be on TCM rather than AMC. Further Deponent Saith Not.

[Argus Sventon]

Time for Professor Argus to explain things here

You're right in the regard that Flip the Frog was MGM's first cartoon star, but like Hal Roach's Our Gang comedies, Metro did not retain full rights to the cartoons.

The Little Rascals shorts air on AMC, because MGM never retained television rights. Also, MGM never retained rights to the Pat Powers cartoons. They were sold for television distribution in the 1950's.

Now, even the Harman-Ising MGM cartoons were sold to a home movie distributor called Pictoreels, but still MGM probably retained television rights to the cartoons.

Loew's, the parent company of MGM, retained distribution rights to Gone With the Wind but not until the mid-40's, did they acquire permanent theatrical rights to GWTW. They had to pay Selznick more money in the 50's, to get the full television rights. Margaret Mitchell actually sold Selznick the television rights in 1936.

I recently acquired a Castle Film print of a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. On the box, it says "TELEVISION AND THEATRICAL RIGHTS RESERVED". Universal did retain those rights of course, even though they owned Castle!

I recall hearing that the MGM Harman-Ising cartoons were sold to a home movie distributor, Pictoreels. But like Universal, Metro retained the television rights.

Clearly if CN can work a deal to get Flip back "in the family", so to speak, they should go for it. Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper were indeed MGM's first sound cartoon stars. However, need I not remind you that Goldwyn Pictures distributed some of J.R. Bray's silent cartoons, but this was before the buy out by Loew's. But for all practical purposes, Flip the Frog was MGM's first cartoon star, regardless!

[Nelson]

Hey Guys, this will be the best way to put it...
When it comes to MGM cartoons, just remember this...IT ALL STARTED WITH A FROG !!!!!! :D :D :D

[Argus Sventon]

As you may have noticed, I posted a poll about Paramount's biggest cartoon star. Clearly, the voters favored Popeye. Now, as we all know, Popeye's cartoons are owned by AOL-TW. If Viacom starts their own cartoon network, the argument should be made that Popeye should be on there.

Flip the Frog's cartoons are owned by Film Preservation Associates, and I'm sure a deal could be worked with them. Now, if we can get CN to do it!

[Nelson]

Cartoon Network "SHOULD" pick up this excellent series of rare "Flip The Frog" cartoons...This would be such a wise idea for the network, and since this has been the year for UB IWERKS, this network would be out of their right minds if they didn't get these classic cartoons.
Mr. GAK, I hope you're reading this....Please do us all a major favor and bring "Flip The Frog" to Cartoon Network, you would put a lot of a smiles to cartoon fans all over the country. :D

[Sogturtle]

Oy vey! A couple more points...

On the subject of "The Little Rascals"/"Our Gang" shorts and their relative ownership... Indie producer Hal Roach decided in the middle Thirties that he would shortly end short-subject production and concentrate totally on feature comedy production. (His erroneous notion was that shorts would soon be unprofitable...) Thus his short subject "stars" Charley Chase, and Our Gang were given the opportunity to make A FEATURE for him (Laurel and Hardy were already in features). Roach adjudged Charley Chase's film to be a failure and immediately fired him! Chase promptly made a monkey out of Roach (sounds like morphing from species to species ;)) by jumping to Columbia and making successful shorts there alongside the Three Stooges. Both MGM and Roach viewed the "Our Gang" as being profitable, one way or the other. Roach thus sold the contracts of the child-actors and the name "Our Gang" and the right to make new comedies to MGM, while he retained ownership of the previous films (sorta like WB selling their pre-'48 toons). When he later permanently sold his original classic shorts outright to a TV distributor, the "Gang" had to be renamed (remember MGM owned the name, thus "The Little Rascals").

Metro went on making NEW "Our Gang" shorts for about 5-6 years after the purchase from Roach. The early ones look and feel indistinguishable from the Roach/MGM films, while the later ones (with young Robert Blake) are morality tales. These were still owned by MGM at the time of the Turner purchase, and were heavily shown on TBS for quite a while as a consequence. (I haven't watched TBS/TNT in ages!!!)

And yepppp, MGM sold the domestic home movie rights to the Harman-Ising toons (pre-'38) to old Pictoreels. Have a 16mm silent print of one of those lurking in and amongst my shtufffff.

Onwards to Viacom. Strongly doubt we'll see AOL-Time-Warner EVER sell the Popeye cartoons back to Paramount [Viacom]. It's too big and too valuable of a cartoon package. Warners buying the Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper toons would be a marvelous deal, something I've always wanted to see. And being a small package would be an easily do-able deal. Something even more do-able would be for Viacom (Viacom-Paramount-CBS) to awaken from their torpor and junk much of the current Nickelodeon programming... And replace it with the VERY SIZABLE library of toons they own from Fleischer (Betty Boop) and from Terrytoons. Summer Redstone are you listening??? ;)

[Jon Cooke]

Well... to be honest, as much as I enjoy Flip the Frog... as far as classic shorts go, I'd much rather see Cartoon Network pick up Walter Lantz or DePatie-Freleng cartoons. Those cartoons would fit in perfectly on the Acme Hour.

And, besides, almost every Flip cartoon can easily be found on DVD. The same can't be said for Woody Woodpecker or the Pink Panther.


-Jon

[Glenn]

In reply to:
And, besides, almost every Flip cartoon can easily be found on DVD


I own both the DVD's of UB Iwerks:Cartoons that time forgot and there are quite a few Flip the Frogs on these DVD's

[Pietro]

Originally posted by Jon Cooke
I'd much rather see Cartoon Network pick up Walter Lantz or DePatie-Freleng cartoons. Those cartoons would fit in perfectly on the Acme Hour.

Yes. I think CN should pick up
the Walter Lantz and DePatie-Freleng
cartoons. But what about LNB&W?
Of course if CN buys the Lantz package they'll
get Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Pooch the Pup
for the show, which is good. But the early
Ub Iwerks shorts would fit in perfectly.

I think that CN should buy the following
cartoon packages:
The Flip the Frog/Willie Whopper Shorts
The Early Fleischer Cartoons (Betty Boop, Screen Songs, Talkartoons, etc.)
The Walter Lantz Cartoons (Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, Chilly Willy, Oswald the Rabbit, etc.)
The DePatie-Freleng Cartoons (Pink Panther, The Ant and the Ardvark, etc.)
The Felix the Cat Cartoons (The Silents) - they can get PD prints of these.

I think that settles it!
Those are the cartoons that
AOL/Time-Warner/Turner should have!

-Pietro

[Nelson]

One can only hope that Cartoon Network brings any kind of classic theatrical cartoon shorts to their channel...But it may be too much to ask for.Cartoon Network should at least bring in some classic cartoons in some format, CN spends money nowadays on their original animation and really doesn't go after the TRUE cartoons, that they should be going after.

CN has money to aquire the Ub Iwerks library or purchase like say, the Fleischer cartoons from Viacom(since the company is not doing a thing the films) or go a little bit further and get the Van Bueren cartoons for their network.Needless to say, that Universal would never sell their entire cartoon library to CN, nor would United Artists(who owns the Pink Panther shorts and the rest of the cartoon library)do the same.

A big and powerful company such as, Viacom could well indeed start their very own "All Toon" channel, considering with the "Nicktoons" along with the other cartoon studios, Terrytoons, Fleischer Studios, Puppetoons, and possibly the Walter Lantz library(for which UNIV/MCA released Paramount titles) for a brand new channel that could compete with CN, Boomerang, and Toon Disney.

But getting back to the "Flip The Frog" sitaution, this would be a perfect fit to the channel's image, towards classic theatrical cartoon shorts, and it would a great way to get rid of those god awful PD prints of the "Betty Boop" cartoons on LNB&W.The Iwerks cartoon collection would be cheap to purchase, than purchasing something like Terrytoons or the entire Paramount cartoon film library, that could cost the network millions of dollars, if they went for those two cartoon studios.

But here is one possibly good thing about all of this, if CN should ever buy the TV rights to the entire Iwerks collection from "Film Preservation Associates" that money the company would get from CN, would go towards preserving more films, that (FPA) the major company could use very much to help save old classic films.

Just Think About It !!!

[Joe Tully]

They should at least get any PD prints of Flip (for the 2 PD ones anywho), Felix, etc. that are out there. This would cost virtually nothing and would add some nice variety. If they can keep showing those same PD Bettys, they can add some more PD prints to break up the monotony.

[Bobby B]

Originally posted by Sogturtle
Metro went on making NEW "Our Gang" shorts for about 5-6 years after the purchase from Roach. The early ones look and feel indistinguishable from the Roach/MGM films, while the later ones (with young Robert Blake) are morality tales. These were still owned by MGM at the time of the Turner purchase, and were heavily shown on TBS for quite a while as a consequence. (I haven't watched TBS/TNT in ages!!!)


I also remember seeing the Our Gang feature "General Spanky" on TNT.

[Jon Cooke]

Originally posted by Nelson
CN has money to aquire the Ub Iwerks library or purchase like say, the Fleischer cartoons from Viacom(since the company is not doing a thing the films) or go a little bit further and get the Van Bueren cartoons for their network.Needless to say, that Universal would never sell their entire cartoon library to CN, nor would United Artists(who owns the Pink Panther shorts and the rest of the cartoon library)do the same.


Well, I wasn't saying they should BUY the Universal or United Artists cartoon libraries outright. I *know* that would never happen. Just obtain the television rights... like they have for Rocky & Bullwinkle. I am all for more variety on LNB&W, and certainly wouldn't mind seeing Flip or Felix on there, but I doubt CN would want to spend extra money on obtaining new material for a show that is only shown once a week in the middle of the night.

Of course, if they can dig up PD Betty Boop prints... they could probably dig up some other PD B&W cartoons (like Felix the Cat) to add a bit more variety to the show. Or, they could show the remainder of the B&W Warner library (Bosko, Buddy, Beans and the Gang, Porky, various one-shots). That could also solve the problem.


-Jon

[J Lee]

My fear about a Viacom cartoon channel would be that they would end up featuring their made-for-TV stars from Nickelodeon (Rugrats, et. al.) and consign any of the classic cartoons they own to the overnight hours.

Still, with the wonders of the VCR and TVIO, that would still make the Terrytoons and Paramount cartoons more accessable than they are today, and it would give Viacom a push towards reacquring their 1950-62 non-Popeye cartoons from the holding company that recently bought the Harvey film library (and if they really, really wanted Popeye, the ones Seymour Kneitel made for King Features in 1960-61 are on about the same level of quality as the theatricals Paramount was releasing at that time -- not a great endorsement, but better than nothing).

It also might actually start a bit of a bidding war between AOL Time-Warner and Viacom for some of the other studios' cartoons (Lantz, Columbia) to fill out the schedules. At least it would be more competitive with CN and more entertaining that the dreck Toon Disney is airing seven days a week.

[Argus Sventon]

My fear about a Viacom cartoon channel would be that they would end up featuring their made-for-TV stars from Nickelodeon (Rugrats, et. al.) and consign any of the classic cartoons they own to the overnight hours.

Nick probably would be more inclined to do that very thing, and show the Nicktoons. As much as I would like to see the Paramount cartoons on Nick or maybe TV Land, that's not going to happen under the present circumstances.

1. The fact that the NTA prints exist, faded, with TV titles. U.M.&M. prints usually aren't faded as bad. Despite UCLA's efforts to fix the Color Classics, it'll take a while to fix the entire Paramount cartoon library. But Paramount, still having, the original negatives, would probably assist in speeding up the process.

2. The popularity of the Nick toons. Clearly, Rugrats movies have led to the return of the Rugrats to Nick. As with the CN Cartoon Cartoons, this is a major thorn in the side.

3. AMC still has the Betty Boop contract, I think.

Ah, but there is one network out there, that no one ever thinks about. It would be the foot in the door for Hunky and Spunky, Heckle and Jeckle, Mighty Mouse, and yes, even Farmer Al Falfa.

THE NATIONAL NETWORK!!!!!!

If we could somehow start a campaign to get some Paramount and Terrytoon cartoons on TNN, even two hours worth on Saturday mornings, it might prove there is some value in the cartoons.

Speaking of Film Preservation Associates, does anyone know if they got the Van Beuren cartoons as well?

[Pietro]

Argus-

Paramount doesn't own their old cartoons, except the 1963-1967 ones. They own Terrytoons, but those are under a 10 year
contract to USA Network (who has not run them in 8 years). That contract should end within a year or two.

-Pietro

[J Lee]

Paramount doesn't own their 1929-50 non-Popeye/Superman cartoons per se, but in the byzentine coportate world that is Viacom, they're owned by Viacom's sister subsidiary, Republic Pictures, which in turn is owned by Spelling Entertainment, which is turn is owned by Viacom. If someone at Viacom wanted to transfer the Republic-owned Paramount cartoons back to the Paramount Pictures division of Viacom, it could be done.

[Sogturtle]

Just a few more reasons for AOL-Time-Warner/CN to buy the Flip The Frog and Willie Whoppers... The stories were largely written by Ben "Bugs" Hardaway,
animation (and inbetweening) was by people like:
Irv Spence (Warners & MGM)
Rudy Zamora (MGM)
Shamus Culhane (Warners)
Grim Natwick
Berny Wolf (MGM)
Rollin "Ham" Hamilton (Warners & MGM)
Ben Clopton (Warners)
Frank Tashlin (Warners)
Virgil Ross (Warners)
Norm Blackburn (Warners)
Robert Stokes (Warners)
Jim Pabian (Warners & MGM)
Tony Pabian (Warners & MGM)
Lou Zukor (Warners)
Morrie Zukor (Warners).
And cel-washing (and brief inbetweening) was by young Chuck Jones.
Musical direction largely by Carl Stalling

So fellers they really are members of the family...