Tweet Sennett restoration preview

I'm sending several of my prints off to Paul Gierucki for video transfer, but I wanted to throw in a restoration of how these things ought to look (and haven't in 80 years).

I posted this to YouTube and Facebook today... here is the opening title to Don't Play Bridge With Your Wife, both as butchered by NTA and then how it originally looked with Paramount titles. Interestingly, the titles are all the same length with only the music being different, so all that's necessary is to find the Sennett opening and re-sync to an NTA print...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKTBL6NI ... e=youtu.be" target="_blank" target="_blank



This is one of the restoration projects that I discussed here in my blog: http://www.drfilm.net/blog/?p=229" target="_blank" target="_blank

OK... I don't come here often, but when I do, I do like to post cool stuff for the Nitrateville folks!

Eric

Excellent! I searched several years to find a print of The Dentist with the original titles. I'd love to find the other Sennett Fields shorts with the Paramount titles!

I'm not sure they do exist with the original Sennett titles. A stray nitrate of The Dentist popped up with the original opening on it. Fortunately, NTA didn't butcher the SOUND, so you can take the picture from The Dentist and replace the NTA visuals, leaving the sound intact. You just sync with the bulldog. Seeing these on video may be the only way it will ever happen.

Eric

I'm curious -- the main title in both runs says "Copyright U.M. & M TV Corp." What relationship does/did UM&M have with Paramount?

I was of the impression that UM&M was a firm that purchased the TV rights to lots of two-reeler shorts in the 1940's and 50's. If so, is this a later 16mm printdown from the 35mm original, and was the main title altered to add UM&M? It's all the more confusing to me because the short begins with an NTA logo, and I thought NTA was another TV-licensing situation.

Can you shed some more light on this? SETH

Paramount sold the rights to most of its short films to NTA. I believe that, as part of the contract, NTA was required to remove the Paramount logos from the prints. They did this by generally freeze-framing the title and putting an NTA logo on the front of it. Some people tell me that this was done only to lavenders, with original negatives untouched.

I don't believe this was always the case, since some of the Betty Boop cartoons I've seen have been permanently altered. I have a 35mm Betty Boop with an NTA title on it.

I know that most of the George Pal films from the 40s have negatives that do survive with the titles intact, but I'm not sure how many of them do.

In any case, the Sennett Paramount logo was standard, so all one needs to do is find an unaltered one (The Dentist survives in nitrate), and replace the picture over the NTA logo, and voila! The sound wasn't changed, only the picture. We can resync the picture to the sound by aligning the barking dog to the sound on the original, and the Paramount fade up corresponds well to the fade up on the sound that was left by NTA.

I think I can be pretty confident, then, that this is the way it looked in 1933. Yes, the NTA copyright is still on it, but I suppose with a little digital handiwork we could take that off, too, and replace it with the original Sennett copyright.

Eric

I'm curious -- the main title in both runs says "Copyright U.M. & M TV Corp." What relationship does/did UM&M have with Paramount?

I was of the impression that UM&M was a firm that purchased the TV rights to lots of two-reeler shorts in the 1940's and 50's. If so, is this a later 16mm printdown from the 35mm original, and was the main title altered to add UM&M? It's all the more confusing to me because the short begins with an NTA logo, and I thought NTA was another TV-licensing situation.

Can you shed some more light on this? SETH

I hate to correct Eric, but U M & M was indeed the outfit that Paramount sold the bulk of their shorts program to for television distribution, then somewhere along the line U M & M either merged into, was swallowed up by, or became NTA, which is why you can find both original UMM and NTA 16mm prints on the Fleisher Cartoons and Paramount shorts, but NTA, though they added their logo at the front over the Paramount logos, they left in the UMM redone opening titles, which is why you find NTA prints that have UMM copyright notices.

All that either UMM ot NTA did was clip off the Paramount logos and Paramount/ Sennett opening titles off the picture negs and put their new recreated titles in place, they didn't touch the soundtracks, which is why you still hear dog barking over the NTA titles on their Sennett prints.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

Yes, what Richard say is correct. I lump them together because they both bastardized the Paramount shorts library.

Which one was Eli Landau part of, Richard, UM&M or NTA? I can never remember.

Yes, what Richard say is correct. I lump them together because they both bastardized the Paramount shorts library.

Which one was Eli Landau part of, Richard, UM&M or NTA? I can never remember.

NTA. But I can't agree that UMM/NTA bastardized the Paramount Shorts Library, most likely, their purchase of it managed to preserve it, and I just don't get that worked up about redone titles. The NTA logo when I was growing up usually meant that something I wanted to see was coming up on television, and the redone UMM titles at least kept the original main title art (including the Paramount Mountain in the background of the Fleischer opening titles). Nobody else put in that much effort until Blackhawk retained the original Hal Roach openers while blotting out the MGM logos. And with Sennett, considering how many different reissue companies he sold his negs too, you are always seeing new and different title cards, some more interesting than the originals.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

Hello everyone! I remember as a kid in the 1950's when NTA was considering being a fourth televison network, dealing with Desilu to produce their planned filmed shows (This is Alice, etc). They went on a TV station buying spree and probably absorbed the UMM library at that time. (around 1958) At the same time they were releasing 35mm prints to theatres, I remember seeing FATAL GLASS OF BEER at the World Theatre in St.Paul MN and it was indeed a 35mm print, with the NTA title in front. NTA was getting to be a big contender (having WNTA-TV in New York, I believe) and also owned Channel 9 in Minneapolis for a year. That was an exciting time!

Just curious as to why these restored titles still have a spliced-in title card that says copyright UM&M TV Corp on it; does the original title card no longer exist for this film?

I get worked up about redone titles.

And, no, the original title card probably no longer exists. The question is whether the original negative still exists and was altered. In many cases it was, in a few, it was not. If original nitrates exist, which sometimes survive, they are around.

The Sennett titles aren't a huge loss, though they're kinda fun. The real loss is the redone titles on Puppetoons, which are so much more fun in the originals.