Our Gang DVD Box Set

[moviepas]

Associated Artists Productions(aap) owned the WB library pre-1948 and after 1958 it was taken over by UA. AAP had their TM put on their Popeye cartoons altering the original titles. Thru various problems UA went broke and merged into MGM & then they had lots of problems we are all familiar with bad investors like Pathe Communications & the runaway Australian the late Chrostopher Skase who also involved himself in Hal Roach & color technology for b&w movies.

Unlike some others MGM, themselves, did not lease their backlog to other distributors for TV and not all titles went into the package such as Wizard of Oz & GWTW although in Australia the network had a claim for those two titles when they were released for TV. In fact, at the local Melbourne station with contract had notices around the building about not copying GWTW when the title was scheduled to come to them. I understand there was some kind of delay before they actually got it. As I have state before we never seemed to see the Golden Dawn titles on Australian TV at the time from any of the US producers. The um&m TV Corp butchered titled Paramount shorts were shown including the cartoons, the WB titles & MGM shorts or at least some of them in series like Crime Doesn't Pay, Fitzpatrick's Travels. We got the Columbia shorts & the Our Gang as Little Rascals but also the MGM-owned & produced Our Gang, Hearst Metrotone news as subject cutdowns as News of the Day & so on.

Whilst we got the Andy Hardy & Kildare/Gillespie series, I don't recall ever seeing a Maisie film to this day & wonder when WAC are going to correct this situation on DVD-R. The Melbourne station started the package with three evening Movie slots showing the MGM titles(Wed, Fri, Sun) & one had the generic title of Academy Theatre. The package was just over 700 titles & included some 50s titles still in MGM distribution like the Jose Ferrer starrer, Moulin Rouge from Romulus-Remus in the UK. The station also had the WB pre-1948s & shorts & it was this package that showed me the history of Hollywood & my interest to this date. They showed these two back to back every weekday during one Christmas/Summer holiday period when the outside heat kept us indoors until evening whilst fires raged in the hills. Incidentally, the TV transmission towers for all our then 3 TV stations were in those hills. I have mentioned before that the station showed trailers for the films and the WB/First National definitely had the company logos at the state of those trailers of which I see none on those I have today in my collection.

All the Paramount films on another station had the MCA fanfare logo which was later removed on later prints that went onto single title sale to any station that wanted to show them. Occasionally in recent years the MCA logo was still on a print. All Paramount titles were damaged in some way with cue marks often every few mins & a single tram line abut 25-30% in on many prints. Never found out what happened there. Gulliver's Travels was in the Paramount package at the start & shown(in b&w) one Sunday night at a 7.30pm special timeslot. I don't remember Hoppity/Mr Bug being shown.

Disney's were shown as cut ups in Disneyland which contract the former MGM-lessee still holds today(although the station has been thru a few ownerships since then due firstly to new rules about TV station & newspaper ownership in the same market and in this case it was started when Murdoch tookover the paper that owned the station & had another station etc etc). The Disneyland title remained after Disney moved from ABC to NBC in USA & the title change in US to Wonderful World of Color. We had no color TV then so Disneyland remained the title.

[MikeH0714]

It is my great pity that Roach took his stuff back and took the path he did. MGM did have those negatives until that time & supplied the prints to moviehouses that they distributed, although Roach did have their own lab also. Had MGM kept this material & maybe bought outright the rights to the material & not just the name Our Gang & retained the other L&H they did give back then that debacle on the ?"forthcoming"? L&H set would not have happened, & we would be talking about something else. All conjecture today but a tragedy in film terms. Many a studio has returned negatives for one reason or another & regretted it. And stuff left at commercial labs, particularly independents at Technicolor around the world, has been junked when storage fees cease & letters remain unanswered as was their policy at Technicolor, for example.

Then again, if the negatives <i>had</i> remained at Metro, many might possibly have gone up in the great MGM vault fire circa 1950, and we'd be out much, much more than "Hat's Off" and a complete reel two of "Battle of the Century."

[moviepas]

Might be so but then there has been a confusion in dates etc on fires at MGM. I would like to read a definitive article on the two I know of, the one you refer to sometime in the early 1950s & one later. The latter is supposed to have lost London After Midnight and The Rogue Song.


The 50s one was supposed to be a picture negative vault of shorts(hmmm) & bits & pieces but the sound negatives were said to be elsewhere on the lot. This information was mentioned on some laserdiscs when using only audio from various songs cut from MGM musicals, for instance.

Although no one has said so, I note that I don't seem to have seen any MGM test reels anywhere. I have seen tests from other companies (besides GWTW), particularly TCF.

Unfortunately, we are not immune to these fires even today with all the technology we have now & archives cannot restore what they have quick enough to protect what they have from any form of deterioration. The Universal fire was one such & nothing really came out that I read that told the real story of what might have been lost permanently. They say everything was digitalised & stored near Philly. But was it?

[BixB]

The latter is supposed to have lost London After Midnight and The Rogue Song.

Just for clarification. The loss of THE ROGUE SONG in this instance would have been a print, correct? Technicolor's policy was to maintain the negatives and the studios only retained prints. I always assumed that the negative of THE ROGUE SONG was destroyed by Technicolor along with all the other two strip negatives they housed, or did MGM acquire it before the purge?

[Kelly]

Here in SO CAL For years and years Our gang shorts were on Saturday morning on KTLA Channel 5 here in SO CAL that thing to watch on Saturday morning usually came around the 12 noon or 1pm in the afternoon I do remember OUr Gang

[Scoundrel]

From a post at Amazon:

"This first release is NOT merely a reissue of the first disc of the 2008 box set which presented all 80 of the Hal Roach produced sound shorts. This is a complete course correction of that set, which purported to be remastered, restored and uncut and it was none of those things. This disc fixes the errors on that set by presenting the first 10 Roach shorts with their original titles returned (many on the original set had Blackhawk reissue titles!) and they are now truly uncut ..."

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Rascals-Vo ... 82&sr=1-10

[gjohnson]

So Vivendi Entertainment first releases a slap dash set of all 80 Our Gang talkie shorts using old Blackhawk and TV prints and has the chutzpah to call them restored and uncut - and now they return to the project and contritely try to atone for that by releasing an 8 vol. set in which each short is now truly cleaned up and remastered?

If this is on the level I'm all for it. I've always owned the entire Cabin Fever set on VHS so I would love to have a comparable set on DVD but so far I'm not finding a lot of corroboration on-line outside of this anonymous poster on Amazon (well...he's anonymous to me).

[sethb]

At best, this sounds more like a reissue (of the Cabin Fever VHS versions) than a restoration.

But even so, if it's accurate, it's still a welcome development, since it would be nice to have these shorts on DVD instead of videotape. I'll be interested to see what's REALLY in these "new" sets!! SETH

[gjohnson]

I agree that if these are the Cabin Fever prints then that would be truly welcomed. That set was remastered from LOC's 35 mm prints. Hard to complain about that. Three DVD's were released early in the decade using those Cabin Fever prints but then they quit (Thank you Hallmark). Those DVD's did not go in order of release. This new 8 vol. set. will.

[Jim Roots]

And they STILL won't be captioned!

Which means they are still NOT a definitive edition!



Jim

[moglia]

So Vivendi Entertainment first releases a slap dash set of all 80 Our Gang talkie shorts using old Blackhawk and TV prints and has the chutzpah to call them restored and uncut - and now they return to the project and contritely try to atone for that by releasing an 8 vol. set in which each short is now truly cleaned up and remastered?

If this is on the level I'm all for it. I've always owned the entire Cabin Fever set on VHS so I would love to have a comparable set on DVD but so far I'm not finding a lot of corroboration on-line outside of this anonymous poster on Amazon (well...he's anonymous to me).

From Mark an admin at littlerascals.proboards.com

Having scanned all the shorts, we have a definitive DVD collection of the Hal Roach talking shorts!

As for Bear Shooters and Washee Ironee, the few seconds missing are still missing. Cabin Fever always had this copy of Bear Shooters. But I'm surprised Cabin Fever didn't junk the first remastering of Washee Ironee with the missing scene and just keep the 100% complete copy. But if you already have the Cabin Fever DVD (Volume 5&6), the complete copy is there.

http://littlerascals.proboards.com/inde ... 998&page=1


After reading the forum topic on the rascals board I ordered all 7 - was able to find them for under $5 each with free shipping. Still not definitive but a lot closer than we got before. Vivendi not offering trade-ins for their fraudulently advertised box is criminal IMHO.

[sethb]

I was in Sam's Club today and saw Volume 1 and Volume 7 of the "new" Little Rascals series on sale for $5 each. I can only assume that Volumes 2-6 will also show up on their shelves at some point.

Volume 7 has the FOLLIES OF 1938, one of my favorites. It has a great story line, excellent production values and Henry Brandon, even if the number with the tap-dancing train porters is now not exactly PC.

If the transfers in these editions are in fact as they are claimed/rumored to be, that's a pretty good deal. SETH

[BixB]

Noticed on Amazon Vol. 1 through 7 are available new from 3rd party vendors for less than $4 each. I've had very good luck buying through these vendors in the past. Seems like a pretty sweet deal to me.

[gjohnson]

Volume 7 has the FOLLIES OF 1938, one of my favorites. It has a great story line, excellent production values and Henry Brandon, even if the number with the tap-dancing train porters is now not exactly PC.

No. Porters actually tap danced back then. It's all perfectly legit.

[Doug Sulpy]

Got 'em today and scanned through Volume 1... and, as expected, all the films have the original titles.

One question, though... anyone know why some of the shorts have the MGM info blacked out during the credits... but other shorts don't?

[BixB]

One question, though... anyone know why some of the shorts have the MGM info blacked out during the credits... but other shorts don't?

My guess would be that the original titles did not exist complete and they had to substitute a reissue title for the restoration.

I haven't bought the new set yet but I do have the Image LD boxed sets and I was curious as to why the MGM lion's roar was muted on some of the prints and not the others. 'Be curious to know if it's that way on the new sets.

[Jim Reid]

I haven't bought the new set yet but I do have the Image LD boxed sets and I was curious as to why the MGM lion's roar was muted on some of the prints and not the others. 'Be curious to know if it's that way on the new sets.

I have seen some early talkie MGM shorts where the lion's roar was also muted. I wonder if that's the way if was originally released?

Got my discs today also. I'm going to transfer them to the box set and send those discs to my little nieces in Arkansas. They don't care about original opening titles or if the lion's roar is muted.

[sethb]

I finally succumbed and bought Volume 7 of the new Little Rascals single-disc sets at Sam's Club today for $5. Now I have about five different versions of the same shorts on different DVD's (including that smacked-up set that Genius put out a few years ago).

As noted in this thread, the shorts do have all the original MGM/Roach main titles, and it looks like RHI has done a pretty good job of assembling and transferring the shorts to DVD. It's pretty amazing actually -- 17 shorts on one DVD for $5. Who'd have thunk it?? SETH

[Salty Dog]

Okay, so now that the single discs with corrected titles and edits have been out for a while, has any Our Gang fanatic out there compiled a disc-by-disc and film-by-film comparison of the differences between the single disc issues and the box set? I know these are cheap, but since I already have the entire box (and a bunch of Cabin Fever discs as well) I'd rather not get all the discs if there are only some which are an improvement.

[Jim Reid]

Nope. I bought all the cheap discs, replaced the box set discs with them, then sent the discs I didn't want to my niece for her little girls.

[moglia]

Okay, so now that the single discs with corrected titles and edits have been out for a while, has any Our Gang fanatic out there compiled a disc-by-disc and film-by-film comparison of the differences between the single disc issues and the box set? I know these are cheap, but since I already have the entire box (and a bunch of Cabin Fever discs as well) I'd rather not get all the discs if there are only some which are an improvement.

I attempted that over the summer at the rascal's board but the effort was mostly stillborn.

http://littlerascals.proboards.com/inde ... hread=1021" target="_blank

Problem is I'm really not enough of a fan to drive the effort nor spend [or have] time to do it myself. Another issue is to keep it focused to the official and "easy" to acquire DVD's once PD discs are introduce it becomes a can of worms to track them down etc.


In case anyone here has the knowledge to spearhead the project, here is my post from the littlerascal board:

Hi,

Now that we finally have a 'passable' DVD complete set of the talkies in the form of the new individual discs, I'm wondering what is the definitive version on DVD for each of the shorts.....

I'd like to compile a list of the definitive version of each talking short on DVD. So I/we can compile our own Master DVDr sets.


By definitive here is my proposed criteria:

1) Completeness - I find this to be paramount, unless somehow the more complete version is of very poor video quality

2) Authenticity - Original title screens, etc.

3) Video Quality - Best picture and bit rate. Any short in which there is pixalation to me is unacceptable, as well as any that have had digital noise reduction applied.

4) Audio Quality - least important to me but in event of tie for above this is the decider

5) Maltin introduction - all things being close to equal any that have it in my mind is the way to go

DVD's to choose from:

1) Cabin Fever 6 DVD set
2) The 3 Hallmark DVD's - there were only 3 correct?
3) Genius 8 DVD Box set
4) the 7 new Individual "corrected" Vivendi/RHI DVD's

To make this effort less daunting. My feeling is we do it in groups of 10 shorts starting at the first talkie.

So anyone interested? Suggestions? Without the rest of you this won't be possible as my knowledge of what is complete and authentic/original is severely lacking.

[Jim Roots]

Do any of those four sets that moglia listed have captioning?

Jim

[Ralph Celentano]

I bought the Our gang box set for just $29.86 (tax included) at a close out. I would not have paid any more for it.