NitrateVille.com

Most of us know that certain MGM titles have never been run on TCM because of problems with underlying story rights: Letty Lynton, Night Flight, and Christopher Bean are the most famous examples, and I think maybe Escapade falls into that category too.

But other titles, particularly from the early sound years, were aired at least a few times on TCM in about the 1994-98 period and have utterly vanished since. It's been quite a while since Men of the North, The Great Meadow, It's a Great Life or In Gay Madrid (among others) have aired. Someone on the TCM board inquired about The Trial of Mary Dugan, and was informed that there was a problem with the story rights, at least as interpreted under the 1990 Stewart vs. Abend decision. Does anyone know if that's the case with the others?

Also, I just thought of something today while reading the thread mentioning The New Adventures of Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford and A Tailor-Made Man: they *shouldn't* have underlying problems, since the source material for both is PD, or so I'm guessing.

Wallingford was based on a series of George Randolph Chester stories published beginning in 1908-ish and adapted into a musical by George M. Cohan in 1910. There were previous films featuring the character in 1915 for Wharton/Pathé, in 1916 in Australia, and in 1921 for Cosmopolitan/Paramount.

A Tailor-Made Man derives ultimately from the 1908 Hungarian play A Szerencse Fia by Gábor Drégely. It was adapted into an English-language play by Harry James Smith in 1917 and Charles Ray filmed it for UA release in 1922.

Now, none of these previous versions in print or on stage/film should still be protected by copyright, at least AFAIK. The Hungarian play might be a question mark; Drégely died in 1944, and I'm not sure what Hungarian law says about how long a work is protected after the death of the author.
I don't know what condition the Tailor-Made Man film elements are in, but the 30s AFI catalogue (compiled and researched in the early 90s) has a "print viewed" notation by it, so it's still around. Can anyone comment on its status, or any of the too-numerous queries I've posed?

-Harold

Care to explain the issues surrounding Night Flight??

It's a Myrna film I've yet to see, but I know little about its history.

Adding to the list, IT'S A WISE CHILD (1931), said to be one of Marion Davies' best films, and a racy pre-code as well.

The Stranger's Return is one I suspect falls into this group, though I don't know for certain. All I know is, it played TNT but never TCM.

myrnaloyisdope wrote:Care to explain the issues surrounding Night Flight??

It's a Myrna film I've yet to see, but I know little about its history.

The original novel was by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; I suspect there's a snag with its copyright or with his estate.

-Harold

How about the films that were shot in Spanish, French and German, between 1930 and 1931. And I'm not talking about the Garbo version of ANNA CHRISTIE.

Among them are parallel version to talkies and a remakes of silent films that were not shot in English. In particular, I would love to be able to see WU LI CHANG.

On the subject of The Stranger's Return, well it's criminal that it hasn't been shown. One of the great forgotten gems of the era.

Wu Li Chang does sound pretty interesting. I'd never heard of it.

It's not an MGM property but I'd love to see the French version of The Crowd Roars, starring Jean Gabin(!) in the Jimmy Cagney role.

myrnaloyisdope wrote:Care to explain the issues surrounding Night Flight??

It's a Myrna film I've yet to see, but I know little about its history.

Just a bit of trivia here. Night Flight was Orson Welles' favorite novel.

radiotelefonia wrote:How about the films that were shot in Spanish, French and German, between 1930 and 1931. And I'm not talking about the Garbo version of ANNA CHRISTIE.

Among them are parallel version to talkies and a remakes of silent films that were not shot in English. In particular, I would love to be able to see WU LI CHANG.

Practically none of them still exist. The foreign versions of multi-language films were usually the first to be tossed into the bath. I know that the Spanish Charlie Chan film, ERAN TRECE, still exists, as does the French-language version of FOLIES BERGERE. A few L & H titles, too. And DRACULA, of course. But most of the good stuff was destroyed decades ago.

Harold Aherne wrote:

myrnaloyisdope wrote:Care to explain the issues surrounding Night Flight??

It's a Myrna film I've yet to see, but I know little about its history.

The original novel was by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; I suspect there's a snag with its copyright or with his estate.

-Harold

The snag is that he was lost at sea or something like that, so the date of his death cannot be confirmed, which flumoxes its chances to go P.D. His estate hasn't been exactly keen to get the movie back out there, for some inexplicable reason (God knows we at Cinecon have tried for years.)

As one of the lucky few to have seen it, I can report that it's quite good, but despite the amazing cast, it falls short of GRAND HOTEL and DINNER AT EIGHT greatness.

Mike S.

"The snag is that he was lost at sea or something like that,"

Shot down by a German aircraft, while engaged in an aerial reconaissance mission over southern France in World War II. What is almost certainly his aircraft has been found in the Med in recent years and a credible report from the likely adversary, who was still alive also exists.

A Google search will give much more information about him.
This means he is dead for over 60 years, but no body was recovered.

Just posted at TCM's Twitter page:

Night Flight ('33)--not seen in theaters since 1942, and not avail on DVD--will be shown at the TCM Classic Film Fest next April.

-Harold

Night Flight was one of the MGM titles that was listed as missing/lost some years ago & it suddenly appeared as having been found. It may have been an error in the first instance if there was a rights problem. In my mind most rights problems are usually nonsense. Warner had trouble with The Letter(1929) & had to redo the Bette Davis version DVD because it was included. Then we got the Davis in a box set we had to have for the other titles & still no 1929 Paramount version. At least Warners got the King Features right cleared up after spending time & money on the likes of Popeye & others. We wont go down the Raymond Rohauer path here but he was a master of rights he could not have had.

moviepas wrote:Night Flight was one of the MGM titles that was listed as missing/lost some years ago & it suddenly appeared as having been found.

A friend loaned me a video tape of "Night Flight" 10-15 years ago, and I think the source might have been Turner (the friend was doing some work with them at the time). The film was interesting but average, with some spectactular shots of the plane flying through the mountains. My interest in it was Stothart's music score, which was not at all typical of the sentimental stuff usually demanded of him by MGM.

Another title that MGM owned, tied up in legal limbo, is the Deanna Durbin Universal "Spring Parade." Jan-Christopher Horak wrote an article about this in "Austria Literature" Vol. 32, Number 4, 1999." I don't know if the article is available online, although I have a copy. Copies of the film have floated around on VHS.

I don't know of NIGHT FLIGHT ever being considered lost. It was always in legal rights limbo due to something with the original author's estate.
During my time at Turner/WB it was never legally distributed.