Official Films, Incorporated (Inc.) was founded by Leslie Winik in 1939 to produce educational shorts. Soon, after buying some negatives of public-domain Keystone Chaplin films, the company found itself in the 16mm/8mm home movie business. [1] [2]
Official Films, Incorporated (Inc.) was founded by Leslie Winik in 1939 to produce educational shorts. Soon, after buying some negatives of public-domain Keystone Chaplin films, the company found itself in the 16mm/8mm home movie business. [1] [2]
It obtained several dozen cartoons from Ub Iwerks and Van Beuren. Six Flip the Frog cartoons were released from the Iwerks studios (Castle Films would later license the Iwerks ComiColor films). These kept the original series and film titles. Official Films retitled the Van Beuren cartoons and changed the name of Cubby Bear to "Brownie Bear". The human Tom and Jerry characters were renamed "Dick and Larry" to avoid confusion with MGM's cat and mouse characters Tom and Jerry.
In addition to cartoons, Official offered sports films, newsreels (as the "News Thrills" series), and specialties including a souvenir film of the 1939 New York World's Fair (which remained available until 1980). Another Official perennial, also in continual release until 1980, was Broadway Handicap, originally released theatrically in 1935 as an audience-participation game like Screeno. Official's home-movie version adapted the set of horse-racing films into a family board game, with printed betting slips and play money accompanying the visual action of the films.
A popular wartime home movie was Schichlegruber [sic] Does the Lambeth Walk (Assisted by the Gestapo "Hep Cats"), an Americanized reprint of British filmmaker Charles A. Ridley's trick film Lambeth Walk: Nazi Style (1941). Ridley re-edited clips of Adolf Hitler and Nazi troops from the propaganda film Triumph of the Will, using back-and-forth reverse printing and special splicing to make it appear that the troops were doing the popular Lambeth Walk dance step.
Most of Official's home-movie releases were in the one-reel, 10-minute length, which was then the industry standard. The company experimented with longer-length, 20-minute subjects in the 1940s. A few independently produced musicals with Lena Horne or Ethel Waters were reprinted by Official. In 1945 Official issued some comedy shorts released theatrically in 1937-38 by E. W. Hammons's Educational Pictures; these starred Willie Howard, Bert Lahr, singers Niela Goodelle and Lee Sullivan, and Imogene Coca. In 1949, Official licensed a number of short subjects from Columbia Pictures; the two-reel, 20-minute comedies featured Andy Clyde, El Brendel, Buster Keaton, Charley Chase, Johnny Arthur and Tom Kennedy, and Johnny Downs. Official added other Columbia short subjects: cartoons with Krazy Kat and Scrappy, and "Community Sing" and "Famous Bands" musicals.
In the late 1940s, Robert R. Young's Pathé Industries acquired Official; through which it obtained home-movie rights to the Young-owned Producers Releasing Corporation's feature films. Most of these PRC subjects were issued as extra-length featurettes running 30 to 40 minutes each, including westerns retitled "Bronco Buckaroos" starring Dave O'Brien and James Newill, and Buster Crabbe and Al (Fuzzy) St. John, and mysteries starring Hugh Beaumont or Alan Curtis.
Official also purchased the backlog of the Soundies Distributing Corporation of America, releasing numerous three-minute musicals. Most were new reprints, issued individually or in three-film compilations ("Musical Film Revues"), but Official also sold used prints of Soundies that had seen service in coin-operated movie jukeboxes of the 1940s. [3]
In 1950, Official licensed Hal Roach's Our Gang comedies for home-movie release; due to trademark conflicts involving the names "Our Gang" and "The Little Rascals", Official gave the series a generic name: "Hal Roach's Famous Kids Comedies".
Official became an early syndicator of theatrical cartoons for television. The company also packaged its Soundies musicals for television, under the title "Music Hall Varieties." Official later also syndicated live-action television series such as Peter Gunn , Yancy Derringer , The Adventures of Robin Hood , Decoy, H.G. Wells: The Invisible Man , Mr. Lucky , The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, Four Star Playhouse, The Buccaneers, Colonel March of Scotland Yard, The Stu Erwin Show , My Little Margie , Rocky Jones Space Ranger, Deadline, and the original Biography during this period. [4]
With the company concentrating on TV syndication, Official's home-movie operations diminished in the 1950s and 1960s; many older items were discontinued and few if any new titles were added, except for a silent 8mm documentary on Marilyn Monroe edited from "Biography." By the late 1960s, Official's TV syndication business had also dwindled, with an aging backlog of black-and-white shows and with no new series to offer; the company became inactive. Official Films continued to fill orders for its home-movie line until 1980. The catalog was then restricted to the company's all-time best-sellers, with many titles from the late 1940s still in print.[ citation needed ]
From 1969 to 1971, the company was known as Official Industries. In the 1980s, Official Films was acquired by International Creative Exchange. In 1994, A&E acquired the original Biography series from ICE; A&E Networks also acquired Battle Line from ICE in 1999. The Official Films library is currently controlled by Multicom Entertainment Group [5] and the Peter Rodgers Organization.[ citation needed ]
Ubbe Ert Iwerks, known as Ub Iwerks, was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician, known for his work with Walt Disney Animation Studios in general, and for having worked on the development of the design of the character of Mickey Mouse, among others. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Iwerks grew up with a contentious relationship with his father, who abandoned him as a child. Iwerks met fellow artist Walt Disney while working at a Kansas City art studio in 1919.
The Alice Comedies are a series of animated/live-action shorts created by Walt Disney in the 1920s, in which a live action little girl named Alice and an animated cat named Julius have adventures in an animated landscape. The shorts were the first work by what ultimately became The Walt Disney Company.
The golden age of American animation was a period in the history of U.S. animation that began with the popularization of sound synchronized cartoons in 1928, began to decline around 1957, and ended by 1969, when theatrical animated shorts started to lose popularity to the newer medium of television. Animated media from after the Golden Age were produced on cheaper budgets and with more limited animation techniques by companies such as Terrytoons, UPA, Famous Studios, Jay Ward Productions, Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, Rankin/Bass and Filmation. In artefact, the history of animation became very important in the United States.
A soundie is a three-minute American musical film displaying a performance. Soundies were produced between 1940 and 1946 and have been referred to as "precursors to music videos". Soundies exhibited a variety of musical genres in an effort to draw a broad audience. The shorts were originally viewed in public places on "Panorams": coin-operated, 16mm rear projection machines. Panorams were typically located in businesses like nightclubs, bars, and restaurants. Due to World War II, Soundies also featured patriotic messages and advertisements for war bonds. More adult shorts, such as burlesque and stripteases, were produced to appeal to soldiers on leave.
While the history of animation began much earlier, this article is concerned with the development of the medium after the emergence of celluloid film in 1888, as produced for theatrical screenings, television and (non-interactive) home entertainment.
Republic Pictures Corporation was an American film studio corporation that originally operated from 1935 to 1967, based in Los Angeles, California. It had production and distribution facilities in Studio City, as well as a movie ranch in Encino.
A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits". In the United States, short films were generally termed short subjects from the 1920s into the 1970s when confined to two 35 mm reels or less, and featurettes for a film of three or four reels. "Short" was an abbreviation for either term.
The Van Beuren Corporation was a New York City-based animation studio that produced theatrical cartoons as well as live-action short-subjects from the 1920s to 1936.
Tom and Jerry are fictional characters that starred in a series of early sound cartoons produced by the Van Beuren Studios, and distributed by RKO Pictures. The series lasted from 1931 to 1933.
Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two-color motion picture process that was based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and the 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel and Alan M. Gundelfinger, and its various formats were in use from 1932 to 1955.
Associated Artists Productions, Inc. (a.a.p.) later known as United Artists Associated was an American distributor of theatrical feature films and short subjects for television. Associated Artists Productions was the copyright owner of the Popeye the Sailor shorts by Paramount Pictures, and the pre-1950 Warner Bros. Pictures film library, notably the pre-August 1948 color Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated shorts, and the black-and-white Merrie Melodies shorts from Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, excluding Lady, Play Your Mandolin!.
Aesop's Fables is a series of animated short subjects, created by American cartoonist Paul Terry. Produced from 1921 to 1933, the series includes The Window Washers (1925), Scrambled Eggs (1926), Small Town Sheriff (1927), Dinner Time (1928), and Gypped in Egypt (1930). Dinner Time is the first cartoon with a synchronized soundtrack ever released to the public. The series provided inspiration to Walt Disney to found the Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri, where he created Mickey Mouse.
Castle Films was a film company founded in California by former newsreel cameraman Eugene W. Castle (1897–1960) in 1924. Originally, Castle Films produced industrial and advertising films. Then in 1937, the company pioneered the production and distribution of 8 mm and 16 mm films for home projection, moving its principal office to New York City. It became a subsidiary of Universal Pictures and was eventually renamed Universal 8 from 1977 before folding in the early 1980s due to competition from home video.
Reg'lar Fellers is a long-running newspaper comic strip adapted into a feature film, a radio series on the NBC Red Network, and two animated cartoons. Created by Gene Byrnes (1889–1974), the comic strip offered a humorous look at a gang of suburban children. Syndicated from 1917 to January 18, 1949, Byrnes' strip was collected into several books. Branding also extended to such items as baseball bats and breakfast cereal.
Commonwealth Pictures was a motion picture company that primarily dealt with reissues of old features and shorts.
The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio was an American animation studio operated by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) during the Golden Age of American animation. Active from 1937 until 1957, the studio was responsible for producing animated shorts to accompany MGM feature films in Loew's Theaters, which included popular cartoon characters Tom, Jerry, Droopy, Butch, Spike, Tyke, and Barney Bear.
Blackhawk Films, from the 1950s through the early 1980s, marketed motion pictures on 16mm, 8mm and Super 8 film. Most were vintage one- or two-reel short subjects, usually comedies starring Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and other famous comedy series of the past. Blackhawk also offered newsreels, documentaries, and silent feature films. With the rise of the video market in the early 1980s, Blackhawk began producing video versions of many of their titles in 1981 and within a few years no longer manufactured film copies. The company was later purchased by Republic Pictures in 1985, and the film elements still later by archivist David Shepard.
Little Black Sambo is a 1935 Cinecolor animated film with sound. Released on February 6, 1935, the short is based on the controversial 1899 children's book The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman. This film was created at the Ub Iwerks Studio and released by Celebrity Productions. The film marked the first appearance of an unnamed dog who appeared in three of Iwerks' films.
When the Cat's Away is a Mickey Mouse short animated film first released on May 3, 1929, as part of the Mickey Mouse film series. It was directed by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks and Ben Sharpsteen. It was the sixth Mickey Mouse short to be produced, the third of that year. In this cartoon, Mickey and Minnie are the size of regular mice, and Tom Cat is the size of a person.
Winston Singleton Sharples was an American composer known for his work with animated short subjects, especially those created by the animation department at Paramount Pictures. In his 35-year career, Sharples scored more than 700 cartoons for Paramount and Famous Studios, and composed music for two Frank Buck films, Wild Cargo (1934) and Fang and Claw (1935).
 | This article about a film studio is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |