OLIVE FILMS/PARAMOUNT 2012 Releases Announced (2 Viewers)

[Jon Hertzberg]

Still disappointed that the folks at Paramount and Olive continue to over look such gems as The Rat Race(1960), The Pleasure of His Company (1961), My Six Loves (1963), Love with the Proper Stranger (1963), All the Way Home (1963), Wild is the Wind (1957), Ash Wednesday (1973), and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977).

Paramount predicates what is available to Olive. I'd imagine if Olive were offered LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR or LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER, for instance, they'd jump at it. Music licensing issues are what seem to be keeping GOODBAR off DVD and Blu.

 

[Deleted member 372755]

Here's some hopping Paramount gives to Olive Films:

 

[moviepas]

Lovely posters, Feliz but there is a problem. Many of those titles won't be considered by Olive Films because they won't be offered them. Why? Because some of the choice titles, such as The Fleet's In & Incendiary Blonde amongst others don't belong to Paramount/Viacom but rather NBC Universal. Those two I single out I have been wanting on DVD for years and I have never seen Hutton's Blonde in its original Technicolor.

 

[Deleted member 372755]

Thanks for the help. hope universal release some of them.

 

[moviepas]

Thanks Feliz. Only happy to inform if I have information. Universal has so much they could issue and as far as their Paramount holdings go(and they are not all in good shape) I saw so much when they were first released to TV in my country when I was a kid with the old MCA opening logo & fanfare. Gulliver's Travels was in that package then, but, of course, could only be screened in b&w along with other color titles. The interesting fact of the prints then shown in Australia was that most had a black line down the frame about 20-25% in. Never found the answer to this problem and there were many cue marks also, sometimes every five mins that indicates, in this case, they were used elsewhere first and they were US ad breaks. Very annoying. Those lines I have not seen for years on a pre-1948 print in any media and the MCA logo is long gone. We got these often as midday movies which I could only see when the school was closed or Sunday evenings such as the likes of Gulliver, Palm Beach Story as I remember it. I have memories in the early 1960s seeing If I Had a Million on a Monday midday during the summer school break on a day they buried my dad's mom. But I did know this fact and was away in the country with my other grandmother and other family in the country and came back that morning. I watch this with my cousin that time and never saw it gain except for one sequence with Charles Laughton.

Another fact is that I never saw the earliest films of Paramount Talkies or those of other major studios at that time(below 1932) although they were in the packages. So it has been recent DVDs that have filled the gap for some titles where they exist. I don't know why the TV stations here did not show them. If I never get DVDs or Blus of many major older titles then at least I have seen many of them when I was starting to get interested in films and music. Having some wartime local music magazines on austerity poor paper my dad bought at that time helped me learn about wartime musicals from the major US companies that reviewed at the time in that paper. That I now own many of them on DVD was something more than I would ever had hoped for and I guess their preservation was only been possible because of the demands of early TV.


That's my story and I am sticking to it!!!!!

 

[Robin9]

When are the titles listed in the first post going to be released? I'm impatient!

 

[ahollis]

Originally Posted by Jon Hertzberg


Paramount predicates what is available to Olive. I'd imagine if Olive were offered LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR or LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER, for instance, they'd jump at it. Music licensing issues are what seem to be keeping GOODBAR off DVD and Blu.

Watch for Goodbar from Criterion this coming year. Shout wanted it and Paramount said no and not for music right issues.

 

[ahollis]

Originally Posted by Feliz

Thanks for the help. hope universal release some of them.

Most of the sound Paramount films made before December 1, 1949 belong to Universal. MCA purchased the titles (around 700 titles) from a cash strapped Paramount in the early 50's to sell to local stations in movie packages. As time went own MCA merged with Universal and that's why NBC/Universal owns them. There were some titles such as The Buccaneer (1938), Sorry Wrong Number, Samson and Delilah, Miracle at Morgan's Creek, Rope of Sand, Red, Hot, and Blue and a dozen or so more that were made before 1951 that stayed with Paramount for various reasons, with the main one being they were still in release to theatres at the time and making money. As far as The Buccaneer is concerned, they kept that due to DeMille's interest in a remake.

 

[Eric Vedowski]

The original sale happened in 1958. Here's a link to the story as reported in Billboard: http://books.google.com/books?id=PyEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=mca+buys+paramount&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Ew7_ToG6Naj40gHDlYWQDw&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=mca%20buys%20paramount&f=false

 

[ahollis]

Originally Posted by Eric Vedowski

The original sale happened in 1958. Here's a link to the story as reported in Billboard:
http://books.google.com/books?id=PyEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=mca+buys+paramount&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Ew7_ToG6Naj40gHDlYWQDw&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=mca%20buys%20paramount&f=false

Your right it was in early 58 and not the early 50's that MCA purchased the 750 sound titles from Paramount. Paramount had previously sold their cartoons and shorts, and I suspect that the date stuck with me.


On an interesting side note about the sale of those titles, theatre owners across the country, especially the owners of drive-ins and second run double features, tried to buy the films and set up a company for the titles. The reasoning is that they did not want the titles to go to television. After the lost that battle, they booked as many titles as possible before they were sold to local stations to prove that there was life left in the older titles.

 

[ahollis]

Here is an interesting page from Box Office Magazine where Paramount says it will continue to distribute some of the pre 1948 films. Also remarks by Cecil B DeMille concerning the use of the term reissue and in the bottom box an intelligent remark stating that if theatres and film companies want to fight against television, then make new product that can not be shown on TV and not rely on reissues that are available to local channels. The Paramount piece also make mention of the theatres failed attempt at getting the Paramount titles away from MCA.

 

[cineMANIAC]

I'm hoping ESCAPE FROM ZAHRAIN gets the hi-def treatment. I haven't enjoyed a film this much in a long time.

 

[cadavra]

Very happy about IT'S ONLY MONEY and WHO'S MINDING THE STORE?, two of Jer's very best (both directed by Tashlin). I could never understand why they weren't part of the original ten released by Paramount. Mike S.