Re: The Soupy Sales Collection
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Originally Posted by Michael Alden
I'd love to know which 15 segments of Diver Dan are on the set. I have the first 34 that a friend transferred from film many years ago. I actually spoke with the son of the show's creator last year and he was looking to make a deal for the series. Believe it or not the show was shot in color and he holds the masters. This release looks to be a PD one though.
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Yes, "Diver Dan" was originally produced and aired in color.
Ray Rayner used to show the segments on "Ray Rayner And His Friends" on WGN-TV in Chicago. Ray featured lots of cartoons, most memorably the Warner Bros. cartoons, and certain cartoons and segments would be on for a while, then be switched for something else. Ray used to sometimes read letters from viewers on the air. One time, someone asked why he wasn't showing "Diver Dan" any more. Ray said WGN had let their license lapse for the films, but after a lot of viewers requested it again, they looked into getting it back but (as I recall) there was some issue with finding out who actually owned it, or maybe two parties were claiming ownership. Anyway, Ray never showed it again. There was a guy in Indiana who operated under the name "TV Lost And Found" and he used to compile tapes he'd sell at conventions and what not. Mostly musical shows from the 1960s, but also a lot of animated shows and local Chicago TV material (which he somehow nicked from the archives at the Museum of Broadcast Communications, or had someone get the stuff for him, but that's where it came from). Some of his stuff was telecined directly from 16mm film prints. He had a tape with a couple of Diver Dans in color, plus some silent behind-scenes home movie footage, also in color. A company called "Nostalgia Family Video" put out a series of VHS tapes of Diver Dan, all in black and white. I have some "Funny Company" cartoons in 16mm, not too many, maybe about 10 or so, and most are in color. I am told they are no longer under copyright. I see on some recent VCI DVDs such as Popeye, Superman, etc., they have an "extra" which is called "animation preview" or something along those lines, and there are clips from some DVDs they already have released, such as "Somewhere In Dreamland," the Popeye disc, "Clutch Cargo," etc., but then they also include clips of a Betty Boop cartoon and a Funny Company (though in black and white, but the quality looked pretty good). Would like to see more of those available (I believe there are 260 of them or something like that).
A related question...there used to be a couple of educational syndicated cartoons which originally aired in the early 1970s on the Captain Kangaroo show. Then, they showed up in Chicago as time fillers on WFLD-Channel 32 (and later still on Channel 11, our PBS affiliate; in fact, for a time, they aired on both stations simultaneously). They are "The Most Important Person" and "The Kingdom Of Could Be You." They are prosocial, and extremely in-your-face (no subtlety here) with political correctness (the group of kids has to include one from each of several ethnic groups etc.) and the "Could Be You" segments have to do with career choices, with somewhat of a feminism slant. (Now, please note, I am not making any judgment or criticism about this...I'm just describing it. These cartoons are definitely "period pieces" and reflect the attitudes of the time they were produced in a big way. If you watched them in your youth, you'll know what I mean. I am not looking to start any kind of debate, but I would like to know if anyone else knows what happened to these cartoons.) They were produced by a company called "Sutherland Learning Associates," and I know for a fact that they were distributed to schools at one time, along with classroom discussion materials (Encyclopedia Brittanica distributed them to schools). However, as far as I know these have not been shown anywhere in almost 30 years. I have been unable to trace Sutherland Learning Associates and don't know if they even are still in operation, or who would own these shorts. I have found 16mm prints of a lot of them. These would make a really fun campy DVD set some day.
As regards Soupy Sales, I have both of the DVD releases. The second one is a single disc with a lot fewer shows (they are from the 1960s and I believe they were produced at WNEW in New York). I have read that most of the shows Sales did in the 1960s were not archived and no longer exist. The "nude woman at the door" clip and the pie fight segment with Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Trini Lopez is on the first volume alongside the 1970s syndicated shows. The shows on the second volume appear to be syndicated prints, timing at around 22 minutes or so...and most surprisingly to me, each one has a late 1960s era Screen Gems logo at the end. I guess some version of Soupy Sales' show must have been syndicated at some point. You learn something new every day, I guess. The B/W shows on the second volume do not have any commercials. (They look like kinescopes.) The color ones on the first volume do have commercials, but they are 1960s vintage commercials added in the breaks of late 1970s shows. Also, the color shows appear to have been re-edited and re-compiled. I remember that show airing on WGN in Chicago as a 30-minute show. It aired before Ray Rayner (just to bring things full circle here). These seem to be re-edited into a one-hour format.
