ronald54321 said:
There really are two groups of classic films. In the 50's and 60's the film studios got together all the best public domain copies and copyrighted them for their TV divisions. These are the ones that were shown on TV, so they didn't have to pay royalties. The actual master copies were never shown on TV except for a brief period in the mid to late 1970's. These films are in perfect condition. In an article, one of the old AMC announcers, said they could only use the TV copies because they were unrated. He said if they used the rated copies, they would look like HBO which he said would be ridiculous. An agreement was made with the rating system that if you used the non rated TV version, you could take them down a rating. However, this agreement was gotten rid of a few years ago. There were many newspaper articles about the replacement of all classic films with the inferior copies written in the 80's. The manager of the Senator Theatre in Baltimore was very concerned about it. There was also a book written about it called "The Ratings Racket". I remember seeing these films in the theatre copies in the 70's of TV. I talked to someone in the media and said how perfect they looked. He told me this is the first time the movie copyrights had been seen on TV.
You can't take a film in the public domain and "copyright them". ( "It's a Wonderful Life" being the rare example.) Once public domain, ALWAYS public domian. You colorize a film, it's a different work, and that version and only that version can be copyrighted, but for the type of public domain films and release in the 1950's and 1960's whoever had a print, or elements, could release them. Mostly by independent distributors who got ahold of whatever elements they could get to make a buck!
Let's not confuse public domiain films with films issued to television by the studios.
When the major studios, and their distributors, issued their back-catalog of films to television in the 1950's - NOTHING WAS EDITED. MCA/Paramount,Columbia/Universal,Warners,Metro,UA,RKO - all the films were issued to television - from quality master/safty elements to 16mm. Any editing were done by thre stations themselves. By 1958 ALL the studios were issuing films for television.
The only studio that was known for editing their films were Republic, and that was so they could run in an hour slot - 51 minutes, and 9 minutes for commercials. No other major studio issued edited prints. However, Alied Artists actually ADDED to their shorter features to give them a "pre-title" teaster to better fit a 90 minute slot!
The major studios saw TV as the enemy when they started to get into the television sales of the pre-1949 films - either directly or licenced out - it was with films still under copyright that they owned. They didn't issue any films that they produced that might have fallen into the public domain at that point.(and it was only a few between the 8 majors.) Thanks to the agrements with Screen Actors Guild, the studios did not have to pay royalties/residuals on any pre-1960 film sold to television.
AMC was refering to LATTER FILMS of the MPAA raitings era films when refering to TV PRINTS, not the classics. When AMC ran the classic 1930's-1950's films from the Paramount/MCA package and the Columbia package in the 1980's-1990's, they were uncut THEATRICAL version, which were the same versions shown on TV since the 1950's! Even after the television raiting system came in, nothing was edited.
azumanga said:
ronald54321 said:
There really are two groups of classic films. In the 50's and 60's the film studios got together all the best public domain copies and copyrighted them for their TV divisions. These are the ones that were shown on TV, so they didn't have to pay royalties.
Wasn't copyrighted works of the era protected for 28 years and renewable for another 28 years? By that rationale, I imagine by 1960, only the silent films and early talkies would have entered public domain, assuming that they were not renewed.
it was 28 years and an additional 28 years.
Yes,The "flood" of public domain films didn't start till the mid/late 1960's - which came at a good time as local UHF stations were in need of cheap filler! Again, not from the original studios or producers, but whomever got get elements.
The major studios did not at any time issue films of their that fell into the public domain - why would they - the prints could be copies and used by anyone.
