Looking for 35mm items

[Frederick Hohman]

I'm new to the forum, and glad to know there is such a place for those of us who seek the occasional rare items in film. I'll be looking here for 35mm, not 16mm.

Has anyone ever come across these items below anywhere in your travels? I'd be interested in knowing whether these can be acquired, if indeed they still exist.

The Fun House (May 1936) cartoon featuring Oswald Rabbit.
A Walter Lantz production, probably released by Universal.
This cartoon had a great score by James Dietrich, a much under-recognized film music composer.
About 30 years ago, I had a very worn 16mm black and white print of this item. I believe this was released in theaters in technicolor. I believe technicolor was in the opening credits. Could this have been an early color cartoon?

Realizing it might be asking the impossible, I would really like to find a clean, color 35mm print of this cartoon. Where, oh where, can this one be?

The Prisoner 1967-1968 TV series. This series aired in USA on CBS in black and white. Does anyone know where I can get hold of clean 35mm prints of these episodes? I would imagine that someone has had to use 35mm prints in order to make the DVD packages of the series that were offered a few years ago. In those days, I believe the networks were still doing network transmissions from film-based telecine units from 35mm projectors.

Thanks for any input / advice / direction you can offer.
Frederick Hohman
fred@zarex.com

[Thomas Stathes]

Hi Fred,
According to two sources, the Oswald cartoon was originally produced in b/w. It can be extremely difficult locating 35mm materials on these older animated films, so your best bet would be to chance upon a Guild Films TV print or a Castle Films print [if they reissued this cartoon.], both on 16mm.
Even 16mm prints of earlier cartoons are becoming hard-to-find. Best of luck!
Tom

[Jeff Sumberg]

The Prisoner 1967-1968 TV series. This series aired in USA on CBS in black and white. Does anyone know where I can get hold of clean 35mm prints of these episodes?
If you found any 35mm prints of this title, they would be faded. They were shot in color. I know someone who has several episodes on 35mm, and all are faded. He obtained them in the 1980s, and they were already starting to fade then. I remember running the episodes when he got them. It was "warm" then, now it's red.

[David Brooks]

The Prisoner 1967-1968 TV series. This series aired in USA on CBS in black and white. Does anyone know where I can get hold of clean 35mm prints of these episodes? I would imagine that someone has had to use 35mm prints in order to make the DVD packages of the series that were offered a few years ago. In those days, I believe the networks were still doing network transmissions from film-based telecine units from 35mm projectors.
fred@zarex.com

I assume you are referring to the Patrick McGoohan series "The Prisoner". It was filmed using 35mm. I remember that show when it was first broadcasted in color not B&W. Some stations may have been broadcasting in B&W, but most were in color by that time frame. That series was later syndicated and I would assume the syndicated versions were on 16mm or 2" quad video tape. Later on, it might have been on 3/4" umatic.

Good luck in finding it on 35mm.

[Dan Matson]

Fedrick the chances of finding 35mm prints of the Prisioner are pretty slim.
When the show first aired on CBS very few prints were struck on 35mm.
One was used in New York to cover the eastern time zone, One in Chicago for Central and mountain and one in Los Angeles for the pacific time zone.
Each facility also had a 16mm backup print but those were usually black and white with the color commercials spliced into the print.
When it went into syndication the norm was 16mm color prints.
Dan

[Jim Reid]

Fedrick the chances of finding 35mm prints of the Prisioner are pretty slim.
When the show first aired on CBS very few prints were struck on 35mm.
One was used in New York to cover the eastern time zone, One in Chicago for Central and mountain and one in Los Angeles for the pacific time zone.


Usually, unless it was different back then, New York feeds both eastern and central time zones.

[Jeff Sumberg]

Dan, typically 4 network 35mm prints were struck. East & West as you indicated, and a "backup" print of each. Sometimes 6 prints were made, and one additional backup print kept on hand at each coast). Two telecine machines ran each print in sync, with the camera active on the 'primary' machine. If there was a problem, the camera on the other machine was switched to (or a mirror box flipped). Both the primary "air" print and the backup (or "standby") print had the same commercials spliced in, same black slugs, etc. Basically both prints were identical in length.

My friend has several Prisoner 35mm episodes as I mentioned. They are completely faded.

[Dan Matson]

Jeff when I worked at the ABC owned station in Chicago in the mid 70's they were just eliminating the midwest feed to Central and Mountain time zones. But when they did they ran 35mm air and 16mm back up on the same telecine chain.
Then when I moved to the CBS owned station, one of the veterans told me they said they did the same thing.
As you said I can't vouch for what was happening in New York or Los Angeles
So I would have to say you are right about them using a 35mm original and
35mm backup.
Up until recently I did have the 16mm backup of the final 2 episodes of the Fugitive.

[Jim Reid]

When I started as a master control switcher in January, 1975, in Tulsa, our ABC feed originated in New York.

[Dan Matson]

Jim thanks for pinning down the date on this, I remember about then we were just running what they called regional commercials. They would load up a commercial on the 35mm Simplex telecine chains and cover commericals that were in the NY feed for other regions Like covering Hellman's Mayo spots with Best Foods Mayo and stuff like that.

[Jim Reid]

Jim thanks for pinning down the date on this, I remember about then we were just running what they called regional commercials. They would load up a commercial on the 35mm Simplex telecine chains and cover commericals that were in the NY feed for other regions Like covering Hellman's Mayo spots with Best Foods Mayo and stuff like that.

The regional covers were done up the line from us. I think they were done in Wichita, Kansas. We were busy enough doing our own covers. Oklahoma had screwy liquor laws, so we had to cover all wine spots and commercials for beer brands that didn't offer a 3.2 version. The owner of the station was kind of a whack job and also insisted we cover all feminine hygiene products. If you saw grapes or a woman walking on a beach, you ran for the black button. We also pre-empted a lot of network shows so we had to cover promos for those shows. We were busy.

[Steven Sigel]

In the 50s and early 60s (at least) there were also extra 16mm network prints struck up for the out of the way stations that didn't have access to the network feed. They would be shipped out to the stations, and would be run a week later than the main network feed (but with the same commercials). I bought a package once of prints from an early 60s series, and there were 10-20 network prints each of some of the episodes.

[Jim Reid]

During the 76 Election, were interupting programming all night with results and news cut ins. They wanted to have control of the prime time programming to stop and start it whenever they wanted. I would have thought the easy thing to do was to get a pre-feed from ABC and record it on 2 inch tape. Instead, they sent us all the programming on 16mm, except for Soap, which was a tape show. I was amazed that we had Family and (I think) Mork & Mindy on 16 with all the commercials spliced in.