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Topic: Soundies
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Gerald Santana
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1060
From: Cottage Grove OR
Registered: Dec 2010
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posted October 05, 2013 02:31 AM
I love Soundies and Scopitones, played on my magnetic/optical projector, it's a fun way to start/end your program or I often put together a few reels of them and show them all together based on a theme. Once you start collecting, you'll get hooked, I know because I buy them often trying to get a better copy of another.
Soundies with reverse titles were later purchased by Castle and Official films, and couple of other distributors like Joe Bonica and Pictoreel. The original films are printed on Kodak Positive film stock are far superior to the dupes made later with could still be printed on Kodak stock. I have for instance many reverse titles and mirrored re-issues that have better source -- or cleaned up, source materials.
They were shown first in Panorams through WW2 were later, Studio Films and Snader Telescritions and the like took over. Much before this, Paramount, Columbia and other studios were releasing short film "soundies" featuring personalities like the great Richard Himber, I'm lucky to have one called "The Magic of Music" from 1935 and it is brilliant.
I also have my collection of Scopitones, there were at least 500 machines out there by the late 60's. I don't have the jukebox but there are about 5 of them for sale in New Jersey at the moment, I think most need to be refurbished. The titles of the Scopitones are great, many are campy and very sexy, and all have great pop tunes from the era.
Scopitones went out of business when they were sued by an act that won a settlement, when the music video finished. Without their knowing Scopitones had filmed "saucy girls" in bikinis shaking their stuff separately and it was edited into the content. I have the film and this wasn't unusual for Scopitone but, the lawsuit ruined their business. I'm starting to slim down my own collection, these are harder to find than the Soundies.
[ October 05, 2013, 12:55 PM: Message edited by: Gerald Santana ]
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http://lostandoutofprintfilms.blogspot.com/
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Robert Crewdson
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1031
From: UK
Registered: Jun 2013
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posted October 05, 2013 02:22 PM
Thank you very much Gerald, I think you supplied all the answers I was looking for. I suspected it was a copy because the film stock does not look old, and looking at some frames through a jewellers eyeglass it looks like the scratches are on the pre print material. I have seen a few Scopitones advertised on Ebay recently, and all but one had turned red, which is a shame. I have seen for sale one or two Soundie types from the 60s that featured British artists, but never saw a visual jukebox in Britain. Thanks again Gerald, and taking the time to make photos.
Dominique; if you want to see a few soundies, here is a link.
http://archive.org/search.php?query=soundies
P.S. Been doing a bit of researching and found that my film would have been printed on Reversal Stock. How did this come about?
[ October 05, 2013, 03:23 PM: Message edited by: Robert Crewdson ]
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