8mm Forum: Soundies From Castle

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Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on January 22, 2017, 04:58 AM:

Soundies were 3-minute musical films made for "movie jukeboxes" from 1940 to 1946.

Castle Films signed a contract with the Soundies Distributing Corporation of America in 1945. Castle selected 103 Soundies and organised them into themes, they were named "Castle Music Albums" (MA). Each compilation contained three similar items. There were 34 issues in all, 17 in 1946, and 17 in 1947.

The Soundies Distributing Corporation closed in 1947, at that time Castle had only issued about 6% of the Soundies total output. Future releases were handled by Castle's rival, Official Films. Castle gradually withdrew its Soundies Music albums already in release with the last few being distributed in 1953.

It would seem that these are all collectors' items, but where are copies now?

Have you got one?

Posted by Ronald Green (Member # 5655) on January 22, 2017, 02:23 PM:

Always find them on ebay.

Posted by Adrian Winchester (Member # 248) on January 22, 2017, 11:24 PM:

I have a few that I'm sure must be Ssoundies and they do turn up quite often. However, in my experience it seems difficult to find them in their original form, because over the years people have separated the songs and sometimes compiled their favourites from different releases, so you end up with songs that you might think are very likely to be Soundies but it's difficult to be 100% sure. 34 x 3 = 102, so I wonder if one release had four songs?

Does anyone have any idea how many Official Films releases there were? And were these also compilations of three?

Incidentally, the original Sounmdies - as used in the players - also turn up, but he problem with these is that as they were not made for conventional projection, the image is reversed, which will be particularly obvious during the opening titles.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on January 24, 2017, 03:17 AM:

Thanks to Ronald for directing me to US eBay. I have to agree with Adrian that some collectors have in the past separated the three-issue Soundie reels into one song of about 100ft each.

I note that many advertisers are incorrectly saying that their musical films are Soundies when they are not. After the 34 Soundie issues in 1946 and 1947 Castle continued to issue other musical items, often from Universal two-reelers but still used the prefix MA (Music Album) for some time after the discontinuing of the Soundies.

Later, there were Grand Opera, Let's Sing, Band Parade, Melody Master. To an unknowing person any of these later groups might be thought to be Soundies.

I have gleaned my information from "Castle Films" by Scott MacGillivray which I can thoroughly recommend to anybody who wants to learn more about the history of Castle Films and which has complete listings of all titles.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on January 24, 2017, 11:53 AM:

Now, Shorty could back me up on this, but I believe that Blackhawk released a few 200ft reels of collected soundies. I have one, which is a largely Jazz oriented one, and the source material they used was very good.

Shorty, what other ones did they release?

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