Nitrateville Correction Dept: Our Gang MGM Silents

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Richard M Roberts
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Nitrateville Correction Dept: Our Gang MGM Silents

Postby Richard M Roberts » Wed Jul 18, 2018 9:10 pm

Today over at Nitwitvile, Bob Lipton wrote:

"Hal Roach's silent shorts distributed by MGM are hard to find because they were never released to either the home market like his earlier movies, distributed by Pathe, but Crazy House (1928) turned up in a nicely tinted copy derived from the French release."

Actually, the surviving Our Gang MGM silents were pretty much all put out by Blackhawk from the 1960's though the 80's, and there were Interstate Television prints floating around the collectors market from the 1950's, so certainly those shorts were on the home market for quite some time, including CRAZY HOUSE. Never found them particularly hard to find.


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Chris Seguin
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Re: Nitrateville Correction Dept: Our Gang MGM Silents

Postby Chris Seguin » Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:40 am

There's 14 1927-29 MGM silent releases -- looking gorgeous -- on this German DVD. They're a strange lot, but readily available nowadays, yep.
https://www.amazon.de/Die-kleinen-Strol ... rolche+dvd

Richard M Roberts
Godfather
Posts: 2890
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 6:30 pm

Re: Nitrateville Correction Dept: Our Gang MGM Silents

Postby Richard M Roberts » Fri Jul 20, 2018 3:44 pm

Chris Seguin wrote:There's 14 1927-29 MGM silent releases -- looking gorgeous -- on this German DVD. They're a strange lot, but readily available nowadays, yep.
https://www.amazon.de/Die-kleinen-Strol ... rolche+dvd



Every single title on this set was available from Blackhawk and available to television since the 1950's. Thanks to Blackhawk, the Laurel and Hardy's and surviving Our Gang MGM's were indeed accessible, it was the other Roach-MGM silent product that was hard to see, and it wasn't the MGM vault fire in the 60's that destroyed them (as someone in the Amazon review surmises), it was Hal Roach's own horrible storage practices that allowed them to rot away, even by the 1950's.. MGM had never stored any of Roach's product, certainly not since the two companies parted company in the late 30's.


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