A look at some of the numerous meetings that we undertook in order to issue 8mm films to our customers.
Contracts & Rights Chapter 15
Beginning in 1918, Pathe Pictorial was the longest running series in the history of the British cinemagazine, being in continuous production for over fifty years. It established the general format of the genre, focusing on stories of general interest and travel.
Derann found that these 8 to 10 minute shorts were always a good bet and as early as 1967 there were ‘Pather Pics’ available for rental ‘Crete’, ‘Romania’, ‘The Royal Tornament’, ‘San Remo’, ‘Moscow’, ‘Uganda’, ‘Tutankhamun’, ‘California’, ‘London’, ‘Monaco’, ‘Heidelberg’ to name just a few (there are around 40 in the 1969 hire catalogue!), and new titles were regularly added. I haven’t a clue as to their origin, however it’s not impossible that manyof them were bootlegs
By 1975 adding Pathe Pictorials should have been a dream at EMI, but it could be a frustrating gamble. EMI had produced a sumptuous catalogue containing long lists of Pictorials and specials, filled with numerous stills illustrating various historical moments and events. However whether they had suitable material was another thing! So finding a negative with a matching soundtrack was often cause for celebration! We had many Pathe Pictorials over the years, but out first batch were hard to beat. ‘Steamboat Down The Nile’, ‘R.A.F. The First Fifty Years’, ‘Hollywood’, ‘Auto Cine’, ‘Armchair Alps’, ‘Dreadnaught’, ‘Copenhagen’ and ‘Operation Saratoga’ started a release pattern that would continue for many years. New titles would include ‘Round the World for Fun’, ‘Armchair Alps’, ‘The Matterhorn’, ‘Copenhagen’, ‘Free Fall Parachuting’, ‘The Dreadnaught’, ‘Zambesi’, ‘The Land of Fairy Tales’, ‘Las Vegas and the Wild West’, ‘A Visit to London’, ‘South Sea Islands’, ‘Billy Jones’, ‘Organ Museum’, ‘Historic Film’, ‘Disneyland’, ‘Tin Pan Alley’ and many more.
Here’s a two page article from an ABC Film Review dated November 1963 and pages from one of our sales catalogues featuring a number of them. I’ve also included two of the three colour labels that were especialy designed for the best selling trio, ‘Auto Cine’ was the third. (Both of these have been taken from images on ebay. And finaly from January’s 1976 Movie Maker we have an advert for the first batch of Pathé Pictorials, along with our first titles from Rank’s rival ‘Look at Life’, which we’ll look at in a oncoming post.
…. to be continued.
Leave a Reply