This is the first of a series of posts that will look at some of the numerous meetings that we undertook in order to issue 8mm films to our customers, or obtain 16mm for our library.
Contracts & Rights Chapter 1
But let’s start in the mid 60s, 10 or so years before I entered the scene! Derann MD, Derek Simmonds had been making trips to Wardour Street for a number of years and during these visits he slowly built up a business relationship with many of the small independents and from these he would buy the 8mm rights. In most cases they would just be printed for use as exclusive films for the Derann 8mm library. If you glance through those early rental catalogues you will see that much of it are films spanning the 1940s to the mid 60s…. ‘The Countess of Monte Cristo’, ‘Ramrod’, ‘Orders are Orders’, ‘Ulysses’, ‘Hallelujah I’m a Tramp’, ‘The Long Hair of Death’, ‘Togetherness’, ‘Incense for the Damned’, ‘The Scar’, ‘Devil Doll’, ‘Some May Live’, ‘Only the Valiant’, ‘Convicts Four’, ‘The Projected Man’, ‘The Quatermass Xperiment’, ‘Rose of Cimmarron’ and ‘Belle Starr’s Daughter’. There must be dozens more, but all this was before my time and my knowledge is sparce. Grand National Pictures, Monarch and Renown were the predominant sources, but he would have picked up the rights from most independents. Grand National Pictures was an old 35mm theatrical distribution company who by this time seemed to exist solely by re-releasing older product. Derek had become a regular customer of theirs and was very friendly with its MD. Maurice Wilson, (1892 – 1978), who had founded the company in 1938 and had also built ‘Highbury Studios’, where he had produced a number of prewar features. He was insistent that Derek should be the one to have the 8mm home rights of a package of Hal Wallis movies for the UK. It consisted of six Elvis Presley films (‘King Creole’, ‘G.I. Blues’, ‘Blue Hawaii’, ‘Paradise Hawaiian Style’, ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’and the western ‘Last Train from Gun Hill’, all originally released by Paramount Pictures. This would have been a real jewel in Derann’s crown at the time. However it was a crown that often bit into the Derann bank account! You must remember that every film on a contact had an ‘up front’ sum that could range from £50 to £500 and more, then in many cases there was a royalty of a minimum of 10% for each print sold… and you mustn’t forget the cost of master material, negatives, sound masters, box labels and advertising! And the prints!! It was a costly gamble.
….. to be continued
Leave a Reply