Madacy Charlie box sets

I'm sure many of you have the two Madacy box sets called Chaplin The Collection set 1 and 2 and was wondering what you all think about them.The picture quality on these range from good to poor and all of them seem to have the same early 20's jazz soundtrack. Also on some of the Keystone films the dates say 1920 insted of 1914. Some of these films were probably reissued by other companys. Also on some of the oppening tittles insted or Keystones trademark arc boareder it says The New Official Films. Does anyone have any infor about this distributer?

I have the first box set, but I don't have the second one yet. I hate the soundtrack. You hear the same pieces over and over. I usually turn the sound down. I don't like the quality of the tapes, either, but at least it's a cheap way to collect his movies. Thankfully, in the month of December, TCM will be playing about 30 of his *digitally remastered* shorts.

Official Films (along with Castle Films) were probably the most common 8mm and 16mm distributors of home movies, around at least since the 1940's and until video put them out of business in the early 1980's.

Official sold several Chaplin one-reelers, including LAUGHING GAS, FACE ON THE BARROOM FLOOR (virtually every print you'll see on these two titles will be the Official Films version), HITS OF THE PAST (was a one-reel version of THE PROPERTY MAN), LOVE PANGS, IN THE PARK (was actually CAUGHT IN THE RAIN), and they also released two one-reel versions of THE CHAMPION (the first half as SPARRING PARTNER).

Does anyone know anything about the other Keystone distributer on the Madacy set. I think its called W.H.O. Productions or something simaler to that. They apparently renamed the Keystone films.

W.H. Productions reissued the Chaplin Keystones theatrically not long after they were originally released (circa 1920, I believe). They changed the titles (THOSE LOVE PANGS became THE RIVAL MASHERS, for example), but I believe they still listed the original film title on the main card. They also re-edited and/or changed the intertitles on most of the films.

I'm not sure if they were 'legal' distributors of the Keystones (I believe the original Keystone studio was out-of-business by this time), or if they simply bootlegged the films because they weren't copyrighted.

I believe they were a British company who bought the rights to the films and redistributed them.

There are many variants in both the main titles and intertitles of Chaplin's films coined by redistributers.

Connie K.

In 1915, Keystone's parent company merged together with other companies to form Triangle. This new company was headed by a man named Harry Aitken. Triangle became the owner of all the old films that its producers had made, but its main business was producing and distributing new films.

In late 1917, W.H. Productions was formed, and it quietly went to Triangle and asked to buy the rights to re-issue all those old films, including the Chaplin Keystones.

Harry Aitken controlled the Board of Directors at Triangle, and he really wanted W.H. to be able to buy those rights cheaply. Why? Because Aitken was secretly one of W.H.'s founders, and he stood to make a fortune from the deal! So he had Triangle's Board approve it.

It was a conflict of interest, and probably illegal, but he got away with it because Triangle shareholders didn't get around to suing him until 1921, after it was all over with anyway.

So in 1918 and 1919, W.H. Productions re-titled dozens of Keystones and re-issued them to theaters, many of which had never played the films originally. At first, theaters had to rent prints from a distributor, but after awhile the folks at W.H. decided to just sell prints to whoever wanted to buy them, for about $150 per reel.

Thousands of prints made it into the marketplace, and that's a lucky thing for us because many Chaplin Keystones wouldn't still be around if not for those W.H. re-issues.

Thanks, Shush, for the detailed account. I see they were an American rather than a British concern. Their reissues appear to have had wide distribution in Canada, which was the reason for my bad guess, and lots of them turn up as source prints for the Madacys.

Connie K.

Thanks for the info.

Does anyone have any info about Charle Chaplins Comedy Theatre? Madacy used the Comedy Theatre eddition for Work and I was wondering when these were origionaly releaed and by what distributer and what other shorts were part of this series.

This was a television series that offered up most of the Mutuals and Essanays and a number of the Keystones as well. Many of these are step printed, causing the action to move too slow, and all of them have extremely annoying narration that goes to great pains to describe virtually movement that Charlie makes.

Here's a list of titles I know were in this series (undoubtedly incomplete):

Dough and Dynamite His Trysting Place Tillie's Punctured Romance (2 parts) A Jitney Elopement The Tramp Work The Bank Shanghaied A Night In The Show The Fireman The Vagabond One A.M. The Count The Pawnshop Behind The Screen The Rink