I contacted a friend of mine who used to be heavily into 16MM collecting. Since standard resolution DVDs match or excel the resolution of most 16mm prints he's out of that field. Anyway AAP (Associated Artists Productions) which was owned by the Hyman Brothers, I believe, who made a mint on Warners pre-1948 cartoons (thrown-in as a freebie … Jack Warner thought the cartoons were crap … with the rights to all pre-1948 Warners features) and who also financed a lot of Hammer and Schneer/Harryhausen films in addition to buying Warners in 1967. They netted about $1 million the first year they sold Warners cartoons to TV stations.

They sold legal copies and not United Artists. My expert Mike Cline (check-out his website at http://www.mikeclinesthenplaying.com) … who said said:

Anyway, to answer your question, yes, legal 16mm prints of features were sold, on a custom-order basis, to individuals back in the 1960s, by AAP, when they owned the pre-48 WB library. If I remember correctly, black and whites were like $200.00 and colors were $300 or $350, regardless of title.
 
It was this precedent that attorneys defending innocent film collectors used in humiliating the MPAA and FBI during various "piracy" court cases in the 1970s. The MPAA claimed that the studios NEVER sold their movies directly to collectors.
 
The attorneys used original AAP catalogs and filled customer order forms as evidence, forcing the judges to tell the MPAA and FBI to go home and stop wasting the courts' time.
 Back in the day that was an a$$load of money.




opticalguy1954@yahoo.com (Spencer Gill)
Last Edited By: opticalguy Dec 29 13 10:28 AM. Edited 2 times.