Onyx Pictures

[rascalstooge]

What OG shorts did Onyx acquire and how long did they handle the distribution?

[mtw12055]

From what I can gather, Onyx owned a package of the Pathés as early as 1955 and 1956. This is merely a guess, but it's possible that they owned the TV rights until National Telepix bought them in 1960. According to Hal Erickson, the OG silents were shown on TV uncut until they became the "Mischief Makers." I'm guessing the uncut prints were the ones Onyx distributed.. At least one Onyx print ("The Mysterious Mystery!") is known to exist.

[marktheshark]

There is a book on children's television called "Saturday Morning TV" by Gary Grossman, published in 1981. There is reference to comedy shorts being shown on television and they mention the Little Rascals first being syndicated in 1955. Then it says another package of 52 Our Gang shorts was offered the following year by Onyx Pictures.

When I first read this (I was in high school) I assumed because of the number 52, they were referring to the M-G-M shorts. But as you noted, clearly Onyx Pictures dealt in the silents. (M-G-M handled distribution of their own films to television.)

The same book also says Columbia licensed 30 of the Three Stooges shorts to the ABC network in 1949. (This was the first place I read this, but it has been repeated elsewhere.) If this is true, I wonder where they would have been shown -- maybe on some "hosted" show which featured film segments. The Stooges also filmed an unsold TV pilot for ABC the same year, but it's unclear if the author was confusing the two.

So if there were 52 shorts, and I guess we can assume they were Pathe releases, does that mean there were 14 already missing by 1956?

[mtw12055]

Not likely, as all but about three or four of the Pathes were available for the "Mischief Makers" package in 1960 (with "Jubilo, Jr." evidently part of a separate package). It's possible that the 52 shorts were the 1922-1926 releases, sans "Our Gang" and "Your Own Back Yard," which both seemed to be deemed "lost" at some point. I'm honestly just guessing, based on the fact that those releases (save for "Telling Whoppers") eventually fell into the public domain. It seems to imply that they were part of a separate package at some point.

I've heard about a Stooges package being offered to TV as early as '49 as well, but it was in a Wikipedia entry. Glad to see there is some sort of source for that.

[rascalstooge]

I have the Grossman book. Great read.