Warner Bros. Censored Eleven and other public domain cartoons on DVD?

Can anyone recommend specific DVD releases which container either

1. Any of the "Censored Eleven" cartoons.

and/or

2. Any (other) public domain Warner Bros. cartoons?

I'm trying to get any Looney Tunes that are on public domain releases but aren't available on official releases.

For more information on the Censored Eleven, go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censored_Eleven

and here's a list of the Warner Bros. cartoons that are in the public domain:

http://looney.goldenagecartoons.com/DVDvideo/PD/

Please feel free to post Amazon links to the specific title(s) that you have or can recommend.

Thanks!

 

Will we ever get a Censored Eleven official release? Maybe Warner is afraid of a boycott, who knows. But, on the other hand, Tom & Jerry latest archival set was boycotted before release because of the suppression of shorts with racial jokes and had to be cancelled. So, we might get lucky one of these days.

 

Many are (were, anyway) available on You Tube, in lousy transfers, so it's possible to record them, for what they're worth.

So called "political correctness" demands that cinematic history be swept under the rug, and we have to pretend it never happened. So the elements will sit and degrade until they are no longer recoverable. The way things were is not the way things are now. Perhaps small children should not watch such films. But we grownups would appreciate being treated like we have a functioning brain in our head.

 

The loss of 11 crappy cartoons doesn't bother me. I just watched a few of these on the web. No great loss if they never get released. They're tasteless. Isn't that reason enough not to care?

 

What is and isn't acceptable over time changes but they can be interesting or amusing, although I do understand they may offend some and stereotypes by definition are actually stereotypical, not representing reality.

 

Also tasteless: Lenny Bruce, Blazing Saddles, Monty Python, and many of the works of Keith Richards, whom you quote in your signature

 

Dailymotion has a lot of cartoons online that aren't going to see a legit reissue from Warner Bros/MGM/Universal (Lantz), Paramount (Fleischer/Famous), and the lesser studios like Terrytoons and Columbia Pictures. Almost all of them are meh as far as funny animation goes, and are notable mainly because they have stereotyped characters and storylines. Coal Black is by far the most notorious Warner Bros banned cartoon - it's a Bob Clampett short from the period when he hit his stride as far as wild animation goes, and is the one that's typically cited when animation historians argue against keeping the banned cartoons out of circulation.

 

I agree that these should be released on home video, but given that this is Warner we're talking about, I'd be very surprised if the elements haven't been properly preserved. Just because they have no intention of releasing them any time in the foreseeable future doesn't mean that they'd allow them to rot in the vaults.

 

Of course the pre-48 Warner cartoons were once split up among different owners, Warner having the B/W Looney Tunes and UA everything else, so it got a little confusing.

 

I wonder if these "censored 11" cartoons are at least being preserved by WB even if they don't plan to ever release them?

 

It's funny how that one is always cited, as it's nowhere near as bad or offensive as its reputation would have one believe. It's not mean-spirited or anything, and in terms of caricature it's not of a much worse degree than Elmer Fudd.

 

Officially selling "offensive" cartoons to make a profit does seem a little tacky. Preserving them for historical and academic reasons seems a worthwhile cause. I think a documentary that shows the cartoons in their entirety along with historical context would be a good solution. Burying history is never a good idea.

 

At this point the cartoons are so obscure that the only people who are ever going to see them have to seek them out by either watching them online or perhaps one day buying a DVD/Blu-Ray release of them. It's not like they're going to show up on cable TV.

 

I find your attitude and post tasteless. How about we ban your words? Should I care if we take down your post?

 

Yes, they were all restored and transferred to HD years ago. I'm pretty sure 90% of the Warner Bros. cartoons have been digitally archived. Why all 1039 WB cartoons haven't been legitimately released on home video, I'll never know. You figure, they could easily get 15 shorts on one 2-hour DVD or Blu-ray disc. It's basically 138 continuous hours of cartoons, which would fit a 70-disc set -- actually fewer discs than that, because some shorts go down to 6 minutes, while a handful hit 8 minutes. And in truth, dual-layer discs could easily handle 3 hours, which would just be about 45 discs. They're not gonna sell a zillion of them, but I bet a "limited edition" of 2000 would absolutely sell.

It was announced a few years ago that the cartoons were mastered and were awaiting release, and they've been shown at festivals now and then. But I think whoever's in charge of WB Home Video at the moment got cold feet.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/whats-the-deal-with-the-warners-censored-11

What I think they should do is just offer an "on demand" collection of all 11 cartoons plus a documentary about them and make it available via Amazon or something.

 

Well, that's good news about the whole library having been restored. What I have previously read is the work was not completed, which is why recent DVD and Bluray releases have recycled content already released on the six Golden Collections rather than continuing to release other cartoons. The official line has been that the recycling of their most popular (already available) cartoons generates funds which can partially go towards further restorations. Still, I think this is why stuff like the Platinum Collection Blurays reportedly did not meet sales expectations. I'm a big fan, and I didn't even buy them. I already have "What's Opera Doc," "One Froggy Evening," "Duck Dodgers" and the rest of the A-list titles.

I have read that the reason they started out releasing them in the manner they did was because they largely had to go with titles which had already been restored at the time. For the pre-1948s (which had been sold off to a.a.p., then United Artists, then M-G-M, then Turner, then back to Warner Bros.) Warner had all the original Technicolor separations, which had never been used for past TV prints and video transfers. They sunk a lot of $$$ into restoring those. Other shorts had recently seen theatrical reissue or international DVD release. So a chronological approach wasn't possible at the time -- though it would have been cool to have them in a format like the Disney Treasures, for instance.

I also read that they were going to do a "politically incorrect" collection including the "Censored Eleven" and other shorts -- maybe Warner along with M-G-M as well. Supposedly the project was killed by a high-level executive who personally takes offense at vintage films with racially insensitive elements. This party also was responsible for pulling two cartoons from the second volume of the Tom & Jerry Platinum Collection, and the backlash led to that release being cancelled (as far as I know, it's still dead in the water).

Back in 1989, M-G-M/UA released a VHS tape (and laserdisc) called Bugs And Daffy: The Wartime Cartoons, with Leonard Maltin hosting and placing those shorts in historical context. This was before Warner bought out Turner, so it didn't include certain cartoons like "Scrap Happy Daffy," "Confusions Of A Nutsy Spy" and others which were always under the ownership of Warner Bros. But they also left off "Bugs Bunny Nips The Nips," possibly the most notorious of the Wartime stereotype cartoons. If they were going to release it, that's where it should have gone. But then a couple years later, they did the Golden Age Of Looney Tunes set which included a volume called "Bugs Bunny By Each Director" -- and that's where they put "Nips The Nips," alongside a bunch of other Bugs Bunny cartoons. Supposedly, one person complained and they pulled the set, re-releasing it with another cartoon replacing the controversial title. (By the way, a friend tells me he saw a Spanish-dubbed version of "Nips The Nips" on a local Spanish language TV station in Chicago some time in the 1990s!)

I agree that this material needs to be handled sensitively and placed in proper historical context. We've come a long way since the 1940s. But these are historical artifacts from another era. Making available a vintage film from another time, when sensibilities were different from today, is not the same thing as making a political statement saying "I hate all people who are X." If anything, maybe we can learn from it.

 

All the "Censored" Warner cartoons had been pulled by UA. I wonder if Warner pulled any of the cartoons it still owned? The re-traced Loony Tunes package had a Porky Pig in Africa cartoon that was so racist it made my Mother throw a fit(It's the one that ends with Porky meeting Kay Kyser, spelled "Cake Iser"). On the other hand, they cut a Stepin Fechit caricature from "Porky's Road Race".

 

Your are just not awesome enough to understand. You should be banned. Only awesome opinions are allowed.

 

I want to check out the censored eleven now. Any recommendations?

 

"All This And Rabbit Stew" and "Jungle Jitters" are public domain.

 

Why not go straight to "Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs"?

 

That's the best one, and in a way, in spite of some racial jokes, is also a celebration of the black culture. I love "Angel Puss" too, except for the recurrent crap shooting joke. But it's a great piece of animation.

 

The point is that if they released the censored 11, some people might say "Warner does not fell represented by the racial prejudices, but they are making money ot of a collection which consists mainly of racial jokes?" I understand their position is not easy.