Anyone watch the Three Stooges on Me-TV and/or Me-TV Plus? Over the last year or so a few friends and I have observed something odd, it's not on every film but there is often screwing around with the end titles on the shorts. It is mainly on 1930s shorts where the end title will be replaced with one from a late 1940s short (so we'll see the theater mask instead of the torch lady). Like I said, it's not on every film, and the first ones I saw like this were done very crudely and abruptly, i.e. you'll start to hear the mockingbird song come on and then it abruptly changes to "Three Blind Mice." But as more of the shorts have been changed they've gotten a little slicker with the original audio continuing to the end even though the picture portion is changed. They still have the Sony TV logo at the end. I have the shorts on DVD so I'm good, but WHY? This doesn't make any sense to me. The only thing I can think of is, the late 1940s end titles don't have Columbia's name on them. Maybe they want to strip Columbia's name from them (again though, why)? Plus, even though they often clip the Columbia intro logo on the affected shorts, the main title card will still say "Columbia Pictures presents." Other than that, I have no idea why they would do this. Any thoughts or insights?
I know exactly what Mark is talking about. They are not old syndication prints. These are the newer high definition transfers. I've been watching them on TV for years and this is the first time I've seen something like this. Its inconsistent and doesn't happen on every short so someone, somewhere had to go in and make the edit. It mostly occurs with the pre 1940 releases although there are a few post 1940 that have been tampered with too. My concern would be if they ever plan a blu ray release that these films would make their way onto the discs.
It's similar to the old syndication prints, but this is different. On the old syndication prints they would replace Columbia logos with Screen Gems. The Screen Gems logo had its own fanfare but for the 1930s shorts where the music continued from the Columbia logo into the titles, the original audio would be dubbed onto the Screen Gems at both the beginning and end. This was done on 16mm so there would be a splice. On one 1930s short ("Calling All Curs") they had the fanfare instead of the original audio and it was very abrupt. This is different and has been done within the last year or two, well after the shorts were remastered for the complete DVD sets. Back in the 1980s a 1950s end title was spliced onto the end of "Disorder In The Court" on some public domain tapes, but this is (apparently) Sony doing it on the official TV masters. Unless it's a Me-TV thing -- maybe someone who watches the Stooges on some other local station in another market could chime in. If they were taken from old prints it would make sense. These are HD masters. This does not make sense. And as HELLOLARRY said, I would hate for this issue to spread to a possible Blu-Ray release. One positive thing -- the 1950s shorts are in full frame so there's no issues like with "Goof On The Roof" being cropped on DVD.
I meant that it sounded like what they did to the old prints. I wouldn't worry. The films are still intact. Besides, the DVDs are so good I cannot see Blu as a big enough boost to justify it. We kinda waded through heck to get THOSE. And since I have those this is a nothing burger to me. Yay physical media.
Me too. I would do a blu ray upgrade if one came out and would not want any changes to the original presentation but like Mark, I'm still curious about this practice and where it originates from. They've obviously been tampered with. Its not the end of days of course but when one considers the minutiae that people do acknowledge and devote pages of analysis and conversation / argument to , I'm surprised this hasn't already been discussed somewhere.
This is gonna sound heretical, but -- I actually miss the Screen Gems intro on the shorts. Some of the DVD ones (1946-1949 ish) have what looks like a silent 1950s or 1960s Columbia intro logo added before shorts that do not say "Columbia Pictures Presents" above "The Three Stooges." That kind of takes the place of the old Screen Gems intro. Of course I know this isn't how they were originally released. Also, I remember short "preview clips" at the beginning of two of the last shorts ("Flying Saucer Daffy" and "Triple Crossed"). The one at the beginning of "Flying Saucer Daffy" survived on TV well into the 1990s at least. Now, I don't know (a) whether this was done theatrically or for television (Screen Gems liked to use "cold openings" on their TV shows) or (b) whether this was done on any other shorts besides those two. These didn't make the journey to DVD.
I believe that was done for TV which is why those segments are missing from the DVDs. Why I am not sure but it is only on those two films. One theory is to bring them up to a proper running time but I don't know if that is true. Back in the day when Screen Gems pre-cut some of the films for content, Three Sappy People (1939) ran a little over 13 minutes with the cuts that were made. Maybe it was done to emulate sitcoms of the time which had a little tag at the beginning of their shows, then the theme, and then the episode. Who knows?
