Warner Home Video-graphy - Part 3 - United Artists, first half

One of Hollywood's legends is that of United Artists. For the first few decades of post-WWII America, UA was one of the major players on the Hollywood scene. It never grounded itself on traditional means, even as a major. To begin with, the company was founded (on 5 February 1919) by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, three actors and one director who have only ever worked for studios before running one. It signed up Walt Disney, Alexander Korda, Hal Roach, David O. Selznick, and Walter Wanger, but, uniquely, all of them retained ownership of most of the works they did for that studio (and Disney, of course, would only release short cartoons such as his legendary Steamboat Willie through UA). The Pickford-Chaplin-Fairbanks-Griffith group missed out on Gone with the Wind all because David O. Selznick wanted Clark Gable, then under an MGM contract (Gable would make a few UA movies in his own right in later years), to play the role of Rhett Butler. Selznick, Korda, Wagner, Disney, and the founders of UA, along with Orson Welles, Samuel Goldwyn, Hunt Stromberg, William Cagney, Sol Lesser founded the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers—SIMPP, for short—in 1941, largely to end the anti-competitive practices put forth by the majors of the time—Loew's (MGM), Columbia, Paramount, Universal Pictures, RKO, Fox, and Warner Bros./First National, the last of whom would eventually release chunks of the UA library on video as shown here—which culminated in the 1948 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., which under President Truman sided with SIMPP, and led to sell-offs of many a movie theatre chain and removal of chunks of practices considered anti-competitive. SIMPP closed in 1958, having accomplished mostly all its goals.

Back in 1950, two of founders decided they would give in to advancing age and Chaplin's blacklist by Sen. Joe McCarthy (Fairbanks died in 1939, Griffith in 1948) and hired former Indiana governor Paul V. McNutt, as chairman and Frank L. McNamee as president. McNutt could not solve UA's financial problems and the pair was replaced in a few months by a more definitive one on February 26, 1951: Arthur B. Krim (of Eagle-Lion Films) and Robert S. Benjamin came to Chaplin and Pickford and offered to fill the vacancies left by the aforementioned deaths of Fairbanks and Griffith, which they would purchase half of if UA were to be successful again. Chaplin and Pickford accepted their proposal; Krim and Benjamin bought Chaplin's and Pickford's interests in 1955 and took the company public in 1957. This created the second unique thing about UA: Krim and Benjamin were more friendly dealmakers than moguls, offering money to independent producers who would oversee each film without their fingerprints. UA leased space at the Pickford/Fairbanks Studio but had no studio lot. Thus UA did not have the overhead, the maintenance, or the expensive production staff at other studios.

The third thing that made UA unique was the way the studio was constructed. With the aforementioned facts of Thing Two, UA tended to act as a supplier of films made entirely by outside companies or by other people. Films such as The African Queen, Moulin Rouge and High Noon kept UA busy in the early '50s, and It released movies from Stanley Kramer, Otto Preminger, and Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions, who gained UA its first Best Picture winner in 1955, titled Marty. In 1958, it purchased the Lopert Pictures Corporation, named for Ilya Lopert, the man who often imported movies that were bait either for criticism or for controversy. UA formed a record arm in 1958 and launched a unit for TV in 1959 (the latter will forever be identified with everything from Gilligan's Island to Outer Limits to The Patty Duke Show). United Artists Television eventually expanded to buy out Associated Artists Productions, owners of Warner Bros. pre-1950 features, shorts and cartoons and 231 Popeye cartoon shorts purchased from Paramount Pictures in 1958, becoming United Artists Associated, its distribution division.

One of the studios most associated with United Artists however would be the Mirisch Company of Delaware, run by Walter Mirisch and his brothers, Marvin and Harold. Their first film for UA was Fort Massacre (1958); they quickly moved on and made Some Like It Hot (1959), The Horse Soldiers (1959), The Apartment (1960), The Magnificent Seven (1960), West Side Story (1961), The Great Escape (1963), Hawaii (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967), and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). The Mirisch family also launched Blake Edwards' original Pink Panther franchise for UA. Of the films the Mirisch kin made together, they had two back-to-back Academy Awards for Best Picture in The Apartment and West Side Story; the latter, an adaptation of the Broadway musical, won a whopping 10 Academy Awards®, which included the aforementioned award. Another Best Picture winner from UA also came from Mirisch, as Best Picture was one of five Oscars® the groundbreaking In the Heat of the Night would win, along with Best Actor for Rod Steiger.

UA made some Stanley Kramer hits in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and A Child Is Waiting, and their releases of A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965) helped to usher in Beatlemania. The company also launched a franchise that shows no signs of slowing down, James Bond 007; his first film, Dr. No, came out in 1962. A chunk of Sergio Leone's "Spaghetti Westerns" also came from UA. In 1967, about ALL of the stock held in UA was purchased by the Transamerica Corporation of San Francisco; from then until 1975, it was billed as "Entertainment from Transamerica Corporation"; this rather wordy text was in turn eventually replaced with the more traditional "A Transamerica Company." They promptly kicked Krim and Benjamin out and replaced them with Arnold and David Picker; after losing $35M two years later, Krim and Benjamin were hired back. Also, Transamerica bought Liberty and associated labels as well as the small Mediarts Records and Films, and folded them all into United Artists Records by 1971; everything was sold to M&R Music Corp. in 1978 and EMI, who owned stock in that company, foreclosed on the stock owned by M&R in 1979.

UA was still going strong in the '70s, with newly contemporized James Bond and Pink Panther movies; they had a slew of movies made by luminaries Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Sylvester Stallone, Saul Zaentz, Miloš Forman, and Brian De Palma and launched another franchise that is still going on today (albeit not as frequently as that of Bond, James Bond), that of the saga of Rocky Balboa (which had the unusual fate of having the first film in the franchise take home the coveted Best Picture award). In 1973, UA began handling 8-year distribution rights for MGM's films in the US (meaning that even though the two studios would work on Network in 1976, UA still essentially held all theatrical rights). Also, UA released two musicals back-to-back, the great Jewish-themed Fiddler on the Roof and the far less successful Man of La Mancha.

Despite the notable films, disputes between UA executives and Transamerica executives were a fairly common sight, and the former got into trouble with the latter regarding releases of Midnight Cowboy and Last Tango in Paris, both of which had MPAA ratings of X; when the former became the only X-rated Best Picture winner, it was promptly recut to get an R. Transamerica exec Jack Beckett wanted to phase out the UA name and call it Transamerica Films. Krim wanted Transamerica to get UA spun off to no avail. Transamerica also wanted the medical records of each UA executive, which pissed off UA's president Eric Pleskow. Finally, after a long flow of negativity between Beckett, Pleskow and Krim, they and other key officers decided to make an unprecidented move: ALL of them left United Artists on January 13, 1978 to form Orion Pictures (see Part 2 of the WHV videography). The departures were viewed as alarming to several Hollywood figures and so they took out an ad in a trade paper warning Transamerica that it had made a fatal mistake in letting them go.

Their fears had yet to be based on fact. With Andy Albeck as president, UA had proved quite the successful studio in 1979, releasing Rocky II, Manhattan, the 007 installment Moonraker, and The Black Stallion. Under the new leadership, the company agreed to back the pet project of freshman director Michael Cimino entitled Heaven's Gate, which was to follow his Oscar®-winning film The Deer Hunter. It overran its budget A LOT (see: Final Cut - The Making of Heaven's Gate and the Unmaking of a Studio), ultimately being budgeted at $44M. Having only made a fraction of it at the box office, UA's independence ended there; Kirk Kerkorian bought the whole thing and merged it with a studio he had bought years earlier, MGM. But that is another videography the OP needs to get back on. UA's final head before the sale, Steven Bach, wrote in his book Final Cut that there was talk about renaming United Artists to Transamerica Pictures.

Meanwhile, back in England, UA decided to have their video company go through a freshman: Intervision Video picked up 20 titles from the UA catalogue (e.g. The Great Escape, Some Like It Hot, and the movie version of Hair, along with a few pre-1950 WB titles) for a while. In 1981, that was gone as UA opted to sign a deal with Warner Home Video for the next 10 years. In fact many of the first thirteen numbers in the Warner series (9 as the first number for international releases, pretty much what the deal covered to begin with) happened to be those of the James Bond series, with the only exception being held by the movie 42nd Street. Pre-1950 Warner movies were released by Warner Home Video in Canada as well; under the Signature Collection series and the Hollywood Gold series, with 1 as the first number. The Canadian number is shown for pre-1950 Warner films UA owned at the time. In the US, all UA films were distributed by Magnetic/20th Century-Fox/CBS Fox and in Canada, UA's non-Warner-related product went through the same distribution channels.

WEV 99200 Moonraker (1979)
WEV 99201 Spy Who Loved Me, The (1977)
WEV 19202 42nd Street (1933) Without showing any references to United Artists, the feature presentation on the 1981 Magnetic Video tape starts with the Warner Bros./Vitaphone logo that started the picture.
WEV 99203 Live and Let Die (1973)
WEV 99204 Man with the Golden Gun, The (1974)
WEV 99205 Goldfinger (1964)
WEV 99206 Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
WEV 99207 You Only Live Twice (1967)
WEV 99208 Thunderball (1965)
WEV 99209 From Russia with Love (1963)
WEV 99210 Dr. No (1962) The original release of this film did not start with a Hexagon because its director objected to the trimming of a few violent scenes and the overdubbing of a suggestive line of dialogue. Originally filmed in the Academy ratio and intended to be shown in widescreen; this release was cropped from a widescreen transfer.
WEV 99211 On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
WEV 99212 Octopussy (1983)
WEV 99213 A View To A Kill (1985)
WEV 99214 Hang 'Em High (1967)
WEV 99215 Bananas (1971)
WEV 99216 Rocky (1976)
WEV 19217 Casablanca (1942)
WEV 19218 Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948)
WEV 99219
WEV 19220 Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
WEV 19221 Key Largo (1948)
WEV 99222 Last Tango in Paris (1973) Due to the notoriety surrounding the X-rating of this film, we cannot link you to its article on pre-cert.co.uk on the off-chance that any link to it would be NSFW. In advance, we apologize for the inconvenience. What we can tell you is that the 1968 UA logo appears at the start of some prints of it despite not appearing on the theatrical release per Transamerica's wishes.
WEV 99223 Carrie (1976) Originally filmed in the Academy ratio and intended to be shown in widescreen; the full aperture was shown on this release. On the 1981 Magnetic Video LaserDisc it has the 1968 United Artists logo instead of the experimental "metal letters" logo that appeared on the videocassette release.
WEV 99224 Alamo, The (1960) Standard version, approximately 40 minutes shorter than the original Roadshow version.
WEV 99225 Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The (1966) This film was dubbed (and all credits translated) in English from the original Italian, with Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach dubbing themselves in English. US version, approximately 16 minutes shorter than the Italian original. When the film was being reconstructed in 2002, Eastwood, Wallach, and Simon Prescott (filling in for the by-that-point-deceased Van Cleef) were brought in to dub the scenes that had previously only existed in Italian. Released previously as Intervision UA A B5010 and as Magnetic 4545-20/30). No word on whether it had the Blue Flower T, or the even rarer UA Ovoid from 1967 (which apparently was the film's original UA logo). The Dollars Trilogy was originally released in Italy by Produzioni Europee Associati.
WEV 99226 Great Train Robbery, The (1978) This has nothing to do with the pioneering 1903 film by Thomas Edison, which you have probably heard of if you've been in school (or for that matter, watched E/I television programs) for several years.
WEV 99227 What's New Pussycat? (1965)
WEV 99228 Rollerball (1975) Originally started with the "metal letters" logo with the Transamerica byline. This was reinstated for the Blu-ray release.
WEV 99229 Rocky II (1979)
WEV 99230 Hair (1979)
WEV 99231 It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) Sped-up version of the standard 154 minute version, 38 minutes shorter than the original Roadshow version. Spine reads Rental Only. This film did not have the UA Hexagon originally, as confirmed by Robert A. Harris, who is a restoration expert. It only appeared on International prints of the film, presumably the British one too.
WEV 99232 Great Escape, The (1963) Pre-Transamerica film; released previously on RCA Selectavision CED and VidAmerica videocassette in North America with the Transamerica logo.
WEV 99233 Network (1976) UA held the rights for this overseas while MGM had the rights here. Essentially UA owned all theatrical rights to this as MGM movies were distributed in the US/Canada/parts of the Caribbean by UA at the time
WEV 99234 Adventures of Robin Hood, The (1938)
WEV 99235 La Cage Aux Folles (1978) Dubbed (and all credits translated) in English from the original French. The actor who dubbed Albin in English (originally played by French-born Michel Serrault), was Victor Garber, who was openly gay. This was originally released theatrically in France by the French division of United Artists Corporation, Les Productions Artistes Associés. In Italy, it was distributed by UA's Italian division, United Artists Europa Inc.
WEV 19236 Captain Blood (1935)
WEV 99237 Comes a Horseman (1978)
WEV 99238 Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)
WEV 99239 In the Heat of the Night (1967)
WEV 99240 Magnificent Seven, The (1960)
WEV 99241 Thomas Crown Affair, The (1968) A split second of the 1968 logo (this is allegedly the first that actually had it) is clipped on the 1981 American Magnetic Video release; the byline is also already formed when the logo zooms out, and zoom out it does, to a farther distance than usual, before suddenly cutting back to the normal distance.
WEV 99242 Pink Panther, The (1963) The original release of this film started with a Hexagon since Blake Edwards mainly filmed it in Europe. At least on the first US pressing, from Magnetic Video, it can be seen for a fraction of a second.
WEV 99243 Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The (1974)
WEV 99244 West Side Story (1961) Academy Award winner for Best Picture. The NTSC laserdisc released in 1981 has the 1968 United Artists logo. Did this originally open with the Hexagon?
WEV 19245 White Heat (1949)
WEV 99246 French Lieutenant's Woman, The (1981)
WEV 99247 For Your Eyes Only (1981)
WEV 99248 Bridge Too Far, A (1977) This Joseph E. Levine movie (made after he left AVCO Embassy) was originally released with a specially-created sepia-toned opening logo, which combined the 1919-1967 logo and the 1975-1981 Transamerica variant. This logo was reinstated on the 2001 DVD, but replaced again with the current logo on subsequent prints.
WEV 99249
WEV 99250 Lenny (1974)
WEV 99251 Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) The last of Peter Sellers' films in the Pink Panther series. At the time of his death, Sellers had severed ties with Blake Edwards completely and was working on his own Pink Panther movie, Romance of the Pink Panther, which would involve Inspector Clouseau falling head-over-heels with a Countess who would later be revealed to be a jewel thief. That movie would never be made. Sellers sadly died of a heart attack on July 24, 1980, shortly after the second draft of Romance was written.
WEV 99252 Annie Hall (1977) Academy Award winner for Best Picture. The opening credits are shown in their original blue tinted background, rather than the black tinted one, as seen in all versions after 1988.
WEV 99253 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
WEV 99254 Fiddler on the Roof (1971) Released previously for RCA's CED Selectavision system in America. On the CED, a specially-created variant of the 1968 UA logo, which featured a timpani piece from John Williams, the film's composer, was retained. It is unknown if the UK pre-cert has the Turning UA logo.
WEV 99255 Pink Panther Strikes Again, The (1976) This is said to be the first film to have the "Transamerica T '75" logo.
WEV 99256 Yanks (1979) Universal held rights to this in the US.
WEV 99257
WEV 99258
WEV 99259 Scorpio (1972)
WEV 99260 Hound of the Baskervilles, The (1959) Like many, if not all, UK/European UA films from before 1967, this film originally began with the Hexagon logo. It has been reinstated on current DVD prints.
WEV 99261
WEV 99262
WEV 99263 Gator (1976)
WEV 99264 Fistful of Dynamite (1971)
WEV 99265 Graduate, The (1967) UA had the international rights for this very revolutionary film. The theatrical release of this might have come with UA's first Transamerica logo, called the Ovoid, instead of the Hexagon.
WEV 99266
WEV 99267 Black Stallion, The (1979) 1975 UA logo was intact when first released on VHS/Beta, but then replaced with the 1981 logo on subsequent pressings. The older one came back in 1990 when it was reissued by MGM/UA.
WEV 99268 Long Riders, The (1980)
WEV 99269 Dogs of War, The (1980) Tape is of the original cut, 14 minutes longer than the US print.
WEV 99270
WEV 99271
WEV 99272
WEV 99273
WEV 99274
WEV 99275 Eye of the Needle (1980)
WEV 99276 For a Few Dollars More (1965)
WEV 99277 Fistful of Dollars, A (1964) Filmed in Techniscope, it was dubbed (and all credits translated) in English from the original Italian, with Clint Eastwood dubbing himself in English. Censored UK version, approximately four minutes shorter than the complete version.
WEV 99278
WEV 99279 Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) Fairly off-beat film from Malpaso (production arm of Clint Eastwood) went to UA after Warner refused to back the film. Eastwood was unhappy with the way that United Artists had produced the film and swore "he would never work for United Artists again". They were to make two films together; the other, untitled, one could quite possibly have the potential to be the best Clint Eastwood film never made.
WEV 99280
WEV 99281 Piranha (1978)
WEV 99282 Who'll Stop the Rain? (1978)
WEV 99283 Missouri Breaks, The (1976)
WEV 99284 Heaven's Gate (1980) This is quite an infamous one as it wrecked United Artists' independence for good and is the reason why MGM/UA exists at all.
WEV 99285 Fellini Satyricon (1969)
WEV 99286 Breakheart Pass (1975)
WEV 99287 Killer Elite, The (1975)
WEV 99288 True Confessions (1981)
WEV 99289 Inserts (1975)
WEV 99290 Caveman (1981)
WEV 99291 F.I.S.T. (1978)
WEV 99292 Battle of Britain (1969)
WEV 99293 Interiors (1978)
WEV 99294 Violent Streets (1981) #Thief.
WEV 99295 Motel Hell (1980)
WEV 99296 Music Lovers, The (1970)
WEV 99297 Misfits, The (1961)
WEV 99298 Fuzz (1972)
WEV 99299 Love and Death (1975)
WEV 99300 Return of a Man Called Horse, The (1976)
WEV 99301 Rocky III (1982)
WEV 99302 Coming Home (1982)
WEV 99303 Women in Love (1969) British film.
WEV 99304 Mechanic, The (1972)
WEV 99305 New York, New York (1977) Title tune is best remembered through the Frank Sinatra performance of it.
WEV 99306 Betsy, The (1978) Issued outside of North America only. Released in North America by CBS/Fox Video, as they at the time handled the inventory of Lorimar, who bought continental rights when it bought the Allied Artists library in 1980.
WEV 99307
WEV 99308 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) Remake of the 1950s film.
WEV 99309 Secret of Nimh, The (1982) Don Bluth's first film after exiting Disney, of course.
WEV 99310
WEV 19311 Public Enemy, The (1931)
WEV 99312
WEV 99313 Still of the Night (1982)
WEV 99314 Semi-Tough (1977)
WEV 19315 Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
WEV 19316 Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
WEV 99317
WEV 99318
WEV 19319 Dark Victory (1939)
WEV 19320 Little Caesar (1930)

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the second half will arrive soon!