The title(s)

As I write this, the film was shown on Turner Classics Movies the previous evening as part of a night with William Holden. The opening moment bears discussion. The film started with its title--literally, without even a studio or distributor's logo--rendered in white letters, within quotation marks, with a slight angular stylization to it, against a dark grey background; nothing else on the screen. Then there was an abrupt cut (but the music flowed smoothly throughout) to the highest billed cast members. This was done in dark letters on a white background which was a page of a book. A hand turned pages to proceed through all the credits. Clearly, "Young and Willing" is not this film's original title, and with the aforementioned lack of any kind of company I.D. ahead of the title, I assumed this was the worst sort of reissue print, probably public domain. Then I got here, read that this was one of several Paramount productions of that time released through United Artists, something I had previously heard mentioned by some TCM host, and figured that UA did the title change. However, further thought brings back doubts. It seems very unlikely that UA would change the title and leave off their own credit. They didn't have a standard logo slide in those days, so would be expected to include "Released through United Artists" or the like under this title. Similarly, not being able to ask Paramount for the backing footage to make it match--in other words, them doing the bluntly poor job seen here--is improbable. This again brings us to the PD print theory. TCM, on the other hand, essentially owns the UA film library, and therefore should have access to one of that company's own prints. The channel's claimed dedication to artistic integrity should have deemed this print unacceptable. One more fact: the source material credit does not give the name of the stage play indicated (Out of the Frying Pan), leading one to suspect it was also the film's original title. Indeed, that is listed among this film's AKAs, categorized as undefined. In the unlikely event that someone can convince me that what TCM screened is actually an original UA print, then I will submit that OotFP be defined as "working title," otherwise as "original title." It just has to be one or the other. Comments one way or the other, anybody?

The GREEN HORNET Strikes Again!