This was another gem from a small studio Allied Artists which folded because it just could not compete with the big studios..which themselves have now folded into big conglomerates so that they in turn can compete with major multi media groups worldwide.
shareRight you are Willi. They made lots of second rate movies most of which were not bad but they did make some gems and this was one of them.
shareSmall studio but they didn't skimp on the cast. I love this movie. For anyone in the New York area, I watched this movie every day when channel 9 used to televise a movie for an entire week on the Million Dollar Movie.
shareTo me the name was a rip-off on the other film company UNITED ARTISTS
shareMe too. It never seemed outlandish that WOR would run a single film as many as 16 times a week on Million Dollar Movie (twice each weeknight, three times daily on weekends; though during the baseball season this figure was usually less because of Mets games). Even though, in the 60s, they, like most TV stations, for some reason cut out a film's opening credits. (On channel 9, The Big Circus began with the headlines about the Borman-Whirling split, remember?) In the 70s channel 9 lost the rights to the Allied Artists films they had held and channel 2 picked them up, so TBC began showing up on The Late or Late Late Show. That's the first time I saw the film's opening. But not until the recent DVD release did I finally see it widescreen.
And what happened to the music over the opening credits? On the thread I started about the DVD, I mentioned that this print, like ones I saw in the 90s, is missing a portion of the theme (not the song, the music over the actual credits), and they relooped part of the existing music track back over the credits to cover the missing piece of the track. It just doesn't go right, and I don't know why they can't recover the missing portion.
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Yeah, claiming that the use of the word "Artists" by a film company is ripping off United Artists reminds me of Groucho Marx's response to Warner Bros., when it threatened to sue over the title of the Marxes' film A Night in Casablanca. After questioning whether Warner had copyrighted an entire actual city, Groucho threatened to sue them for the use of the term "Brothers", since the Marxes were "brothers", professionally, long before the Warners. Nothing more was heard from Jack L. Warner.
I think The Company of Artists was Robert Aldrich's company -- though I can't quite remember just now and may well be wrong. But it wasn't Jerry Wald's company, which was simply Jerry Wald Productions. Regardless, the point is the same.
AA grew out of Monogram, which set it up in 1946 as its "prestige" subsidiary. In 1953 Monogram's board of directors decided to subsume the parent into the offspring, and Monogram disappeared into the AA fold.
You're right, AA did release a number of great pictures. Major ones like the ones you mentioned, along with Friendly Persuasion, 55 Days at Peking and others, and good ones of smaller stature like Al Capone and Pay or Die. They usually had solid production values. They also released the first sci-fi film in CinemaScope, World Without End.
Haven't Allied Artists become a distributor?
I'm the kind of guy, when I move - watch my smoke. But I'm gonna need some good clothes though.
AA went out of business in 1980, when it was bought by Lorimar after filing for bankruptcy in 1979. When Lorimar itself folded later in the 80s, it was bought out by Warner Bros., and its films -- including those formerly owned by AA -- came under the control of Warner, where they remain today.
But in its heyday, Allied Artists was always a distribution as well as production company.
Then there's no relation between Allied Artists and Allied Artists Pictures which has been distributing movies since 1947 and is still distributing them?
I'm the kind of guy, when I move - watch my smoke. But I'm gonna need some good clothes though.
No: Allied Artists Pictures Corporation, which was founded in November 1946, went bankrupt and was acquired by Lorimar in 1980. Earlier, in 1976, it had merged with a company called Kalvex, Inc./PSP, Inc., and changed its name to Allied Artists Industries, Inc. It was this corporate entity that filed for bankruptcy in 1979 and was subsequently sold to Lorimar the following year.
I do not know of any company called just plain "Allied Artists", but the original company -- the one you describe as "distributing movies since 1947 [sic]" and "still distributing them" -- has been out of business for 31 years and is not distributing anything. Perhaps the other AA you refer to is some sort of distribution company, assuming it does in fact exist.
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Okay...if you notice on the home page for this movie, it mentions companies including Allied Artists Pictures. The list of movies produced ends in 1975, but the movies distributed which now appear to be mainly music videos continue to one scheduled for 2012.
Just click on Allied Artists on the home page and you'll see the full list of movies distributed up to 2012.
Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies
I took your advice and clicked on the link for Allied Artists Pictures (which yielded the same results as the link for Allied Artists Productions, Inc.).
The last films listed for the original AA were in 1978-79, not '75. This is followed by a couple of odd releases credited to AA in the mid-80s, with a steady resumption of releases beginning in the late 90s. It's unclear to me what these are -- music videos as you say (which I tend to agree with), or direct-to-video films, or both, or something else. (There are some apparent music videos jumbled together running from around 1990, as a separate listing.) Not one title was familiar to me, so these clearly aren't mainstream, theatrical movies.
All the sources for my information state that the company went out of business, bankrupt, in 1980, when it was acquired by Lorimar, which in turn went out of business in the late 80s and was acquired by Warner Bros. (which is why WB controls most of the old AA and Monogram libraries). These sources include such film historians' works as Katz and Halliwell, along with the 1993 book The Allied Artists Checklist, as well as other information I've seen.
That the "real" Allied Artists went bankrupt and disappeared in 1980 is beyond dispute. The question is, what is this present incarnation using the same name? It's possible the company name has been acquired by another entity and it's this "new" company that's using it (which is what I suspect to be the case). The timing of the later releases would more or less coincide with the aftermath of the collapse of Lorimar, which may have sold the rights to the name Allied Artists even as AA's own library went to Warner (or Warner may have subsequently sold it). Clearly, whatever the current AA is, it is not the direct descendant of the original company, since it doesn't control the old AA library or have any other visible link to it -- quite apart from the indisputable fact of the original company's public bankruptcy and sale in 1980. The fact that there's virtually no activity under the AA name shown during the period after Lorimar had acquired it is another clear indication that the original company no longer existed.
It's a curious matter, but I can guarantee that, however this current company came to use the name Allied Artists, it is not the same outfit as the film production company that existed from 1946-1980. There's quite likely a connection of some sort, some new entity that got the rights to the name and has revived it, but it's not the old AA we knew.
I'm wondering if some of the original owners of the company managed to hang on to the name and started up again as strictly a distributor for whatever. I agree...there are no familiar titles in what's listed after 1975, so direct-to-video is a good guess. I've done lots of googling trying to find out more, and it seems to me that some sources that show AA still in business also display the Monogram logo, but I could be mistaken. I need to look again.
Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies
I doubt it was the original owners of the company, since it was founded in 1946 and by the 90s these men would likely all have been dead or retired. But it wouldn't surprise me if some of the people from Lorimar, or from the corporate merger in 1978 that very briefly saved AA, might have been party to reviving its name for a new company. If you find out anything it'd be interesting to know. But it isn't the original AA. Frankly, I'd rather they'd let the name die in peace and not try to keep it going artificially, with a new company bearing no relation to the real one.
shareI did come across information on wikiepedia, but much of that was questioned by responders. First time I noticed that on wikipedia...some entries being questioned as to accuracy.
Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies
I never bother with wikipedia. It's notorious for its inaccuracies. The owners have been trying to do a better job controlling what goes in but I regard it as inherently unreliable, since basically anyone can write anything irrespective of the truth. You may have heard of the recent actions of right-wing bloggers, who crashed the site en masse in an attempt to rewrite the entry on Paul Revere's ride so as to make it conform with the mangled, inaccurate, politicized and thoroughly incoherent version given by Sarah Palin in response to a question in New Hampshire the other week. The site masters finally had to lock down the page and throw out all the lies and bogus information that had been inserted by Palin's supporters.
shareYeah, I did notice that some of the information I googled on Allied Artists contradicted other information, so had to use a little common sense to interpret.
Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies
Has anyone seen their movie Young Guns with Russ Tamblyn on tape or DVD?
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