anime in American theaters 1960-1985

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Daniel
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anime in American theaters 1960-1985

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Originally written by davemerrill on 2015/11/28, 11:13:57 PST :

anime in American theaters 1960-1985 :

just finished a new Let's Anime column about Japanese animation in American theaters in the 60s, 70s, and 80s - it's surprising how many anime fans think Akira was the first anime film in theaters, or if they're a little older, maybe the Warriors Of The Wind version of Nausicaa. But there's a whole history of anime films in American theaters, and I take a stab at talking about them in this latest column.

http://letsanime.blogspot.ca/2015/11/at-movies.html




Originally written by Kame-Sen'nin on 2015/11/30, 04:57:47 PST :

Re: anime in American theaters 1960-1985 :

Another great read thanks Dave! The amount of research you do for your posts is impressive it couldn't have been easy to locate all of those old newspaper clippings!




Originally written by davemerrill on 2015/11/30, 15:59:53 PST :

Re: anime in American theaters 1960-1985 :

I spent a couple of days in the Toronto public library going through their microfilm back issues of Variety and the Toronto Star. The Seattle newspaper images came from a friend in that area. Some of the images came from things I own, like the Nobody's Boy poster, the Alakazam The Great lobby card, and the Gulliver's Travels Beyond The Moon LP.

I was really happy to find that Variety review for Cleopatra. That Variety piece is the only direct evidence I've ever seen to prove the film actually did screen in the United States. Similar claims have been made for A Thousand And One Nights, but so far no proof has been uncovered.




Originally written by usamimi on 2015/12/01, 15:21:06 PST :

Re: anime in American theaters 1960-1985 :

quote davemerrill I spent a couple of days in the Toronto public library going through their microfilm back issues of Variety and the Toronto Star. The Seattle newspaper images came from a friend in that area. Some of the images came from things I own, like the Nobody's Boy poster, the Alakazam The Great lobby card, and the Gulliver's Travels Beyond The Moon LP.

I was really happy to find that Variety review for Cleopatra. That Variety piece is the only direct evidence I've ever seen to prove the film actually did screen in the United States. Similar claims have been made for A Thousand And One Nights, but so far no proof has been uncovered. quote

I second what Kame said--I'm always blown away by all the careful research you do, and the stuff you manage to find. Microfilm is a blessing, but I know from experience that it can be pretty boring to look through.




Originally written by davemerrill on 2015/12/01, 15:41:34 PST :

Re: anime in American theaters 1960-1985 :

Well, I love old movie ads, so that part wasn't a chore. Seeing all the crazy exploitation double bills that ran in Toronto at long-gone drive-ins and demolished theaters was actually pretty cool, and there were a lot of long-running what-the-hell programming choices made by theaters in 1980 that probably didn't make any sense then and make less sense now, like the big 12-screen theater in Eaton Center downtown showing not only 'Casablanca' but the George C. Scott haunted house movie The Changeling for something like twenty straight months. I guess they owned the print.

Digging through the Varietys, that was a pain their free online search will tell you that a particular topic was mentioned in a particular issue, but not on what page. So there was a lot of squinting and scrolling past 1972's film news.

Nobody's Boy took some looking up as the IMDB seems to not know it exists. The first I'd ever heard of the film was when I bought the poster for some really cheap amount . And I totally forgot to mention the '71 release of Toei's The World Of Hans Christian Andersen! I guess that's OK because it's a really forgettable film.




Originally written by AVHodgson on 2015/12/02, 18:53:49 PST :

Re: anime in American theaters 1960-1985 :

Great article, as could generally be expected from this blog.

There's something to be said about how the first wave of anime feature films in America was largely due to the kiddie matinee phenomenon that K. Gordon Murray and his ilk started, which fed itself off of foreign kids' movies that probably would have never been distributed in the US otherwise. And I don't think it's a coincidence that it was in the late 60s, when the kiddie matinee phenomenon started dwindling, that the wave of anime in theaters slowed down to a trickle, with perfectly good films such as Jack and the Witch and the Toei Puss in Boots going to TV distribution...

The movie posters, incidentally, are great little masterpieces of design. They don't make them like that anymore...
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