I have been digging into the silent Aesop's Fables recently, and the recent Youtube uploads by Tommy and others made this experience both insightful and fun. I also familiarized myself with the Commonwealth Pictures company, well, with the little info that is out there. So Commonwealth bought the silent Fables, replaced the main and end titles and, in many cases, edited the films further (removing the moral, deleting intertitles, adding soundtrack etc.). I assume the films were marketed for different purposes, like syndicating them for TV, releasing as home movies, possibly serving foreign markets, and doing so over several decades, until the library ended up as part of Blackhawk.
Can someone enlighten me about the different styles of titles used on Commonwealth films? Such as the "animal menagerie"  style somewhat resembling the 1930/1 Van Beuren cartoons, or the "Paul Terry Cartoon"  style? I am under the impression that cartoons of the latter style were more often renamed, and some (many?) shorts were released with both opening styles. Were these issued for different purposes, or at different times, and if so, which ones came first?

Here is a little more than what you wanted, but I think will help everyone here understand the release history of the silent Aesop's Fables into 16mm

Late 1920s, Pathégrams: American Pathé produces several cutdowns of the Aesop Fables, mostly the very early ones, a few outliers, and some of the ones reissued in sound in 1929. Pathégrams produced a few complete prints with original titles, but these prints are very, very, very rare.

Early 1930s, Kodascope Libraries: Several 1927 titles are licensed to Kodak's 16mm rental library. These prints kept their original titles, and show up on occasion. Local Kodascope libraries also produced their own 16mms of other Fables, but there's no way to determine which ways were done locally and where, in theory most could of been. In the late 30s, Kodak rebranded their Kodascope library to something of a downgrade, and with it many more Aesop's Fables were made available, with redone title cards . Its likely a wide variety of Fables from the entire silent run would of been included. These prints are of superb quality, with a sharp image

Timeline note. The Fable packages I've noted have cartoons that were eventually in these later packages. Despite this overlap due to the passage of time, these later packages more than likely had no overlap between each other

1945-46, Fabletoons: A startup company repackaged just two Aesop's Fables, 1929's A LAD AND HIS LAMP  and THE BLACK DUCK . These prints have music by Winston Sharples and some very funny, seemingly ad libbed dialogue. Both were possibly intended for theatrical release but only circulate in 16mms. I've never seen any other offered in this package, though more may of been considered. The prints are in just okay quality, a little soft, and are cropped due to the soundtrack from the 35mm material being printed directly on the image. These were the first Aesop Fables remarketed with sound, and not the last time as we'll shortly see.

Late 1940s, Snappy Comedies: These prints, about one to two dozen cartoons I believe, were made by an ambitious producer trying to get his foot into the 16mm market, and did some pretty remarkable repackaging of these cartoons, adding original intertitles  that were almost always never there, one even including the original moral  "re-intertitled" and some consideration into the stock music. These prints, while decently sharp, are often very dirty

1950, Commonwealth: This is where it gets really huge. Everything before this pales to what comes here. Commonwealth purchased over 300, nearly 70-80% of the Aesop's Fables library, and rereleased them to television (a first, although the Snappys may of been used for TV filler as well), with redone front and end titles  but usually everything intact within the film unless edited by a local TV channel. Sometimes, they were retitled to the name of another Fable, though not very common. These prints were initially silent, but quality for television had to change, and thus new prints would be made soon. Prints, maybe not as sharp as a Kodascope, are still often quite sharp but can be a little more worn. These would be HUGE on television for about a decade, even with actual sound cartoons being released, many TV boomers still remember Farmer Alfalfa's antics

1952, Commonwealth, again, and Stuart: With the demand for actual sound with the televisions, Commonwealth repackaged its library to have sound, albeit not printed over the image, removing all intertitles and morals in the process. New titles without the Aesop Fable title were created for these releases, some cartoons had stock music tracks and some had cheesy narration. And some cartoons were later retitled and sometimes even mismangled with the retitled names of other cartoons. These prints aren't nearly as nice but still good prints I'd say. Around this same time a few dozen Fables not in Commonwealth's library were licensed to Stuart, who also gave them tracks and removed the intertitles and morals. (running out of time to link examples, sorry!)

This list doesn't include the various reductions and local libraries that offered Fables, its likely almost every title was offered in 16 at some point or another!

This is very valuable information that clears up a lot of dust for me. In my mindset, I had put the Fabletoons to a much later timepoint than 1945/6. Back to my initial question: You suggest two waves of Commonwealth releases; is it possible to say that the 1950 wave corresponds to the "animal menagerie" style I mentioned before? This is consistent with your statement that in that wave, many original features such as morals and intertitles were retained. On the other hand, the "Paul Terry Cartoon" style is more remiscnet with the 1952 wave, trimming the cartoons for a kiddie TV audience. "Paul Terry Cartoon" versions are, in my experience, generally edited more thoroughly than theit "animal menagerie" counterparts.
I think I was somewhat biased, by getting introduced to the silent Fables vie the 1990ies European arte "Cartoon Factory" show, with films provided by Lobster Films from France, and I am starting to guess that they have trimmed a lot of their cartoons, giving the Fables for their show a uniform Commonwealth "animal menagerie" style regardless what Commonwealth prints they used, 1950 and 1952. So in my mind the "animal menagerie" style releases had removed all main, end and inter-titles as well as the moral sections, as presented on the Cartoon Factory. I think I have to re-check my collection of Fables...

The silent Commonwealth Fable prints are indeed the animal style, recreating the title card style around 1924. The "Paul Terry Cartoon" title is for the sound prints. Some of the Cartoon Factory prints seemed to be from French Kodascopes, mostly RIVER OF DOUBT and RED HOT SANDS, both were in the Kodascope library domestically and internationally (the British and French Kodascope libraries only got the 1927 titles as far as I'm aware). Lobster decided to give them fake Commonwealth titles, likely to enforce the series the cartoons are from, ditto with the Stuart prints aired

Re: Snappy Cartoons, that was film producer Saul Turrell's first foray into the 16mm distribution market. He founded Sterling Films as a distribution outfit in 1946, and the Snappy prints were intended for home use at that point. Later, he founded Sterling Television. The Snappy prints, plus many other things, were given a much wider outlet by then. For a few years, Turrell/Sterling were sub-distributing the TV package of Bray cartoons and the Guaranteed/Stuart TV packages of Fables and Inkwells. It's possible to find 16mm prints from all three of those latter packages with Sterling Television intros physically spliced onto them...just like it's possible to find "Sterling Television" prints of the Snappy Cartoons reissues.

I'm pretty certain Commonwealth purchased their massive lot of Fables sometime in the early or mid-40s, though I'm forgetting where I've seen hints or even solid evidence of that timeframe. The earliest Fables prints from Commonwealth that I've handled/owned are almost always printed on 1947 or 1948 Kodak stock, and that corresponds with the first moments that a large package of 16mm cartoons would have become useful for television use. That's really when the postwar TV boom began, and when programs like Howdy Doody and Fred Sayles' "Junior Frolics" started up. Older Baby Boomers who grew up in the NY tri-state area often recall Junior Frolics in the late 40s and early 50s, as an avenue for showing all different silent cartoons...Bobby Bumps, Koko, Alice Comedies, Fables and Farmer Al to name a few...with 'Uncle Fred' often narrating them for the kiddies.

The silent prints with 'animal menagerie' title cards are the first offerings from Commonwealth. Think about it logically, in terms of a historical timeline, in terms of the early evolution of television, and in terms of economy. The further back you go in the history of [relatively] widespread TV broadcasting (i.e. the initial postwar period), the more it was an 'anything goes,' open frontier sort of realm without much of an established set of programs. There was really not a lot of material available to fill up all the airtime. Most broadcasts were live, and done very much on the cheap—there weren't big production budgets available, and so there wasn't much money available for producing *or* licensing pre-existing film material. The quickest and cheapest option, both for Commonwealth as a distributor, and for TV stations in the late 40s, would have been to supply/use a package of silent cartoons. Truly silent, as in the prints were physically silent; it's not just that the material hailed from the silent era. The stations could run the films either with a live host narrating them, or with needle drop music tracks from a simple in-house library of 78s. Easy and cheap for Commonwealth to prepare and sell silent prints, and cheaper for the stations to buy them that way, then use at their own discretion...maybe with a little bit of extra elbow grease at their own expense, in having to supply their own audio.

But that scenario didn't last forever, as TV's popularity boomed. This meant that it became less attractive, and less useful, for a station to rely on silent prints. The more popular the medium became, the more viewers there were, and the more advertising money was coming into the mix, which means more money for production and for licensing. Why make our kiddie show hosts, and technicians, slave over silent prints anymore? I'm sure Commonwealth saw the writing on the wall and their personnel must have realized that if they were going to keep successfully marketing their massive package of Fables, they'd have to make it a bit more competitive—the prints should have tracks! So, the "Paul Terry Cartoon" prints with music tracks start appearing in the early 1950s as the second wave of Commonwealth Fables prints. While they're a lot harder to come by, there are even third or fourth waves of offerings; one batch features a male narrator, and another features a young boy and girl speaking over the cartoons as children enjoying the adventure along with viewers.

I'm not entirely sure why many of the films are retitled for the sound printings. What I can tell you, though, is that the silent 'animal menagerie' prints almost always had the original morals intact at the end, just before the new The End titles. It was the individual TV stations that often cut those morals out, as they probably found them distracting or irrelevant for a quick, dumbed-down TV showing in live kiddie programs with clowns on tricycles and pies being thrown across the set. A few of the earliest silent prints even sport the original main title card! I have at least one like that; original main title, then moral at the end, followed by the standard Commonwealth "The End" title card...printed this way, seamlessly, with no physical splices. My print of Two Explorers (1922) exists in that form, and is printed on 1948 Kodak stock. Anyway, unless they were physically edited by individual TV stations, these earlier silent 'animal menagerie' prints almost certainly included all the original intertitles (if there were any) as well. Intertitles and speech balloons were cut out of the negatives for the later sound print offerings.

Thanks, Tom, for that trove of information. Still digesting. Would it make sense to share this information on the Cartoon Research site? I haven't seen a posting from you in years, and this is the kind of information that is most interesting to the usual readership over there.

My pleasure!

Re: blogging, I'm not sure. While I enjoy reading and occasionally chiming in on some of the forums, I've become discouraged by certain people taking my (and others') easily-accessible online research and only using it for competitive purposes. I may want to hold out on some things for one or more book projects, though I do still like throwing some info into goodnatured forum discussions like this.

Adding to SC's and Tommy's very thorough and wonderful timelines, a select few Stuart prints actually DO retain the original moral, namely "Hunting in 1950" and "Lindy's Cat". I suspect these were the very earliest ones readied for their package, especially "Hunting", which I have a hunch was the very first one prepared since there's much more consideration put into the editing of the stock Van Beuren cues in that entry compared to others.

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You may very well be right... I also have a scan of LAUNDRY MAN as a Stuart with the original moral too. Need to rewatch it as I am too tired every time I do, and end up falling asleep during it 🙂

I wanted to talk a little more about the Stuarts while I'm here. They clearly saw the Fables as the more popular product when providing them with stock tracks; they were given some serious consideration and also have sound effects, which while annoying that Sharples' timely scores may have sound effects over them, it does show effect was put into them unlike most of the OUT OF THE INKWELL cartoons (the Stuarts of later INKWELL IMPS cartoons also have more diverse soundtracks from what I've heard). They also seem to of had quite a few Fables that were in the earlier Kodascope library, but I doubt there's a connection there. Like Commonwealth, some Fables were retitled for the package, which makes it hard to identify when I haven't seen these particular Fables but were listed in a Blackhawk ad for used Stuart prints. I'm interested in the following cartoons, anyone have transfers?

JUNGLE CHOP HOUSE
JUNGLE VAUDEVILLE
THE MAGIC MIRROR
ROCK-A-BYE BABY

I don't believe there were actually any retitled Fables in the Guaranteed/Stuart package. I'd happily be proven wrong if I see some in the flesh (er, celluloid)!

Those old Blackhawk ads for used prints did include large swaths of Guaranteed/Stuart and Commonwealth prints over the years, since they'd taken on the retired syndication prints to resell. But on the same token, those ads weren't exclusively offering one package of films; they were always mixes. Those strange retitlings were probably Commonwealth or other odd prints mixed into an ad mostly featuring Stuarts, if that makes sense.

That would make a lot of sense. My filmography doesn't have these retitles noted, so we'll have to find prints of them to know for certain what they are. If only there was a much larger index of the retitles available to researchers, from Commonwealth's own records

Many moons ago I actually commenced work on a document pairing up Commonwealth's retitles with the original names. I ought to get back to working on it one of these days.

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I have a good chunk of the retitles matched from an old document, but its incomplete which is to be expected. Like my filmography, I'd like to keep these private, but I will be identifying the titles of retitles online should you make the list

Something I didn't know until now, entirely interesting is that Guaranteed/Stuart and Commonwealth were one in the same. Guaranteed mostly handled 35mm re-releases, and Commonwealth 16mm non-theatrical. -R&c[0]=AT0mRmQrhGZzla5Lz24fMoJ85b3PP9E6PozrncELmV8QOjlsTn-KcXF6TEj3UNenhL4sWaZgYDSaEFd3GbzV4xZpHTKpLp6W8s-fLqSWojLskNZ6tH-IA0Bp3kePpBGmbkXacXoejOPkUhZZSlQopArgVicPkwaU3Xydy9Od2OvVmRngKbPcCe3Zu2FUEneMKJBQCTgSZ0A7zQoAdTi5Mw0 ] See here 

So why two packages? Here's some guesses, although nothing concrete:
-The companies split, and some leftover Fables were kept for a new package by Stuart
-For an intentional secondary package that included Kokos
-To have a package under a different name because it may of been seen that Commonwealth's Fables package was not as "modern"

These companies didn't think much from an aesthetic point of view or latter-day (i.e. modern) history-minded fanboy's perspective, and I'll bet the reason was a bit more utilitarian. The Guaranteed Fables were likely prepared for theatrical reissue, in 35mm. UCLA has at least one of those versions in 35mm form. It was probably discovered pretty quickly that there was no real market for the material in the 35mm format or in the theatrical business, and so anything that was prepared for that purpose was likely just reduced to 16mm for television use after a short while.

There likely was some kind of split or dissolution away from Commonwealth at some point. The Stuart material (including earlier Guaranteed items) eventually changed hands to FilmVideo, which was one of Maurice Zoaury's early companies. The sound TV prints of various Fables and Inkwells at LOC were all given to them in the 60s by Maurice, and most of the related items donated by him are later reprints from the early 60s, with FilmVideo intro titles. These have softer pictures than the Guaranteed/Stuart 'originals'...but are otherwise identical to those earlier versions. Zoaury threw a few more Inkwells into the FilmVideo package than what Stuart had initially released; these have FilmVideo intros which are followed by totally original main titles which are a hoot to see. The usual Sharples tracks are laid over for sound.

Something interesting I noticed, the original sound release and Commonwealth versions of DINNER TIME (1928) have slightly altered continuity. In the original sound release  (I'll note why I say it this way in a bit), the scene of Farmer Alfalfa spinning his eyes is shown after he sees the dog rapidly entering his butcher shop. BUT, in the Commonwealth version , the scene is after the dogs growl at him. Considering there is no splice in the soundtrack, this wasn't manually done. Since Commonwealth didn't edit the cartoons beforehand to my knowledge (but may of intentionally left a few out of circulation), I suspect this change was done early on to make a slight difference in the sound and silent release of DINNER TIME in 1928, and since Commonwealth was using a source from the silent version, this would make sense