Renting Movies In 1964 

People today don't realize just what a boon the 16mm format was, especially in the post war years. There were distributors like Ideal in every major city, sometimes several. Besides clubs, churches and community groups, there were also a handful of small, second run theaters, often in converted storefronts, that ran 16mm features. As big as it was, it was just as unceremoniously jettisoned in the 80s to early 90s. Distributors, school districts and libraries alike. VHS was the new king, and 16mm, a once valuable and very expensive media (just put some of those prices into an inflation calculator!) were trashed: aggressively tossed in dumpsters by the ton. Early 1990s is when I got most of my collection. They almost paid me to take them away

The little college I worked for rented movie ( film) up until the mid '80s....they rented " Star Trek: The Motion Picture on 16mm in the mid '80s....

In the late 70s early 80s I had a kodak 16mm sound projector. We would have film parties every once in a while. Our local public library had a decent selection of films to borrow for free. lots of early silent films, buster keaton was well represented.around 1983 I went to borrow a few films, and they had thrown all the films away. Fun while it lasted. Thanks for the memories.

7:18 I don't think the "Shut-in" category was intended for individuals. I don't think they were interested in that market. "Shut in" would have been for nursing homes, hospitals, institutions, etc. A lot of nursing homes switched to just showing rented VHS tapes in the 1970s and got in trouble for it, for public showing of what was intended for individual viewing.

Great memories of “running the projector” wherever I was at school. But my first memory was watching WW2 films in 1944 and 45. Such titles as “Victory at Sea“ designed to showcase the US war efforts , and reassure the citizenry that we’d be victorious. 16mm films were the TV of the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s. Delivered by mail, in the legendary fiber case with canvas straps.

In the early 80's me and two other guys were allowed to use the school auditorium a few evenings per year to show 16mm films. By then there were three distributors in Sweden where you could rent feature films. We poured over the catalogs for hours selecting titles. Only title I remember to this day was Duel from 1971. The films had to be returned promptly so we used to pack them up immediately after the viewing and get them to the post office first thing in the morning. The audience disappeared pretty much overnight though and we had to shut it down. Killed by VHS.

Definitely interesting and I liked your comment at the end. America was a damn monoculture back then... contrary to what people with red baseball caps have on them, not that great at all. Nah, poly-ticks (poly = many, and ticks are bloodsucking creatures).

I was given a Bell & Howell model 138 16mm sound projector from about 1940 that did not work. That was 1968. I was beginning to be able to repair vacuum tube electronics and I managed to get the projector running again with the by mail help of R.L Stromberg of the B&H General Service Dept. in Chicago. I wrote in my latter I was Jr. high school and Mr. Stromberg helped me with an original service manual and complete schematics along with very helpful troubleshooting advice right from the source. It does not get any better than that. Our family enjoyed many movies on that projector that we rented from the Union County Film Service in Roselle Park, NJ. from 1967 until around 1974. I became a film collector because of that first B&H projector.

Over the past three years, I've watched all the films in your film archive. I enjoy them very much and recommend them to my friends. I recently realized that watching them continuous play from your playlist, enjoying them play one after the other that I hadn't click like on many of them, So I'm trying to go through the whole list and click the thumbs up on them all. IDK if that helps you out or not, but I feel it's good for me to show my appreciation for your efforts. Thank You, and please keep up the good work. Ragnar (Long time watcher, third time commentor.)

When I was little, we used to rent Castle films -- 16 mm silents with intertitles, mostly B&W prints -- to vary our program of home movies. Basically kids stuff.

Our local cricket/rugby/tennis/netball club would host a movie+braai/boeriwors roll event...you would buy grades of tickets, better seats, popcorn, but before the movie, you could buy meat packs, have someone cook it, or you could buy boeri rolls..2 movies, between movies, around 9pm..hot chocolate and ice cream...The 2nd movie was most def for older people...There was cots/beds mattresses set up for kids to sleep on..

Oh man, that takes me back a long way. In high school, I was THAT A/V nerd and I was responsible for helping pick films to rent and, each Friday night, I was the one responsible for setup, running the show, and packing it all up when done. Often times, me and my roommate (also a serious nerd) would set it up in our dorm room and have a private screening just for us. The condition of some of those 16mm prints we would get was pretty bad sometimes. 16mm is -kind- of forgiving but, not that much As a young adult, I got a job as a projectionist at a few different local specialty and revival houses-and at the famous Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Blvd. in the heart of Hollywood running both 35mm and 70mm first run films. I had gigs at two revival houses, The Four Star Theater and the Nuart Theater in West in L.A. where I ran the nightly stuff and, my favorite, the Friday midnight run of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And, as a revival/second run house, you become an expert in film print cleaning and restoration. Now, I am a freelance 3D animation/motion graphics artist, and a video editor (and the occasional VFX artist for small, independent films doing mostly (hidden or invisible VFX shot). It's all digital now, has been for the past 20 years or so. I was one of those who was on the bleeding edge of using digital video tools.

While the 16mm movie format rental continued into the 70s, that 1964 catalog printing looks like it may be a late holdout of letterpress, with tight columns and white space that contained spacers to keep lead type letter slugs confined and clamped. For a periodical catalog there would be a literal ton of galleys and pieces saved, sliding down major parts of columns to physically inset new blocks of type for entries. The B&W photos and spot illustrations were rectangular blocks of hardwood with metal on the surface to hold ink where it had not been acid-etched away and were very durable. The blue movie icons on the right side of the cover were probably standard woodblocks too, mass produced and sent out to letterpress newspapers so they could drop them in to 2 inch columns for "now showing" theater ads. Their presence inside the catalog would probably have been too disruptive to the format and would have caused more costly pages, so they went with occasional photos and mostly text. The newspaper Dad worked at had been letterpress before 1965, and in 1970 there was an employee who still walked with a limp because he had stepped into a pool of molten lead spilled from the Linotype machine and it ate through the soles of his sneakers. Once there was both QWERTY and ETAOIN SHRDLU. Lead used to be in fuel & atmosphere, paint, printing and solder. And batteries, but that is now carefully recycled properly and lithium has its own problems.

Our local museum rented 16mm films and filmstrips that you could check out. The library also had a small selection. We watched them in school in the 70's. You never knew what condition they would come in. Nothing worse than having a movie with a couple broken sprocket holes that stopped the film and then watch it burn.

I wonder if Caterpilar's "Shake Hands With Danger" was ever in this format. Its a workplace disasterpiece!

I grew up in Boston MA during the mid-to-late 1970s, and we were lucky enough to have the "Wholesome Film Center" based in Melrose MA. My dad would rent "Yellow Submarine" or "The Point!" for my birthday parties. It was awesome.

Fran, your collection of STUFF is awesome.

4:29 damn, Die Brucke / The Bridge. That's one hell of an impressive movie. I wonder how many people actually saw it in the USA.

Page 2 says, "National Legion of Decency rates most pictures from the standpoint of moral acceptability to the Catholic Church." One of the categories is "Condemned."

I've started randomly singing "In the lab.... it's where I work"

Wow, does that bring back memories from the 60's. Just about every event for whatever club had movie nights.

In the 1970s there was a local film group that would show Marx Bros. and W.C. Fields movies because that was the only way to see them, unless they happened to be on TV. It was just a small room with some chairs.

Holy smokes, as an example I plugged $12 in 1964 into an inflation calculator and that's $120.90 in 2024, a 907.5% increase.

Very strange restriction on which states could rent the "Israel films".

Super interesting, Thank you!

the iconic picture of albert schwitzer. worked so hard to bring medicine to the poor, and is largely forgotten.

I remember seeing a black and white one from the 30s about a guy who looked like was in his 80s making large round wooden animal feed trofs. It was amazing to see this old guy through huge logs over his shoulder and cut them down to size by hand and fit them into giant rings. I'd love to see it again someday. My art school professor went to great lengths getting a copy that she remembered seeing in school

Growing up in Scarberia in the 60s Scarborough Public Library would have just about any NFB films, often anything the school board had too. Got a library card? For some reason my dad had the same Bell & Howell as we used in class. Travelogue anyone? Don't know where he got so many real movies. How did we have Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot for a week? You better believe we had old movie and popcorn night as often as possible. As good as Saturday Night at the Movies and Magic Shadows both with Elwy Yost which followed.

Very neat!

We used to get those in Boy scouts for film nights. Think the last one we had as in the early 90s.

I still have a Universal/ 16 rental catalog

Who did the illustrations for the catalog? They look very much of the 1950s - 60s period.

I probably would have never seen a 16 mm film if it weren't for schools. In the 80s, they showed us these exclusively, in the 90s, it was a mix of 16 mm and VHS. What do they use these days, DVDs? 😂 (I also remember the smell of worksheets fresh from the hand-cranked spirit duplicator. My elementary school did not have a xerox machine in the late 80s!)

I never knew you could rent reel to reel film

Oh Fran, you could not have chosen a better topic to review. You did it just for me. I remember watching Ben Hur & Ten Commandments, on multi large reels & several others at our Church movie night in the late '60's and 70's. I now have 3 functioning 16mm projectors in which I use to transfer films to digital for clients. I don't have, however even a single 16mm reel of my own. Any suggestions on how to locate and purchase 16mm films, B/W or Color, and the type you enjoy and show are perfect examples for me. Thanks and please continue your style of RU-vid productions. I try to watch all I can, even the old ones. .

I’m pretty sure Disney was in the 16mm film rental business into the 90s.

Growing up in the 60's, my parents Firefighter neighbor had a side business called Z-Films, (his last name was Zitano) and I remember a whole room and more full of the 16mm films.. almost forgot about it until your video, Thanks Fran!

omg fran!!! what was that intro... that was coooooool lol, also very interesting episode :) love from England 8-Bit.

"We'll rent 'em to shut-ins, We'll make a fortune!

Duck & Cover?

A fun vid, Fran, takes me back to when I was zero. 1964 dollars are pretty close to 1/10th 2024 dollars, so $300 to buy on some flicks! Internet archive has many of these for free now (progress?)

Very fascinating look back into this era of film history

8:03 - :'A Peep in the Deep'

❤ 🫂 📸 📷 🎬 🎞 🎥, ❤ ✌️

Back when I was a student "AV Monitor" in high school. Nerds Arise!🎥