Blackhawk Films
Encyclopedia
Blackhawk Films, from the 1950s through the early 1980s, marketed motion pictures on 16mm, 8mm
and Super 8
film. Most were vintage one- or two-reel short subject
s, usually comedies starring Laurel and Hardy
, Our Gang
, Charlie Chaplin
, Buster Keaton
, and other famous comedy series of the past. Blackhawk also offered newsreels, documentaries, and silent feature films. With the rise of the video
market in the early 1980s, Blackhawk began producing video versions of many of their titles in 1981 and within a few years no longer manufactured film copies. The company was later purchased by NTA
, and the film elements still later by archivist David Shepard.
s and sold independent 35 mm theatrical film prints for home projectors of the day. Eastin worked from his parents’ home in Galesburg, Illinois
. With the advent of 16 mm sound film in 1934, Eastin moved his company to Davenport, Iowa
, operating a rental library until 1957 when business slowed due to television. Davenport was also home to the Victor Animatograph Corporation, a pioneer motion picture equipment manufacturer.
With a background in direct mail and management, Martin D. Phelan left Montgomery Ward
to become Eastin's business partner in 1947. The Blackhawk name was first used for a secondary business, liquidating stocks of used 16 mm prints from British Information Services, Mills Panoram
Soundies and other libraries and producers. Blackhawk began publishing monthly catalogs in 1949. More than 2,500,000 used films were sold by mail order before this business was discontinued in 1981.
In 1952, Blackhawk introduced its own releases in both 8 mm and 16 mm. Included in this "Collector Series" were Laurel and Hardy
silents from Hal Roach Studios, authorized editions of Keystone comedies licensed by Sennett’s original backer, Roy Aitken, and a group of railroad films (Eastin was a lifelong rail fan). Consumer interest grew, and soon Blackhawk was offering a wide variety of vintage comedies, dramas, westerns, musicals, documentaries, serials, and cartoons. Blackhawk continued to cater to dyed-in-the-wool silent-film enthusiasts; Art Acord, Theda Bara
, Charles Hutchinson, Lige Conley, Lloyd Hamilton
, Alice Howell
, and Richard Talmadge
were just some of the silent-era personalities whose work had almost totally vanished until Blackhawk brought some representative reels to light. The company issued a tabloid-sized catalog, the "Blackhawk Bulletin," which heralded the latest releases and sales promotions each month.
Boasting up to 18 new releases every month, an in-house film restoration facility as good as any owned by film archives, and more than 90 employees working in a picturesque, century-old building of roughly 30000 square feet (2,787.1 m²), Blackhawk grew to dominate the home-movie field with a base of 125,000 customers. Fox Movietone News
, silent-film revivalist Paul Killiam, and National Telefilm Associates
joined Hal Roach as important sources for Blackhawk's releases. Other rare finds were offered to Eastin by private collectors, for reprinting in the home-movie gauges.
Since the late 1960s, David Shepard of the American Film Institute
had been working closely with Kent Eastin to ensure permanent preservation of Blackhawk’s unique original films at the Library of Congress. Shepard joined the Blackhawk Films staff in 1973, and spearheaded the ambitious restoration of Charlie Chaplin
's twelve Mutual comedies of 1916-17. Shepard later became vice president of Blackhawk Films.
In 1975, with business booming in the Super 8 and 16 mm film formats, Eastin and Phelan sold Blackhawk to Lee Enterprises, a successful newspaper and broadcasting conglomerate. The rapid rise in the price of silver (essential to black-and-white film processing) caused home-movie retail prices to skyrocket, and many collectors abandoned film in favor of then-new home video. Lee Enterprises' decision to emphasize mail-order sales instead of a unique product line, and heavy investments in the Betamax
and CED (RCA
mechanical video disc) formats, proved very costly.
Lee Enterprises sold the company to its Blackhawk management team, who continued until 1985 when Republic Pictures
bought the company. Republic discontinued film sales and closed the Davenport facility in 1987.
Shepard is now owner of Film Preservation Associates, specializing in restoration of silent film classics. He started FPA with the purchase of the Blackhawk film library. Although the film-sales business had slowed dramatically, Shepard continued to serve serious hobbyists by selling new 16 mm prints of Blackhawk subjects, made to order. In July 2007 he announced that Blackhawk Films would discontinue the 16 mm business. Shepard now devotes his energies to video restorations of classic motion pictures.
8 mm film
8 mm film is a motion picture film format in which the filmstrip is eight millimeters wide. It exists in two main versions: the original standard 8mm film, also known as regular 8 mm or Double 8 mm, and Super 8...
and Super 8
Super 8 mm film
Super 8 mm film is a motion picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement of the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format....
film. Most were vintage one- or two-reel short subject
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
s, usually comedies starring Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...
, Our Gang
Our Gang
Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals, was a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and the adventures they had together. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, the series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively...
, Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
, and other famous comedy series of the past. Blackhawk also offered newsreels, documentaries, and silent feature films. With the rise of the video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
market in the early 1980s, Blackhawk began producing video versions of many of their titles in 1981 and within a few years no longer manufactured film copies. The company was later purchased by NTA
National Telefilm Associates
National Telefilm Associates was an independent distribution company that handled reissues of American film libraries, including much of Paramount Pictures' animated and short-subjects library.-History:...
, and the film elements still later by archivist David Shepard.
History of Blackhawk Films
The company was founded in 1927 as Eastin Pictures by Kent D. Eastin, who made movie ads for merchants, filmed local news events for theater newsreelNewsreel
A newsreel was a form of short documentary film prevalent in the first half of the 20th century, regularly released in a public presentation place and containing filmed news stories and items of topical interest. It was a source of news, current affairs and entertainment for millions of moviegoers...
s and sold independent 35 mm theatrical film prints for home projectors of the day. Eastin worked from his parents’ home in Galesburg, Illinois
Galesburg, Illinois
Galesburg is a city in Knox County, Illinois, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 32,195. It is the county seat of Knox County....
. With the advent of 16 mm sound film in 1934, Eastin moved his company to Davenport, Iowa
Davenport, Iowa
Davenport is a city located along the Mississippi River in Scott County, Iowa, United States. Davenport is the county seat of and largest city in Scott County. Davenport was founded on May 14, 1836 by Antoine LeClaire and was named for his friend, George Davenport, a colonel during the Black Hawk...
, operating a rental library until 1957 when business slowed due to television. Davenport was also home to the Victor Animatograph Corporation, a pioneer motion picture equipment manufacturer.
With a background in direct mail and management, Martin D. Phelan left Montgomery Ward
Montgomery Ward
Montgomery Ward is an online retailer that carries the same name as the former American department store chain, founded as the world's #1 mail order business in 1872 by Aaron Montgomery Ward, and which went out of business in 2001...
to become Eastin's business partner in 1947. The Blackhawk name was first used for a secondary business, liquidating stocks of used 16 mm prints from British Information Services, Mills Panoram
Panoram
Panoram was the trademark name of a visual jukebox that played music accompanied by a synched, filmed image popular within the United States during the 1940s...
Soundies and other libraries and producers. Blackhawk began publishing monthly catalogs in 1949. More than 2,500,000 used films were sold by mail order before this business was discontinued in 1981.
In 1952, Blackhawk introduced its own releases in both 8 mm and 16 mm. Included in this "Collector Series" were Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...
silents from Hal Roach Studios, authorized editions of Keystone comedies licensed by Sennett’s original backer, Roy Aitken, and a group of railroad films (Eastin was a lifelong rail fan). Consumer interest grew, and soon Blackhawk was offering a wide variety of vintage comedies, dramas, westerns, musicals, documentaries, serials, and cartoons. Blackhawk continued to cater to dyed-in-the-wool silent-film enthusiasts; Art Acord, Theda Bara
Theda Bara
Theda Bara , born Theodosia Burr Goodman, was an American silent film actress – one of the most popular of her era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" . The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman...
, Charles Hutchinson, Lige Conley, Lloyd Hamilton
Lloyd Hamilton
Lloyd Vernon Hamilton was a major silent film star. Hamilton is best remembered as the stocky half of silent comedy's "Ham and Bud" , and later, his own series of short comedies...
, Alice Howell
Alice Howell
Alice Howell , was a silent film comedy actress from New York City.Early reviews of her movies describe her as the scream of the screen....
, and Richard Talmadge
Richard Talmadge
Richard Talmadge was a Swiss-born American actor, stuntman and film director....
were just some of the silent-era personalities whose work had almost totally vanished until Blackhawk brought some representative reels to light. The company issued a tabloid-sized catalog, the "Blackhawk Bulletin," which heralded the latest releases and sales promotions each month.
Boasting up to 18 new releases every month, an in-house film restoration facility as good as any owned by film archives, and more than 90 employees working in a picturesque, century-old building of roughly 30000 square feet (2,787.1 m²), Blackhawk grew to dominate the home-movie field with a base of 125,000 customers. Fox Movietone News
Movietone News
Movietone News is a newsreel that ran from 1928 to 1963 in the United States, and from 1929 to 1979 in the United Kingdom.-History:It is known in the U.S. as Fox Movietone News, produced cinema, sound newsreels from 1928 to 1963 in the U.S., from 1929 to 1979 in the UK , and from 1929 to 1975 in...
, silent-film revivalist Paul Killiam, and National Telefilm Associates
National Telefilm Associates
National Telefilm Associates was an independent distribution company that handled reissues of American film libraries, including much of Paramount Pictures' animated and short-subjects library.-History:...
joined Hal Roach as important sources for Blackhawk's releases. Other rare finds were offered to Eastin by private collectors, for reprinting in the home-movie gauges.
Since the late 1960s, David Shepard of the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
had been working closely with Kent Eastin to ensure permanent preservation of Blackhawk’s unique original films at the Library of Congress. Shepard joined the Blackhawk Films staff in 1973, and spearheaded the ambitious restoration of Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
's twelve Mutual comedies of 1916-17. Shepard later became vice president of Blackhawk Films.
In 1975, with business booming in the Super 8 and 16 mm film formats, Eastin and Phelan sold Blackhawk to Lee Enterprises, a successful newspaper and broadcasting conglomerate. The rapid rise in the price of silver (essential to black-and-white film processing) caused home-movie retail prices to skyrocket, and many collectors abandoned film in favor of then-new home video. Lee Enterprises' decision to emphasize mail-order sales instead of a unique product line, and heavy investments in the Betamax
Betamax
Betamax was a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional wide, U-matic format...
and CED (RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
mechanical video disc) formats, proved very costly.
Lee Enterprises sold the company to its Blackhawk management team, who continued until 1985 when Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures was an independent film production-distribution corporation with studio facilities, operating from 1934 through 1959, and was best known for specializing in westerns, movie serials and B films emphasizing mystery and action....
bought the company. Republic discontinued film sales and closed the Davenport facility in 1987.
Shepard is now owner of Film Preservation Associates, specializing in restoration of silent film classics. He started FPA with the purchase of the Blackhawk film library. Although the film-sales business had slowed dramatically, Shepard continued to serve serious hobbyists by selling new 16 mm prints of Blackhawk subjects, made to order. In July 2007 he announced that Blackhawk Films would discontinue the 16 mm business. Shepard now devotes his energies to video restorations of classic motion pictures.