Some distributors mainly sold films to which they had exclusive rights. Other companies had some exclusive films to offer. They supplemented that income with the rental of films that they sub-distributed. They would buy or lease a print for a fixed price from another distributor or the producer of the film and put it in their rental collection. They kept whatever income the print produced for them. The creator of the film only made money from the sale of the print. Sub-distribution deals are non-exclusive so more than one company could buy the print and rent it. Filmmakers made money by selling as many prints as possible.

I found a contract dated January 15, 1982, between King Features Syndicate Division and a non-theatrical distributor for the lease of a print of The Yellow Submarine. It called for the payment of $1,400 and allowed the distributor to use the print for non-theatrical rentals. The contract prohibited theatrical or commercial use of the print including exhibition to a paying audience. Distributors sometimes looked the other way if the film was rented by someone who was going to ask for a "donation" at the door. The company rented the film for $100 in their 1982 catalog.

An interesting contract was offered animators by Prescott Wright when he produced The Tournee of Animation (1970 - 1986). The producer, Wright and his associates, got 50% of the gross and the remaining 50% was split among the artists. About half of the money going to the animators was split evenly and the remaining amount was split based on how long each short was. That meant a really short film got slightly less than a film a minute or two longer. As the cost of producing the show rose, the percentage the producer took changed to 55% and finally 60%.

Another type of deal was offered by Mike Getz, who ran a midnight movie series for many years. He paid $1 a minute per screening. I had one film that Getz showed many times. It turned a profit for me after I deducted production and print costs. When the print eventually came back it was covered with scratches and was barely usable, but it had made me a profit.

The Distribution Companies
The following discussion covers a few of the companies that distributed animation in the 1960s and `70s. They were selected to give a fairly good idea of how divergent one company was from another. One catalog from each company was selected for the discussion. In the course of a few years a company would add and drop titles, but no attempt was made to show how the holdings of the companies changed.

The largest distributors in the country in the 1960s and `70s didn't go out of their way to handle unusual animated product. Films Incorporated just ended their film rental business and is now a video sales company. They used to rent features and shorts including MGM cartoons. They had exclusive rights to work from MGM, 20th Century Fox and other companies. At one time they had eight offices across the nation to better serve their customers.

Contemporary Films/McGraw Hill, founded around 1950, had a 384 page catalog in 1972. It included 20 films by Norman McLaren, a large selection from Zagreb, silhouette films by Lotte Reiniger, work by John Hubley, Jeff Hale, Jan Lenica, Alexander Alexeieff, Les Goldman, Halas and Batchelor, Ernest Pintoff, Karel Zeman, Jan Svankmajer, Jiri Trnka, and dozens of other animators from around the world. The McLaren films rented for $12.50 or $10. Most animated titles rented from $10 to $15.

United Artists' UA16 catalog #5 (1975) focused on the distribution of features, but it did devote space to early Warner Bros. cartoons (1930 - 1948), the Fleischer Popeye cartoons, Woody Woodpecker (Lantz) and the Pink Panther series. Most of their cartoons were available packaged in groups of three for $25. Individual titles rented for $20 each and an 85 minute program called The Popeye Follies rented for $200.