By RAY KELLY
American Heritage Vol. 2: Clarence Darrow — one of six rare Cartrivision video titles directed by Orson Welles — has found its ways into the hands of a collector.
Oddity Archive host Ben Minnotte told Wellesnet he picked up several defunct Cartrivision videotape cartridges. He chronicled his recent acquisitions in a YouTube short, Episode 289.6 – A Lot of Cartrivision (A Prelude?).
Minnottte is proceeding cautiously in examining and playing the half-inch videotape because of the format’s peculiarities. Further, many Cartrivision tapes are known to have been damaged by improper storage over the course of five decades. A copy of American Heritage Vol. 2 that surfaced in 2022 was found to have been erased.
He noted the American Heritage Vol. 2 he purchased appears to be in good physical condition.
“Unless this sucker met with a bulk eraser at some point, the odds are pretty good this might be one of the missing Welles tapes,” Minnotte said.
In 1970, Avco Broadcasting Corp. hired Welles to write, direct, produce and star in original programs for its fledgling Cartrivision Television, which predated Sony Betamax and VHS videotapes. Unfortunately, Cartrivision was a flop and Avco’s Cartridge Television line filed for bankruptcy in July 1973.
Filmed in late summer 1970 at Welles’ rented Beverly Hills home on Lawlen Way by cameraman Gary Graver, the no-frills videos are sometimes referred to as An Evening with Orson Welles, though that name does not appear on packaging or credits. The six titles are:
• American Heritage Vol. 1 – Selections from George Ade, Thomas Wolfe, Mark Twain
• American Heritage Vol. 2 – Clarence Darrow
• Two Wise Old Men: Socrates and Noah
• Ring Lardner’s The Golden Honeymoon
• Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince; and
• The works of G.K. Chesterton and P.G. Wodehouse.
The Munich Film Museum has been in possession of a copy of The Golden Honeymoon for decades and screened it at the Locarno Film Festival in 2005. Orson Welles LLC, headed by his youngest daughter, Beatrice Welles, acquired copies of American Heritage Vol. 1 and Two Wise Old Men in recent years and expressed a desire for them to be seen by a larger audience.
The Welles-directed programs were copyrighted by Avco Broadcasting in 1971 and 1972. The company was acquired by Multimedia Inc. of Greenville, South Carolina in 1976 and folded two decades later into Universal Television, now part of NBC Universal.
In response to a copyright query by Wellesnet, a NBC Universal licensing executive said the entertainment giant was not in possession of the six Welles-related Cartrivision titles.
It is unclear as to whether the Welles titles have fallen into public domain.
While the titles were initially copyrighted by Avco, a perusal of U.S. Copyright Office records does not indicate a required renewal was submitted 28 years later. This may have resulted in the shorts becoming orphaned titles with unenforceable ownership.
(Special thanks to TV archivist Ray Langstone for alerting Wellesnet of the Cartrivision find.)
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