Legal Status
All Fleischer and Famous Screen Songs released prior to October 1950 were sold to U.M.&M. T.V. Corp. in 1956 for television syndication. These shorts have changed hands in the decades since due to a series of corporate acquisitions involving what would eventually become the revived Republic Pictures, and the 2006 corporate split of Viacom (which became the parent of Paramount Pictures in 1994, and later acquired Republic in 1999) into two separate companies. Today the theatrical rights to the Screen Songs are once again owned by Paramount (via what is now Melange Pictures, a division of Viacom, Paramount's parent company), home video rights are owned by Viacom/Paramount licensee Olive Films, which has yet to announce any sort of home video reissue—and the television rights are the responsibility of Trifecta Entertainment & Media. However, the majority of the "Screen Songs" are in the public domain, and are available on various discount public domain cartoon videos and DVDs. The Screen Songs released between October 1950 and the final release in 1951 were sold to Harvey Comics, and are now owned by DreamWorks Classics (formerlly Classic Media), due to purchase from DreamWorks Animation.
The only exception to the above was Let's Sing with Popeye. This particular film was purchased by Official Films in the 1950s and re-released to the home movie market. While this cartoon stars the character Popeye it is unknown if it was included in the sale of the Popeye cartoons to Associated Artists Productions. It is possible that a.a.p. was supposed to receive this film, but never did, or that they did not do anything with the film at all, since it re-used animation from the original Popeye the Sailor short released 14 July 1933. Whatever the case may be, it fell into the public domain as would be expected when its ownership is unknown. This film was released as a special feature on the first volume of Warner Bros. Popeye DVD series, but it was the same public domain print that has been in circulation. Additionally, it was never given a real general release—rather, it was shown as part of a Saturday morning matinee Popeye club—and searches in the Library of Congress Copyright Catalog turn up no results for the film, suggesting that a copyright was never registered.
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