I just featured 'Out West with Jean Arthur' on the Classic Daily Double thread yesterday over at the General Discussions forum. I included both these titles you have mentioned. She made some other westerns earlier in her career but as you know, these are the two best-known offerings. For trivia buffs, Miss Arthur also appeared in a well-received episode of TV's Gunsmoke in 1965.

I agree that her interpretation of Calamity Jane is delightful and fun to watch. I prefer her brand of Calamity to Evelyn Ankers, Yvonne de Carlo and Doris Day who all took turns playing the role.

Paramount was desperate at the time it sold the library and was thrilled to get the money. Actually they didn't sell the library to Universal, they sold it to MCA which distributed it for a number of years. Universal didn't get involved until MCA became its parent company.

I can't remember the exact selling price, but it was in the low millions and everybody in the business thought MCA was nuts spending all that money on "old movies", most of them in b/w no less. But MCA had the last laugh and made well over a hundred million dollars from that deal. A really huge sum back then.

When MCA got out of the picture, I don't think Universal's new owners really had any idea what a gold mine they had sitting in their vaults. When the original MCA contracts with TV stations expired, Universal never made an effort to repackage the Paramount library and put it on the market again. As a result, many Paramount titless (not to mention a lot of Universal's own films) weren't shown again for twenty years.

Universal has never been the most forward thinking studio and always seemed a couple of steps behind the others when it came to new things like home video. Perhaps, now that they've seen Warner's success with "on demand" DVDs they'll realize what they have and how much they can make. At least we can hope.

You're quite welcome, glad to be of some assistance. That was a big mistake on the part of Paramount and they should have had some concern as to Universal's willingness to purchase the library.

Could part of it have been related to the fact the not long before, Universal had leased its horror films to the Screen Gems division of Columbia and the latter was reaping big bucks on the Shock Theater packages? But it was just a lease and the films reverted to Universal within the decade.

Now we all suffer as Universal seems to be sitting on the bulk of the Paramount library as well as a hefty chunk of their own titles.

Apparently, Universal remade it in the 60s. So at some point they acquired it from Paramount.

In 1958, Universal purchased about 700 Paramount titles that had been made between 1929 and 1949. There are some exceptions, such as the 1931 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE which had already been purchased by MGM so as not to compete with the Spencer Tracy adaptation.

I don't recall seeing THE PLAINSMAN on Encore either, maybe they struck a new deal with Universal. If it's on Encore Westerns, it's a safe bet that it will be run numerous times like most of the films they show. I recorded it and it's very nice quality probably made from the same digital master as the DVD.