I know this is an old traed but only just now reading all this. A couple of years ago we had DVD's released which were called "John Wayne collection". All films from the 1930's with the original titles and in B/W. A few months later I saw DVD's called "Young Duke", I bought all 4 of them and found them the same as the ones in the John Wayne collection. The difference being the titles which I had never heard of before, the films in different order than on the JWC and these were in colour. Have these been released anywhere else? Each DVD has 3 films.
These Monogram titles, produced under the studio's Lone Star banner, were colorized by Color Systems Technology, Inc. in the late 1980s and released for television broadcast and home video under their original titles. Later the features were abbreviated and released on VHS and DVD under the Young Duke banner with different titles, marketed by CST Entertainment, Inc. (aka CST Featurizations, Inc.).
The black and white ones you referenced are most likely the ones from Fox/Lorber Associates and Classics Associates, who were the first (mid-1980s) to take these public domain films and add new music, editing, and sound effects. The films were free for the taking and with John Wayne being so marketable, companies altered them enough to file copyrights based on the changes they made.
And now the films have been altered again, this time by Legend Films. To be fair, Legend has done a class act colorizing the films, but that is to be expected considering there's twenty years of technology improvements from the first ones done by CST. Legend also includes the black and white version with each title, although they're otherwise the same as the color version. They also include some interesting special features with each title (e.g. John Wayne on the Jimmy Durante show, commercials and trailers). Say what you want about altering films, Legend has done a nice job with their DVDs.
I believe all of the colorized Republic titles were done by a company called American Film Technologies, Inc., although copyrights weren't an issue since most aren't in the public domain. Colorizing Angel and the Badman, though, allowed Republic Pictures to file a copyright on the color version.
Personally I dislike the altered Monogram versions, not so much for the colorization but for the tacky music and re-editing. It's too bad Legend Films didn't also release the original version with each title, because colorization requires the prints to be in good shape -- unlike so many of the public domain versions.
