"About Bananas" -- a huge disappointment if you were expecting Abbott and Costello

For those of you unfamiliar with Castle Films, writer and pop culture historian Mark Evanier has a great post on the subject.

Castle Films was founded in 1924 by a man named Eugene Castle. This was before 8mm. Castle distributed 16mm movies — mostly newsreels and sports highlights — sold almost exclusively via mail order and in photography shops. There was also a successful business selling prints to film rental companies that would rent them out for non-theatrical exhibition…say, at a school or club function.
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His timing was great. Soon after, another company stole the rights to the "soundies" away and Castle Films lost its most important item. To fill the void, the new owners made a deal with Universal Studios to release scenes from some of their movie musicals on 16mm and this led to them also putting out excerpts from other Universal movies, most notably Abbott and Costello films, monster movies and the Walter Lantz cartoons (like Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda) that Universal distributed. They continued to also market newsreels and travelogues and also began releasing films in the 8mm format that was becoming increasingly popular for home movies.

There was a certain artistry in the editing. Most Castle Films came in two versions…a 50-foot reel (3-4 minutes) and a 200-foot reel (12-16). Someone had to take an 85-minute movie and edit the abridged versions, preferably selecting action with a minimum of dialogue. The technology of motion picture production marched in reverse as they made silent films out of talkies, adding in title cards where necessary. The editors for Castle were pretty good about keeping them to a minimum.

You should definitely check out the whole thing, even though he completely omits "About Bananas."