The Extras - Warner Archive August Blu-ray Reviews: Little Women (1933), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Father's Little Dividend (1951), Wichita (1955), Spinout (1966)

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive joins the podcast for a fun and informative review of five of the August Blu-ray releases.   We review each film, provide background on the restoration and all of the extras on each release, and share our insights into why these films are worth adding to your Blu-ray collection.  Purchase links:FATHER'S LITTLE DIVIDEND BLU-RAYTHE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA BLU-RAYLITTLE WOMEN BLU-RAYSPINOUT BLU-RAYWICHITA BLU-RAYGAY PURR-EE BLU-RAYThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Lard, your host, and joining me today is George Feltenstein of Warner Brothers to review five of the August Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive.

Hi, George. Hey, Tim. How are you? Good, good. Well, I've had a very fun, busy weekend watching these brand-new Blu-rays, and two things come to mind before we kind of get into talk about each of them. One is, I love the variety. I mean, you've got from 1933 to 1966, Little Women to Elvis Presley, you know, on the extremes. And then the other thought was the restoration of all these is, per usual, terrific. I have to attribute all that greatness to our talented colleagues at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging. Right.

I sound like a broken record praising them. But obviously, I'm delighted with how they turned out. And we put a lot of work into them. And I was doing a lot of running back and forth between my office and their facility. And, you know, the train keeps moving. We're working on things that will be coming out later this year and next year. And it takes, I'd say, sometimes anywhere from six to nine months for a non-problematic title from initial scanning to the disc being available to the consumer on street date. So these are things we've been living with a long time and to see them completed and have the

extras put on and it's truly something to be grateful for and something to be very proud of and very grateful for the inestimable contribution of the people at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Engine. Can't say enough about them. So I've said it on virtually every extras podcast talking about releases. So I'll leave it at that and say thank you, MPI. Well, I think the reason why it's noteworthy is just because I know you and Warner Brothers emphasize the quality. And I know people often talk about why can't we get more of this, more of that, faster, you know, so forth. And you've made it clear many times why. And that is just because you're focused on A-list quality from Warner Brothers.

If it's coming from Warner Brothers, it has that stamp of quality and people may have to wait a little longer, but when they buy it, when they get it, they're going to know it is the best that's available as of right now with the work that you guys do. But like you said, we've talked about it many times, but it still hits me, especially I thought we'd start talking with the oldest one here, especially when we look at these movies that are 90 years old, like Little Women from 1933. It's so impressive how it looks. Now, it's not perfect, but you have this from what, the best preservation elements, and it just looks so good. It's a little bit of a combination. The camera negative has deteriorated in certain spots, and preservation elements were made before the deterioration.

So you've got a combination of a little nitrate, a little safety preservation. I think we worked from three different elements, basically, for the picture. I think we worked from three different elements, basically, for the picture. And the DVD was the last transfer, and that came out 22 years ago. And that went through a very strange process. And that was a lot of work for the people that worked on it. I think what we've achieved here is mightily impressive because this is another movie not as severe as like broadway melody or cimarron or even our dancing daughters those always look dreadful this last dvd of little women 22 years ago was a big improvement from you know what i saw on tv as a little kid or what came out on VHS,

but the leap from DVD to Blu-ray here is pretty astounding. And like you said, for a 90-year-old movie to look that good and, again, sound that good, and add up to the Arcado sound department, because they were pretty crackerjack, very, very pleased at the results of this. And this is a film we've been wanting to bring out for a long, long time because it's so important in the canon of Catherine Hepburn's career, George Cukor's career, and really in the history of RKO because it was one of their earliest true classic films. And interestingly, it was bought for remake by MGM, who remade it eventually in 1949.

And I think it was actually sold by RKO to David O. Selznick, who sold it to MGM. But the point is, when MGM remade a movie, they usually buried the old version. We talked about that with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Frederick March. In the case of Little Women, they never buried the Hepburn original. It did go into TV syndication,

and it was sold like a regular MGM movie, except, of course, they cut off the RKO logo and put a lion in front of it. We obviously don't do that. And even on the DVD, it wasn't like that. So MGM never buried this film. It was always available. And that also, I think, contributes a little bit

to why we had so much trouble working. It's usually we don't have a black and white original negative and fortunately this didn't burn in the fire but it was it succumbed to decomposition and deterioration but preservation fine grains were made early on and also later on, which is a better stock. And so by using these different fine grains and the camera negative where it was available, we came up with almost perfect image is what I would say. Right. And the music I noticed was by Max Steiner.

And this must have been when he was at RKO before he came to Warner Brothers. And it's terrific in there as well. But to your point, the sound on this comes across terrifically as well. And Max Steiner, really, I call him the father of movie music, modern movie music, because it was at RKO that he really developed music written specifically for the film that would convey emotion. I think it was Symphony of Six Million in 1932 that was like a breakthrough film for him. Of course, 1933, he did King Kong and Little Women, and his talent just can't be overemphasized enough. And it was after a period of time that he made the leap across from Gower Street in Hollywood to Burbank.

And Warner Brothers was his home for, I think, probably 25 to 30 years. But his work at RKO is exemplary. And that's why we have, we're fortunate to have this we have some recording session material as an extra scoring stage material that we put together as kind of a suite right and you get to hear the music as it was recorded for the scoring of the film in like classical suite if you will and those recordings did survive the little bit that we have. And we're so grateful to be able to share that with the fans. Yeah, that was really fun to listen to.

And it's a little bit different. It felt like, you know, being just musical, though. Once in a while, I guess you do put those on. But the other extra that that I did want to mention, because it leads right back to the film and that's the trailer. So I'm watching that trailer, and it's just really promoting this new young actress, Katharine Hepburn. It was like her fourth film, but she'd only really started in her first film like a year before that. So she was really coming on the scene strong. Speaking of strong, you know, she also has Christopher Strong, which came out in 1933, which is coming out, you're bringing out in another month or so. But that trailer really pushes her as this new actress on the scene. And of course, she's terrific in this film. And we're very fortunate to have that trailer because we generally don't have trailers on RKO movies, but when this film was sold, the trailer negative went with it, and because MGM preserved it, we have trailer elements.

Usually on RKO, we don't have trailer elements, or what we have is negligible or just horrible. Right. But I'd rather have something horrible than nothing at all. Right. In this case it's a little a little weather beaten but it's wonderful to see how they sold her and how important she was she had only made her first film the year before our bill of divorcement

with john barrymore and she made such an impression she was literally an overnight superstar on film. And a few years later, her career kind of went into a downward trajectory because a lot of her films weren't making money. And so she went back to New York, did the Philadelphia story on Broadway, bought the screen rights. And then when MGM wanted to make the movie, she said, you have to negotiate with me and I need to be the star of the movie and I'm going to pick my leading men. But I'm getting ahead of the fact. I think Little Women is one of her cornerstone motion pictures. acknowledge the wonderful performances by the other people in the film, whether it be Spring Byington as Marmee or Edna Mae Oliver as Aunt March, and then the other girls, Jean Parker and Frances Dee, particularly I found quite moving.

And it's just a terrific film. And it is very emblematic of what Cukor brought to his films. And to have it in a presentation like this that looks so good is what it deserves. I wish we could do this for every film overnight immediately. That's not realistic. But I'm hoping that someday we can do more Catherine Hepburn films. And I neglected to mention the other sister, who is actually the second build, which is Joan Bennett. And she's pretty terrific in this, too.

Yeah. They're all great. And I'm delighted that we're bringing this classic to the people who want it. And one last thing on this one, I was reading and Catherine was very proud of her performance in this one as well, just in terms of later in life.

You know, I think if you're a Catherine Hepburn fan and she has quite a career, this is one that you definitely are probably going to want to own this Blu-ray because of the restoration you've done and just that it's a cornerstone of her filmography. I completely agree. And I don't say this about most films, but if you're building a classic film library, this one is an essential. This is a very important film on so many levels. And Kath and Catherine Hepburn was very modest and didn't

really like to talk about herself she was somewhat private and yet her seeing the praise of this film and her lifelong friendship with George Cukor and they worked together up through television movies and when they were both in their senior citizen days it speaks so highly to how it all, you know, began in the early days of RKO. Their friendship and their workmanship is wonderful. If anybody's on the fence, you've thrown so many extras in here. The two Mary melodies are really fun. I really enjoyed those. In the Dough, the short film with Jack Haley, that's quite hilarious, I thought. And then you have another one with him. So it's just a terrific package as well. But I'm watching it and I just got so nostalgic as I was watching it. I couldn't help but think of

just that time, that era, you know, my mom watching these old films with her. It just really takes you back. And I just thought this was a real highlight release of this month, I think. Well, I had hoped that we could bring more of that experience of what it was like to go to the movies 90 years ago. And so we try to do that whenever we can and make sure that we're putting content on there that people will really, really enjoy. And that is always a great pleasure and a great privilege. Well, next up, another terrific film from the 30s, and that's The Life of Emile Zola. And this restoration, I also thought was very noteworthy.

Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes.

Well, this isn't one of those occasions where we had the original camera negative to scan. And I've seen comments where people are thinking that the original camera negatives to the Warner Brothers films are at UCLA. And that is wrong. On the pre-'49 Warner Library, the original camera negatives that are extant are on deposit with the Library of Congress, and we bring them there for that. The original negatives to Warner Brothers' post-'50 movies that were shot on nitrate, which only represents basically, I think,

two or three years' worth of films, those are at UCLA, because we don't keep any nitrate on the lot. But we have to acknowledge the partnership with the Library of Congress and how they take care of everybody's films, but especially ours. And we moved in the camera negative and did a 4K scan and created this new master. And this film is very important to our studio because it was the first Warner Brothers feature to win the Outstanding Motion Picture of the Year Award,

a.k.a. Best Picture Oscar for The Life of Emile Zola. And the year before, Paul Muni had won Best Actor for The Story of Louis Pasteur. So this is one of his many historic biographical motion pictures. But again, it's also important because it gives an amazing performance. It's also important to note that this is representative of the Warner Brothers using historical events to warn people about the dangers of extremism and censorship and false accusation. And they did so by setting historical stories rather than not you know later on starting with confessions of a nazi spy they had the courage to state what was going on at the time but even

the same year of confessions of a nazi spy they made juarez with pauloney and Betty Davis in 1939 because they used every they pulled every lever they could to make good, important, entertaining films. But that also would shine a light on things that were of a social nature. And this was incredibly well made and prestigious. And it was a huge hit at the box office. And it's certainly part of the Warner Brothers Hall of Fame. And with the 4K scan off the camera negative, obviously it looks magnificent and we're very, very proud of the movies.

This had 10 Academy Award nominations, did it not? And it won, of course, you said best picture, it won best screenplay, best supporting actor for the gentleman who played Captain Dreyfus, Joseph Schildkraut. And that was a huge movie from that year. And yet Paul didn't win, which I thought was maybe surprising, but he's terrific. I mean, the fact that he goes from, you know, early days of Zola to, you know, to the very end. I mean, the, the range he shows in it

is terrific. Now the story I thought was fun because it does show the early stuff, but it takes you a long time to get to the Dreyfus trial. And Suzanne comes in and they show all the different things from his, his career. But then when it comes to the trial, I mean, he's just a force. It's just really terrific. I, I thought it was really fun. And, you know, once again, here you got, he lost the Oscar to another one of our films, one of the films that we own that we didn't make, but we made at MGM, Captain's Courageous, Spencer Tracy. I mean, like, how do you pick who's the best? It's kind of like those Oscar competitions that are so close.

How do you choose? Those Oscar competitions that are so close, how do you choose? And you end up with one person winning, but you know the other person was really equally deserving. And the fact that he had won the year before, I think, probably had something to do with it. But then again, you have Spencer Tracy winning for Captain's Courageous in 37 and winning for Boys Town in 1938. So they were not necessarily against successive Oscar winners, but it was very rare. Right. And this is certainly a wonderful film. And we're very, very proud of the release.

And I know the Warner Brothers put so much work into this film that they always were very, very proud of it. And we're delighted to release it. You know, this is something that was done as a needed element of the 100th anniversary. We couldn't have a Warner Brothers film that won the Best Picture Oscar that wasn't available. And we're trying to get all of our Oscar winners out there. I'm delighted that it is available. Yeah, and we'll talk briefly here about the extras. You've got a couple short films on here.

You've got the Lux Theater broadcast. You've got the trailer. I mean, it's also really packed so that for the fans of this film, for the fans of Paul Mooney, you know, for that era, this is a really great release for everybody to own. Well, thank you. And I'm hoping we can do the same and more for everything as we continue to struggle along. It's all good.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's a terrific film. And like you said, so many people want to own the most important films of Warner Brothers. And they're looking for that this year in the 100th. So it's terrific that this comes out and they can purchase it. So, well, you just mentioned Spencer Tracy. So I think next, we might as well jump right into the discussion of Father's Little Dividend from 1951.

Oh, yes. Yeah. How about that for a transition? That's perfect. But it's like the opposite end of the spectrum from, you know, the life of Vimo Zola in the sense that this is a light comedy by one of your favorite directors. Yes. Always will call out my unending admiration for Vincent Vanilli. Some people think of this as a trifle because it was a sequel and it was made very efficiently and quickly after the first.

But aside from series films, which were even then a rarity, sequels were not that commonplace at this time. Not only that, but the fact that they made this as an A picture at MGM with the same director, same cast for the most part, the same screenwriters. Everybody got together and the timing of it was just like perfect because it was made in between. It was shot in between. They had completed shooting most of an american in paris and as i understand it if i have my history correct that minnelli made father's little dividend while they were getting ready to shoot the ballet for an american in paris and this is a film that like if you go back and read the reviews in the major newspapers and the trade papers, everybody said that it was as good as, if not better than, Father the Bride, which is a very heady compliment. beloved and it's been circulating in despicably ugly editions that are not authorized and this is going back to the original negative and creating a beautiful 4k scan that can make a new blu-ray

is an honor and it's important that we get as much of manelli's work available in the proper format with the proper quality as possible. So we've got a lot of work ahead of us because there are a lot of needy cases in the library still waiting that attention. But Father's Little Dividend is surefire entertainment, and we're so proud to bring it to the fans. Yeah, I mean, you got Minnelli behind this. You got Spencer Tracy.

Then you've got Joan Bennett, who we just talked about in Little Women, almost 20 years later now in her career playing Tracy's wife and the grandma. And she's terrific in this. And then, of course, you've got Elizabeth Taylor, who is their daughter, Kay, about to have the baby. And so it's a great cast. I mean, there's so many fans of all of those actors and directors that I think would enjoy this. And, you know, you watch it and it just flies by. It's just like fun. And then of course you've got the voiceover with Spencer Tracy, which is really well written. Yeah. And that was, that was a novelty back then. So that's why it worked so well. The style of the movie was really quite wonderful. Yeah, the style really does feel like quite a change from the 40s. I mean, this is 51 to a much more, when I say modern, I mean modern for the next step of the 50s and 60s style of filmmaking. It just feels like a real step forward to that 50s style.

And then you loaded it with a couple Tom and Jerry cartoons, a Pete Smith short film, the trailer. So it has a robust amount of extras as well. Well, it's like a night at the Lowe's Theater in 1951. And that is our goal. Right. And those cartoons, again, they fit the same mood or tone, I should say, of this movie of being just light fun. Well, a lot of these are making their HD disc debut. They have not been on Blu-ray before. And the first way you can get them is on this disc.

And that is the case for a lot of the cartoons that we're adding. And we're adding them to create entertainment. And people who buy the movie have the benefit of having these little extras. And that's always nice. Right, right. Well, next, let's jump into a serious Western here, Wichita from 1955. And when I say serious, I mean, Joel McRae. He's like this big, imposing presence playing Wyatt Earp.

And this is the story of how he becomes a lawman, really. But before we get into the story, I have to say that from the very first shot, from the very beginning, the restoration of this Technicolor film and the Cinemascope is fantastic from the get-go. Well, this was a very significant restoration effort because it's a 1955 movie, which means Eastman color stock at its worst. And the original negative had very bad fade. We used the original negative and the yellow separation to create a sharp, colorful image. You know, I've looked at our old DVD. It doesn't look deplorable as some of our old DVDs do,

but this was, to me, revelatory. When I saw that they had recombined the yellow separation with the camera negative, the color, the sharpness, the clarity. And this is very early CinemaScope. This is like two years into the use of CinemaScope. And the other thing that's very notable about this, first and foremost, Joel McRae, a tragically, in my opinion, underrated and underappreciated actor, because even though he had a career in films for 30s, the 40s, the 50s, into the early 60s, people don't know his work well enough. And he was wonderful. He made a lot of Westerns, but he also did like comedy and drama. And from what I understand,

he was a great person. Certainly, I don't know anything about his personal life other than I've heard that he was very well respected in the filmmaking community. And if you look at the great directors he worked with, that speaks volumes. And he plays Wyatt Earp in this film. And some people said that he was a little too old to play Wyatt Earp. But I think you can suspend the age judgment for the performance that he gives, which is so taut and so tight. And I think one of the reasons why he's so good and the film works so well is the director, Jacques Tourneur, who is a personal favorite of mine. who is a personal favorite of mine. He's directed some of my most favorite films, including things like Out of the Past. He was great at noir.

And then he made social films like Stars in My Crown, which I'm hoping we can restore for Blu-ray someday. And he also directed some of the best Val Luton movies like Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie. So his versatility as a director, his works are incredibly important. And I think, you know, he went from making feature films to doing a lot of television. his lifetime, I don't think people appreciated how talented he was. And that's why he's one of the auteurs that certain people will buy anything that he directed. And we did release one of those obscure films a couple years ago, Great Day in the Morning with Virginia Mayo. It was an RKO film made right after Wichita. And the reason we put that film out was it needed restoration. And more importantly, it was a Jacques Tourneur film. And we have our work cut out for us with the other Jacques Tourneur films that are not yet available on Blu-ray. So they're coming, folks.

Just give us time. So when you say you have your work cut out is just in terms of the restoration and everything the amount of titles that need to be okay mastered and restored and there's one film where the original negative is missing uh which is very very strange but we've been looking for it for probably over 20 years because Wow. Because we have secondary elements, but we want to work from the best if we can. So we need to either confirm that it's gone or that it is someplace, and then we make a decision as to what we're going to do from there.

That's the story on a handful of titles, but very important that we know exactly where we stand on everything so we can make the best possible product for the consumer. Well, just going back a little bit to Joel McRae, he obviously is so associated with Westerns. And in real life, he was a rancher. He had a lot of property and he bought a lot of property out by where I live here. And you know the western part of the valley.

Yeah, the western part of the valley going toward, you know, Thousand Oaks and up toward that area of Ventura County. And he basically, you know, bought a lot of that land for his ranch, which has now been turned into the city there. But just yesterday, just total, total trivia and side note, but I'm driving back from visiting some friends over there and I drive by a street and what's the street name? McRae Street. And I was like, wait, that's no accident. That's no accident at all. After him. Yeah. But he's so comfortable on the scenes where he's riding the horse and he started off as a stunt double. So he's very comfortable there and he looks terrific when he's doing all of those scenes. But his presence, I thought, really carries the film.

Yeah, he might be a little bit older, but just that presence that he has on screen, it makes him the lawman or as they say in the film, he's the lawman. He just doesn't know it yet, basically. And he brings that across, which I think is terrific. And the other thing to note about this film is there is a key player in why it's so great and why it holds up. That is the producer, Walter Mirisch, who started at Monogram in, I guess, the late 40s and really developed as a creative guide and produced many films as the company morphed into Allied Artists. And he honed his craft at Allied.

That's why this is like an A picture for them as opposed to a B picture. CinemaScope required the licensing of the technology for 20th Century Fox. And within about three years, he was part of the technology for 20th Century Fox. And within about three years, he was part of the Mirage Corporation who made A-level features for United Artists release. And the Oscars started flowing with The Apartment and In the Heat of the Night. And the films that didn't win Oscars,

but that are so famous, like The Magnificent Seven and some like it hot, the Mirrish pictures for years were regarded as such high level, A plus entertainment. And they basically, between James Bond and the Mirrish,

they kept United Artists in Business for many, many years. So Walter Demirish just passed away. He was over 100 years old. He was very much a part of the Academy. He was the president of the Academy for a little while. And he was the producer of so many great motion pictures, West Side Story. I could go on and on. But he cut his teeth at Monogram and Allied, and we have the

proof on celluloid of how wonderful he was as a producer. And between Walter Mirsch, Jacques Tourneur, and Joel McRae with a stellar supporting cast, including Vera Miles and Lloyd Bridges, Wichita as a Blu-ray experience is top flight, in my opinion. I'm just going to add a couple more pieces of trivia. One is that supposedly Joel met White Earp back in 1928, which is true or not, I don't know, but that's kind of interesting if that's true. And then Vera Miles, she lived in Wichita for a time and graduated from high school there. And she was a Miss Kansas in 1948. So there's a few small little kind of interesting little links back to this film.

But she really, I thought, brought a fun, you know, the love interest to the character. And, you know, she's beautiful. And that kind of builds slowly into the storyline. And of course, it ends up becoming very important by the end. But it's a terrific supporting cast. I have to say, I just wish it was longer. I wanted more. I felt the same way.

I was so enjoying it. And I was like, oh, now we're starting to get into the love story. And so there was both the balance of him becoming the lawman, him enforcing it, you know, and I just, it's a shorter film. And so I just wish it had been a little bit, a little bit longer. Um, but that's just because I was enjoying myself so much. So glad you did. We're really delighted. And there are more Joe McCrae Westerns and non-Westerns that we want to tackle as well. Yeah, I have to bring up the extra, George, because I was laughing out loud.

I mean, not every cartoon do I laugh out loud. Sometimes I'm just smiling. But this Deputy Droopy was just downright funny. And then the Tex Avery, the first Batman with Dinosaur Dan, that's kind of brilliant, I thought. I thought those were really worth mentioning. Well, what I try to do is put cartoons that are not otherwise available that have some kind of thematic or yearly relevance to the motion picture. In this case, these cartoons have been available on prior Blu-ray Tex Avery collections, but they fit Wichita really well. They're not exactly from the same year, but I thought thematically it made for a better show. And people will notice

that there isn't a trailer. We didn't have a trailer to put on here. I'm sure there are probably 30 collectors out there that have trailers of this movie, but we don't. And that's pretty typical of Allied artists and monogram, kind of like RKO. The trailers are rare and hard to find. So let's talk about the next film. Yeah, jumping to 1966. I mean, this is a total different kind of film for this month. And it's so much fun. Spin Out with Elvis Presley. I mean, this one, you watch it, you pop it, you pop in the Blu-ray and the colors just like literally pop off the screen. I was so shocked how great this looked. And when you go back to the original negative, and this is a period of time where the original Eastwood Color negative was made on good stock that isn't subject to fade. And we had a 4K scan of the camera negative, and the colors pop off the screen at you. The costume design is deliberately created to create the most colorful film. And having Elvis be a race car driver and all around good guy,

I think what's interesting about this film is he doesn't break down the fourth wall, but he doesn't take anything too seriously. You can tell he's having a good time. seriously. You can tell he's having a good time. And most importantly, he gets to sing a lot. A lot. The plot is fairly lightweight. The supporting ladies that are in the movie are all quite wonderful. You have Deborah Wally and Diane McBain. And this was directed by Norman Torov, who directed Broadway Melody of 1940 and had been at MGM for years. And it was produced by Joe Pasternak, who produced a lot of great musicals at MGM in the 40s, as well as comedies. And as musicals faded out, he started shifting to dramas and comedies

and rare musical efforts. But one of those, several of those actually, were Elvis films. And Elvis was working primarily at MGM and Paramount around this time. And his fans really want everything he ever did. So we've got our work cut out for us. There needs to be more Elvis from our library on Blu-ray,

and we're working on it. We may have some more to announce in the coming years. But in the meantime, Spin Out, I think, is just a confection and a delight and fun. And we also did put some cartoons on there, too. Right. You have the two Tom and Jerry cartoons and you've got the trailer. I mean, those are a lot of fun. But to go back to the dancing and the songs and the costume design and the art design,

I thought it was terrific because it so captures that time. It so captures that era, 1966, middle of the 60s. I mean, they're grooving, they're dancing, the dance moves. They take plenty of time to enjoy that because of while he's singing to really highlight all the people dancing, whether it be by the pool or inside one of the places where he's performing or wherever. And that brings, I think, a lot of fun to watching it because it just transports you right to that. That art direction just transports you right there. The hair, you know, everything.

And of course, his songs from that era, just that style of Elvis from that time. The songs are really good. And when I was mentioning the leading ladies before, I was specifically going to reserve commentary to call out the appearance of Elvis's leading lady in this film. We had worked with the year before on Girl Happy. It was Shelley Fabare, who had established herself as the older daughter on the Donna Reed show on television for many years. And she left the series toward the end of its run to be on the big screen. And I think Spin Out was probably her fourth movie, but she had a contract with MGM for a brief period of time.

a contract with MGM for a brief period of time. And after she did Girl Happy with Elvis, she did Hold On with Herman's Hermits. And then she was in Spin Out. And then MGM lent her out for the UA film Clambake with Elvis. And her film career was somewhat limited. But she is, I think, one of the more well-known and well-liked Elvis leading ladies because she did three pictures with him, which is unusual. And for people who have seen her in some of her more recent TV, she was also in the TV

show Coach in the 1990s. And I remember her being very good in that as well. She's terrific. And I believe, I'm not certain about this, but I believe she's been one of the Elvis leading ladies who has participated in events at Graceland. Like, I think she's very supportive of talking about her collaborations with Elvis.

So I really think this is a lot of fun. And the Elvis fans have already proven that they've wanted this film because the pre-orders were very, very empowering. Right, right, right. Well, it's a terrific lineup of these five films. Now, some people listening might say, isn't there six films this month?

And we will be talking about the sixth film, Gay Paris, and George and I are working on it. We hope to have some special guests join us for that one. Yep. That is really a highlight of the month. And we thought it would be nice to give this film a special podcast because it's a very different special film that I think in this new Blu-ray that we have available, people will see it as they've never seen it before, certainly as I've never seen it before. And it looks amazing. And we'll have some experts to talk about various aspects of the film on that next podcast. That'll be terrific. And it is, of course, available

and the podcast will come a little later. There are a terrific amount of extras that are included in that release. So if you purchase it before you listen to the podcast, I think you're really going to enjoy it. But listen to the podcast, you're going to get some real insight that I think you'll really enjoy.

So that'll be coming up in the near future. So, well, thanks, George, for coming on the podcast. As always, it's fun to go through these with you and share just some of my insights into both the restoration and the films themselves. And to just let fans know that all the things you promised in those announced podcasts where you talk about the restoration

and what these films are that I can validate. I've seen them and these are terrific. And it's so much fun to go over them with you and to share with fans, Hey, if you're a fan of these actors, if you're a fan of these films, this is, this is what you're going to get in this Blu-ray package from the Warner Archive. Absolutely.

And as we say it again and again, it is always an honor and a pleasure and a privilege to be with you and to be able to get the word out to our loyal consumers a little bit more minutiae than we're able to communicate otherwise about what makes these films and these releases special. the consumers that support our efforts, because without you, we wouldn't be here. And we're very grateful for your continued support and patronage. For those of you interested in ordering the films we discussed today, there are links in the podcast show notes and on our website at www.theexpress.tv. So be sure and check those out. If you're on social media, be sure and follow the show to stay up to date on our upcoming guests and to be a part of our community.

And as we mentioned earlier, that will also let you know when we are going to be releasing the special episode on Gay Paris. And you're invited to join our Facebook group for fans of Warner Archive films called the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog Group. So look for that link on the Facebook page or in the podcast show notes as well. And for our long-term listeners, don't forget to follow and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media,

producers of podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connects creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals at www.otakumedia.tv or look for the link in the show notes.