The Extras - Warner Archive August Release Announcement

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

Hear directly from George Feltenstein as he announces the Warner Archive's August Blu-ray releases, including a highly requested Hanna Barbera series and two MGM Technicolor musicals.  George provides background on each film, the new HD master, and all of the extras that are included.  And he always drops some knowledge about what is being worked on for the future. There is no better way to learn about what is on the Warner Archive schedule than to hear directly from George.Purchase links are not yet available. Warner Archive Store on AmazonSupport the podcast by shopping with our Amazon Affiliate linkDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.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, this is Bob Singer, executive producer and director for 15 seasons of Supernatural, 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 Larder, your host, and joining me today is George Felstein to announce the August Blu-ray releases from the OneR Archive. Hi, George. Hello, Tim.

Great to be with you as always. Well, I thought we would address one thing before we dive into the August releases, and that's because you had actually a release from earlier this summer moving into August. And that was the Alaskans. And maybe you could explain to the fans what caused that move. Well, it actually moved twice because it was originally announced, I believe for June 25th, I think. Right. Right. That's right. And then we had to move it to early July. And then we had to move it to the August 27th date, which will end up being one of the six titles that we release on that date.

The reason for this delay was after a lot of work had been done on preparing the disk, we were able to locate some additional bumpers and bridges and ins and outs and previews and so forth and so on, that were missing from some of the original negatives, not all, but some, and I thought we get one shot at this. And this is really one of the components that the fans love. It's to make it as faithful and accurate to the original broadcast presentation as possible. So we made the decision to start over and

be able to include as much of this material as we can. So the net benefit will be a much more comprehensively accurate presentation of the series than it would have been if we had said, oh, let's leave them out and make our street date. These are difficult decisions to do because we don't ever like to disrupt the schedule and we're up against the continuing manufacturing delays and so forth and so on that are affecting the entire industry because there is not enough pressing capacity.

So we can be sure to make that date and have discs on people's street date just as was the case this week with the June titles. Everybody had them pretty much either on street date or the day after. We're trying to get a longer runway to give more advanced notice, so that will help also. And in addition, the reason that we're talking today, we're not talking about July releases. July releases we've already spoken about and they're, you know, in process. But we're talking about basically what will be coming out just one day shy of two months from the date we're recording this.

So with that longer lead time that allows for us to make sure that everything is in chip shape order and the Alaskans is a release people are really excited about. excited about. We had a phenomenal reception to Colt 45 and I expect the Alaskans will perform equally as well and make a lot of people happy. Yeah, and just for the listeners, we posted about the move and the addition of the bumpers and the response has been all positive. I mean, just, hey, you know, it was a thrill that this title was being announced. It was just a pleasant surprise and waiting a little bit longer to get that additional content. Because as you said, this is the shot to do it, because there's not going to be another Blu-ray release, you know, and this is it. Let's take the time to add that material.

But sometimes you don't know about that until you get deeper and deeper and deeper into the process. That is the risk you take when you make announcements before the work is complete. On the releases we're talking about today, the work is complete and we can get ready for disk preparation. And we've got a solid lineup for the end of August, which I'm very excited to talk to you about. Well, why don't we dive right in with the first one that you want to talk about here? Because I think you have, what, five here that we're going to talk about today and it's

a nice variety again, like you've been doing of older classics and then newer classics and some animation. So lots of fun stuff. Which one do you want to talk about first, George? Well, I think the most important thing to talk about is what we've gotten the most requests for over the years. And when we did Johnny Quest about five years ago, and the Jetsons right after that, and those Blu-ray sets were so amazing and they performed so well, people were asking for Top Cat. It was going to be a very expensive proposition because this meant going back to the original negatives, scanning at 4K, coming

out with beautiful HD masters for the Blu-ray. But the day has arrived and the complete series, all 30 episodes, have been beautifully remastered and they have all their original episodic credits because we've gone back to the original negatives. There was a little bit of a controversy 20 years ago, I guess it was, when the DVD set came out, because the DVD set used one set of credits for all 30 episodes, and that was not the appropriate manner to release these films on, because you're depriving the original artists of their credit.

We're able to release them properly and they look amazing. We're very, very excited about this. It's a series that not unlike the Jetsons, it only ran one season in prime time. It was the year after the Flintstones that they tried Top Cat. But those 30 episodes lived on another 30 years on television between bouncing off each network on Saturday mornings and diving into syndication for a year and then back on the networks. And Top Cat was always around.

So people get surprised when they find out there is only one season, 30 episodes. It's kind of the same reaction I've gotten when I tell people that the Addams family was only on for two seasons or the Munsters was only on for two seasons. They're like, what? There can't be. And there were more episodes per season at that time. And also continued popularity and syndication has kept those shows alive and at the forefront of fans. Accordingly, with animation, it's the same thing.

Top Cat has been omnipresent for multiple generations, but I think to be perfectly honest, probably in the last 10 years, 15 years or so, young kids aren't getting the exposure to Top Cat that they did, such as they would have in the early days of Cartoon Network. Now we're going to be able to bring them to Blu-ray with outstanding quality. And to me, that is a wonderful thing. I know that we have a big group of Hanna-Barbera fans out there, and they really want this prime years. Well well they want everything

frankly and we've got a lot in the Hopper that we're working on but this was really a big goal and I'm delighted that we're able to talk about it today. Yeah. And it will be on four BD50 discs on four BD-50 discs. So the discs will have plenty of room to breathe with nice high bit rates and really exceptional quality. And they're going to look and sound terrific. And I was looking at some notes here and it says here that you've got just a ton of extras. Did you want to talk about those briefly? An enormous amount of extras. They were all produced for the DVD release and there was really a concerted effort here at that time to be bringing out the Hanna-Barbera landmark shows

with as much cool stuff as could be obtained. And many of the voice cast actors were still live at the time. So we've got commentaries from film historians on three episodes. We have an interview with the, you know, about the series itself. We have a documentary and then we have interviews with many of

the surviving cast members survived at that time, including Arnold Stang, the voice of Top Cat himself, along with Marvin Kaplan and Leo DeLion. I just wish the great Alan Jenkins, Officer Divel, could have been around for that, because we have a special affection for Alan Jenkins in the Warner Archive, which we've joked about for many years,

but he was awesome as the voice of Dibble on this show. This show was, as the Flintstones drew some of its sensibilities from being a Stone Age version of the honeymooners. This is kind of a New York Alley Cat version reminiscent of Sergeant Bilko. So you had even Maurice Gosfield, who was one of the members of the cast, Doberman on Bilko, he came on to Top Cat playing Benny the Ball. And Arnold Stang, who was always usually playing nerdy parts, he got to be the cool voice of Top Cat

and the leader of the gang that lives in the alley. And the episodes are very sharply written and they're quite beautifully drawn. It just has the footprint of prime Hannah Barbera. Now you get to see the episodes as they exist on the negative, Uncut, as they were broadcast on ABC back in the 1961-62 season. Well, there's a lot of excitement for this. It's a packed set. I have the old DVD set and I'm looking forward to getting an upgrade to it with all the changes that you've mentioned, the upgrades to the credits and everything. So I'm really looking forward to this one

as are the fans. What's our next title, George? Well, this is where we make a left turn at Albuquerque, shall we say. I wanna talk about two, what I would say are more contemporary feature films. One of which was made 14 years after Top Cat, one of which was made 19 years after Top Cat, one of which was made 19 years after Top Cat or 18.

Because we go from 1961 to 1974 and 79. I'm going to get my math right, but these are two cult classics that have a very strong fan base. The first film is Black Belt Jones, and it stars Jim Kelly who made such a huge impression when he went up against Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, which was released in 1973. The producers of Enter the Dragon wanted to make

a film featuring Kelly for Warner Brothers and it was released in 1974 and the result was Black Belt Jones. And this is another 4K scan off the camera negative. What's important about that is that people have been seeing these films from the 70s coming from secondary and third generation elements that take away from the original photography. This looks amazing. And for fans who love the film, we've gotten a lot of requests for it. They're gonna be really, really thrilled. And this is the kind of film that has transcended generations. People who are into martial arts and into the blaxploitation classics of the 70s, they've all been asking for films like this and others. And we have our ear to the ground and we're listening. So I chuckle a bit when I hear,

oh, why haven't you released anything from the 70s? Well, here's one and we have another one to talk about as well. Yeah, I mean, it's great to see these 70s ones come out because there's that perception, as you say, that you don't do as many or haven't recently. But I'm looking back at what you've released in the last year and there's a kind of an equal I think amount of 70s 80s 90s that you've been releasing so of course

but people have very short memories where they believe what they want to believe and they run to their computers to complain about it. Well, what's the other 70s one that is releasing, George? Well, this is a very unique film. This is from 1979. It's a film called Boulevard Nights, and it deals with the Mexican gang warfare that was rampant in the streets in 1979. There were other films at that time that were addressing similar topics, but Boulevard Nights is a film that's very important to the Latino community. When we were starting Warner Archive as a DVD business back in 2009,

I had several colleagues here at the company who were saying, would this be the way you can get Boulevard Nights on DVD? Because there's a huge following for this film, we want to see it. Of course, we had already planned to do exactly that. But now we have a 4k scan off the camera negative. About three years ago, maybe four years, it was probably a little longer because it was before the COVID pandemic. I had been speaking with John Bailey, who was the director of

photography for this film, quite a renowned and respected part of the creative community here. He was even, I believe he was either president or on the board of governors of the Motion Picture Academy. He was really trying to make a case to get an upgrade for Boulevard Nights because the film meant a great deal to everyone who worked on it. And I'm only sorry he passed away last year and I'm sorry he didn't live to see this happen. But we told him that we were going to try to make it happen and we have.

And I think people who haven't seen it will find it to be very much a product of its time and also still quite relevant and prescient to some of the conflicts that people are facing with inner city violence and loyalty among family. It touches on a lot of issues that transcend the particular circumstances. And I think people in all walks of life will be moved by the excellence of the filmmaking. And it's just the kind of film that is so important that about five years ago or so, maybe a little longer, this was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. And for a very good reason,

because it represents on film a kind of storytelling that needs to be preserved for the future. And to be part of the National Film Registry, only 25 films a year, and they could be somebody's home movies that gets nominated, you know, or inducted. home movies that gets nominated, you know, or inducted. The National Film Registry, the purpose of it is to protect all sorts of filmmaking. And the fact they selected Boulevard Nights, that actually was the instigator to the conversations I had with Mr. Bailey. And I'm so glad that it's coming out with the new 4k scan and beautiful

Blu-ray. It has quite a pedigree there from the executive producer Tony Bill. Yes. He worked on the Sting and Taxi Driver and from that same era. So I am not that familiar with this one. I'm much more familiar with the Black Belt Jones, but I'm looking forward to diving into this one and seeing both of them. Now, the best part about it is we're going to get a chance to talk about them after you see me. Yeah.

So I'm looking forward to it. It's great. This is great. All right. What do you have next, George? Well, next we have, and I'm going to go in, I'll just keep going in alphabetical order rather than chronological. We have two MGM Technicolor composer biographies.

Songwriter biographies is more accurate. They are both, I think, terrific entertainments. The first I'll talk about is Three Little Words, which was made in 1950. It stars Fred Astaire, Red Skelton, Vera Allen, Arlene Dahl. And it's about the life and work of composer Burt Kalmore and lyricist Harry Ruby. And Calmore and Ruby are probably best remembered for having made many contributions to the Marx Brothers in their earliest days at Paramount. But they had worked on the stage before that, and they had also done work for Will and Woolsey Films, and they wrote a really impressive list of songs. This is unique in that Fred Astaire and Red Skelton

are what you would take as an odd pairing. The chemistry that brings the two of them together Works really really well people really like this film a great deal and it was very profitable it was also the first time Fred Astaire got to dance with Vera Ellen and They were terrific together. They only made two movies together. The other one was The Bell of New York. She was a terrific dancer and a wonderful partner for him. So there are some terrific musical numbers,

there's great comedy. I found Skelton's performance poignant, because he wasn't being the goofy oaf, at least for most of the screenplay, that he usually played in his films that was very popular at the time. There's a poignancy to it, because it deals with a little bit of the fractured relationship the two songwriters had,

because they didn't always see eye to eye about things. But it's well-written, it moves at a great pace, and there are some really terrific musical numbers in it. Of course, being in Technicolor, this is another opportunity for us to do a recombine of the Technicolor negatives and bring out quality that is unprecedented.

And I think people are gonna be really, really happy. I hope they will be. I remember what it looked like when we put it out on DVD, and this is a quantum leap ahead. Hopefully, there will be a lot more and we do have another one to talk about right after this one. The second screen biography of Richard Rogers and Laurence Hart, it was called Words and Music, released in 1948.

The team of Rodgers and Hart were incredibly prolific and wrote literally dozens of great songs from the mid-1920s until the end of their partnership in the early 1940s. And this was an opportunity for MGM's preeminent musical producer, Arthur Fried, to work his magic, to tell the story of Rodgers and Hart with a great deal of, I would say Hollywood inaccuracies, probably the best way to describe it. Because virtually all of these, and there were many,

all of these screen biographies of songwriters have a loose story by which you can stitch around great songs. Right. The story of Rodgers and Hart in real life isn't quite what you see here in this film. Mickey Rooney plays Lauren's heart. Lauren's heart in real life had a problem with alcoholism. Lauren's heart in real life was not dependable in terms of working on time and delivering lyrics to his partner, Richard Rogers. He had a lot of

inner conflicts and was ultimately a very unhappy individual. But he's also responsible for great lyrics. When he and Rogers got together, it started around 1925 with a Broadway show called The Garrick Gaieties. And they supplied the song Manhattan, and that led off their careers. And they triumphed on Broadway for many years,

in the late 20s and all through the 30s. They did some work out here in Hollywood, and then went back to Broadway. A lot of their Broadway shows were turned into films, but as was the case in many times in that era, a lot of their Broadway score didn't make it to the final movie and were replaced by other songs. So what you have here is a skeleton of what the real life story was between Richard Rogers and

Lawrence Hart as people, but it serves the scenario well to have just one magnificent musical number after the other. And that's what really defines the film. You have Judy Garland reuniting for the last time with Mickey Rooney to sing I Wish I Were in Love Again. Garland also performs Johnny One Note. Perry Como, who really wasn't known for a film career, dabbled briefly in Hollywood, but gets to sing several songs in this film, including Blue Room and Mountain Greenery,

and With a Song in My Heart. It's terrific, and it's just adding to the entertainment value. A very young Sid Sharice joined by another dancer, Dee Turnell performing to On Your Toes, Anne Southern does Where's That Rainbow, June Allison does Thou Swell from a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court with the Blackburn twins. A huge highlight are two songs performed by the great Lena Horne. She sings The Lady is a Tramp as well as Where or When.

Those numbers are dynamite. It still has to be said, which is a painful thing to talk about, that Ms. Miss Horn's section of the film where she's performing these numbers in the nightclub were designed so that they could be cut out of the film when it was playing in the South. And I've seen a front page article in Variety from 1949 that talks about such and such state demands removal of Lena Horne footage from Words and Music. It's a painful part of our history.

Yeah. Yeah. Happily, Ms. Horne went on to other great things and had a triumphant life, but her performances on screen are rare and she's incredibly exciting. We used when I was working on That's Entertainment 3 many years ago, we used Lena Horn singing Where Are When

from Words and Music, and then pulled back into the MGM soundstage, where the lyrics were basically saying things that are happening for the first time. Then it cut to Lena at that time, 1994, where she continued to sing, Seem to be happening again. Then she talked about what it was like coming back to MGM after three, four decades and memories that were good and bad.

That creates a personal poignancy for me. But the performances of Mel Torme just killing it with a beautiful melodic rendition of Blue Moon. And the choreography is terrific. And speaking of choreography, probably the most breakthrough part of this film is Gene Kelly and Vera Ellen dancing to Richard Rod Rogers' Slaughter on 10th Avenue, which is a little mini ballet leading to what Kelly would do in On the Town a year later. Then of course, American in Paris two years later and singing in the rain the year after

that of telling story through dance. And the original Slaughter on 10th Avenue Ballet as it was performed in the Broadway show On Your Toes in 1936 on Broadway had a whole different story. And they couldn't transplant that into this film, so they came up with a different story. And Gene's choreography is sensational.

And like Fred Astaire in Three Little Words, this was Gene Kelly's first partnership, but not the last, with Vera Ellen. And I think that's the most important part of the film in terms of if you were to take one section and look at it as kind of a landmark grew over his career at MGM. And this is definitely an example of him taking yet a step further. The film is just filled with great songs. Betty Garrett is terrific in it.

And we have some great special features on here. We have two deleted musical numbers that we rescued from the vault a few years ago and we also have some audio only outtakes which were either never filmed or the film doesn't survive. So this is a very sturdy package with lots of fun. There's a short, there's a cartoon, but there's also, you know, when we can present any of these outtake musical numbers, it's always a joy. And this is just going to be a lot of entertainment wrapped up with a 4K scan of the Technicolor Nitrate negatives in the new HD Master.

So much to look forward to. Yeah, and whenever these Technicolor, you know, scans come out, people just, we say it every time you bring one of these out, just how fantastic they look. So it's so great that you've got two here coming out. And we maybe skipped the fact that there are some nice extras also on the three little words. Oh yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's loaded as well. If you want to run through those real quick.

There is a documentary on there that is called Two Swell Guys, and that kind of takes you through their relationship and gives background because the one problem with most of these composer biographies is giving the real story behind the real composers and lyricists versus what the scenario did in the film. So that perspective is here too. And we have film authorities as well as clips from other films that show their numbers in out of context situations. We also have a Tex Avery cartoon, Ventriloquist Cat, and that of course will be HD as it was on our Blu-ray of

Tex Avery schoolball classics. We have Fitzpatrick Travel Talk roaming through Michigan that is from 1950 and that's why it's there. And then one of MGM's radio programs from the era, which was called Paula Stone's Hollywood USA. And the film was promoted during one of those episodes and then of course we have the trailer. All of these things are carried over from the DVD and it really makes for a great package. And it's been quite a long time since we've had a Fred Astaire release and there are more waiting. So that's good to be able to communicate. And I really didn't intend to release three little

words and words of music in the same month, I'd rather have spread them out. However, I have to deal with what is ready at any given time. I was hoping for a certain film noir with a very important leading man that probably won't be ready until a week or two from now, but that's what will make it a September release. So there's a lot coming out from all sorts of ends of the library. And yes, we will have Halloween classics for Halloween.

I don't think that's breaking any serious news with, you know, announcing anything in advance. I won't talk about titles, but it will be more than one and it will represent films that have been endlessly requested and rightfully deserve to be on Blu-ray with 4K scans off their camera negatives. So much to look forward to, and always our thanks to the fans that support us. We're doing the best that we can to try and continue to bring you the finest in entertainment and physical media rules.

As always, George, thanks for coming on the podcast to walk us through these and tell us what's coming. We're always excited to hear. My pleasure, Tim. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to spread the word. You bet. Thanks, George.

Thanks, Tim. For those who would like more information about the films announced today, be sure to check out our Facebook page and our Warner Archive Facebook group. You can find the links to those and all of our social media sites in the podcast show notes. Facebook is also the best place to get the pre-order links for these titles when they become available. And just to let you know, we won't have a podcast next week as I will be on vacation,

but when I get back, George and I will go through our June review podcast. So look for that coming soon until next time you've been listening to Tim Millard, stay slightly obsessed. 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 Bros. 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.