The Extras - Warner Archive Celebrates Judy Garland's Centennial

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

Warner Bros George Feltenstein brings a special guest to discuss the June 2022 Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive.  John Fricke is the foremost authority on Judy Garland and he brings his insights and stories into a lively, fun-filled discussion of these three black and white Judy Garland films available now for the first time on Blu-ray.  First up is the glamourous 1941 musical "Ziegfeld Girl" starring Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, Lana Turner, James Stewart and directed by Robert Z. Leonard with musical numbers directed by Busby Berkeley.  Next, we review the 1942 musical "For Me and My Gal" starring Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, George Murphy, Martha Eggerth, and directed by Busby Berkeley.  A showcase for Judy and her vaudeville roots, this was also Gene Kelly's first film role.  And finally, we review the 1945 "The Clock" starring Judy Garland and Robert Walker and directed by Vincente Minnelli.  Purchase on Amazon:Ziegfeld Girl Blu-ray   For Me and My Gal Blu-rayThe Clock Blu-rayThe Wizard of Oz 4KFor all Warner Archive podcasts: www.theextras.tv/podcastsOtaku 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.tvThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify Warner Archive Store on Amazon Support 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, 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.

Today, George Feltenstein from Warner Brothers joins the show to take us through the June 2022 releases from the Warner Archive. George, it's good to talk with you today. Tim, it's great to be back, and this is a special occasion as far as I'm concerned. Yes, not only is it the normal kind of June release, but obviously it's it's special for the month and the celebration of Judy Garland. And with that, we have a very special guest joining us today. And he's a good friend of yours. So why don't you introduce him to the listeners? Well, it is my deepest pleasure to introduce the gentleman I think is the world's foremost expert on Judy Garland as well as the Wizard of Oz. And it's because of the Wizard of Oz that John and I met many years ago.

And there's rarely been any, well, there hasn't been any project involving Miss Garland's body of work, a great deal of which we're the pleasure to be the stewards of, where we haven't asked and begged and pleaded for the influence and input of the incomparable John Fricke, an author, lecturer, and just all around great guy. And with that, I am so glad that you're here with me to talk about these new, exciting Blu-rays of three of Judy's very best films that have never been available on Blu-ray before, no less in high definition. And they've been restored just for you, John. I got the last bit about the Blu-ray, but I missed everything you said about me. Would you please repeat that? Well, you were born in it, John. Never mind.

Thank you, George, very much. Suffice it to say that what George said about their employing me from MGM UA home video for the Oz 50th anniversary through Turner material, through Warner Brothers material, I mean, it's all the Garland archive, but we've had an awfully good time working together and people have liked what we've done, which makes it even nicer. So to come along for Judy's Centennial, which is why actually these three films are the Warner Blu-ray releases for the month of June. I hope it doesn't tie everything up as a finale, but it is certainly nice to be part of it. As George said, we've been working together for over 40 years, and that's a pretty good roll of the dice, as they say. 33! Yes. 33. Yes. 33.

Thank you. Math is not what I do. But we can talk about Judy Garland if you want to. John, first before we do that, I just want to thank you for coming on today and making this a special episode for our listeners. And you guys just mentioned that, you know, that this is a special release. George, why don't you kind of give us some background on how you went around planning this June's releases because of this centennial? Well, it's been a priority because a lot of the great classics from the 40s and 30s were, they're expensive projects.

And we had to wait, really, for the Warner Archive to grow as a business before we could afford a lot of these projects. And we've, with the exception of films in which Miss Garland made sort of cameo appearances, and that would include Thousand's Cheer and Words and Music and Till the Clouds Are By, but all of her other Technicolor films are now available on Blu-ray, all from the Warner Archive, except for The Wizard of Oz and Easter Parade, which are available from Warner Brothers Home Entertainment. But in recent years, we've restored the Harvey Girls and the Pirate and Summerstock and In the Good Old Summertime, among others. And it's been such a joy to be able to get her filmography out and to make it available to all the consumers with the very best quality. And the black and white films deserve love, too.

So we singled out three films from Judy's black and white period. And we had already released two of the films Judy did with Mickey Rooney, Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy in 2020. And now it's time to revisit and we had the opportunity to select three and they are in fact Ziegfeld Girl from 1941 and we have a personal favorite of mine because of Judy and Gene Kelly making his film debut for Me and My Gal 1942 and then a very special film in which Judy sings Nary a Note. Now, John may correct me on that because she might hum something, but it's a non-musical, beautiful, romantic love story called The Clock, co-starring Robert Walker and directed by Vincent Minnelli. And that's kind of a surprise release in the sense that people really have wanted the release of that film. And in the case of all these films,

what they've been seeing so far on DVD and on television has been of, uh, let's just say that the sources are as old as John and my friendship. So put together as Lena Lamont would say. Right. So they're all beautifully remastered 4K scans off the best preservation elements that we have. The sound has been restored. The special features are there. And John does the introduction for Ziegfeld Girl on the disc.

And John does the commentary on the For Me and My Gal disc. And those are things that he did several years ago for the DVD releases. But just like John himself, they aged nary a day. And I don't know if that's good. Lots of special features on really on all the discs. And we can get into all that. But, get into all that. But, you know, there are people who are fans and there are people who are fanatics. And I think William Shatner used that title for a documentary he made about Star Trek fans. But John took his dedication, devotion and being a fan of Judy Garland's work and turned it into his life's work. And he has always been such an incredibly eloquent representative of whatever company happened to own the library at the time as we've moved from MGM to Turner to Warner Brothers. John has always represented each company with such professionalism and such,

such a proper level of adoration that never went overboard. He looks at things very realistically, and that's why all the books he's written about Judy and about Oz, they're all, each and every one of them, quite stupendous. So now, John, I hope I haven't made you turn too red in embarrassment, but welcome to being on The Ext extras with Tim and myself. It's, it's, it's a great honor to have you as a special guest. Well, thank you.

I feel a little bit like Tom Sawyer when he goes back to his own funeral in the book by Mark Twain. But that again, you said, I took being a fan and made it my life's work. You are the one George who helped make it my life's work. You are the one, George, who helped make it my life's work. You're the one who gave me all the jobs that beyond the first book put me on the map. The 50th anniversary Oz VHS tape, and then a supplement to the Meet Me in St. Louis VHS tape, which led me to realize that there was so much unpublished Garland artwork out there that it became a Judy Garland book. And then you started working me in the Laserdisc field and sent me over to Merrilee Bradford and Rhino for the CDs. And I joke about this now because I never set out to

make it a career, but it's people like George who have hired me and the fact that Judy Garland is Judy Garland. There was only one. George and I realized that decades ago, long before either of us planned to make this a career or a part of the career in George's case. And the wonderful thing is that she bears this kind of attention. She never gets old. She never gets to be predictable. She is rediscovered year after year after year. Now, I would have been more careful about these statements 30 years ago or 35 years ago she has withstood all the changing tastes in entertainers and entertainment. And you look at her and the movies may be of their time, but she is, to be cliched about it, perfectly timeless. Arthur Freed, who produced two of the three films on Blu-ray, he produced For Me and My Gal for her, and he produced The Clock for her. He went on record as saying not only he wanted to be a producer and he brought Wizard of Oz to MGM for

Judy in the first place, but he then said, Judy helped me as much as I helped her. And he went on to say that the reason she was, Arthur died in 1973, I believe it was. But before he died, she had already passed away. But he had given her this great tribute saying she was so real. That's why she has remained timeless. He didn't say that part of it. But her reality, the fact that you get Judy Garland neat, as it were, as the character in every case in these movies. But you're getting a very vulnerable, very sincere, very rooted in reality person. One other quote I can say about her performance is in these films

and in concert and on TV and in any motion picture, Elaine Stritch, the actress, spoke very highly of Judy at several Garland events at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She was invited because she had these things to say. And she said she always watched a Judy Garland film the afternoon of a big opening of her own because she said it taught her to not lie when she went on the stage that night, that Judy was so rooted in reality. She said, never did I catch Judy Garland in a lie and never did I catch her acting it was always real and so you get that in these films and in two of them with the acting and the musical numbers in the clock in her first straight dramatic role and it is it is an homage she deserves not just because it's her centennial but because it's her centennial. And she's been proving this over and over and over for more than 80 years. End of sermon. 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. You know, I think about this a lot in that because of The Wizard of Oz, which will live on as probably most other movies, there will be new generations who will find out who Dorothy is and become interested in who Dorothy is. That is a guarantee of immortality. And I truly worry about other great artists that are not really known by most people today, like Bing Crosby.

And they took Bob Hope's name off Bob Hope Airport. Not that I'm putting them all on the same level. I'm just speaking the great celebrities of 50 years ago or even 30 years ago. People will be forgotten as new people take their place and as our cultural zeitgeist in this country diminishes. in this country diminishes. And I feel that we who really appreciate the great works of great artists, you know, that that's what gets me up in the morning and gets me excited about my work is to make sure the great performers, the great directors, the great films, the great recordings that they're not forgotten. And I think of, of all of the classic performers from Hollywood's golden age, not only just Judy Garland's work hold up incredibly well and the films she made, even the lesser films, have great charm.

And there weren't too many lesser ones. But the core of The Wizard of Oz is what will lead other people in current and future generations to want to know who this person was. And then they'll start seeing the films, listening to the recordings. And this is a perfect way to celebrate her centennial. And I'm very excited that John's here to talk about the new Blu-rays, which we're so proud about. And they become available June 7th, three days before what would have been Judy's 100th birthday. And it's part of a lot of things that are happening in June throughout Warner Brothers Discovery.

TCM will have Judy as Star of the Month. The Wizard of Oz, as John mentioned or intimated earlier, is going to have Fathom screenings right before we release these Blu-rays. And our soundtrack label, Water Tower Music, is going to be releasing over 100 Judy Garland tracks to streaming services like Spotify and Pandora. And those are actually from albums that I worked on and some of them John and I worked on. And there's all this Judy Garland activity. And I'm hoping it will attract a lot of new fans and please the longtime fans as well. Well, that leads us right into kind of talking about these new Blu-rays that are coming out in June. Just for the listeners, we will have another podcast with John and George, and we'll talk about Wizard of Oz and some of the

other great films that Judy Garland was in. But for today, we're just going to focus on these three. And this first one, Ziegfeld Girl, 1941, it's a terrifically great movie, great watch. And am I right that it was kind of her last juvenile role before she began her career? It's funny because I don't think of her as a juvenile and yet kind of it's a hybrid maybe. Yes. Because she was 19 when she filmed it or possibly even younger. I don't know exactly when in 41 it was released in 41. But I don't know the the production dates. John, I'm sure.

Actually, she was she was 18 through the time she was making it. OK, well, there you go. It's very remarkable to realize that two years before she was Dorothy, you know, and they unbound her upper half and let her be a more grown woman very quickly. And by Ziegfeld Girl, I mean, it's a remarkable film on a lot of levels because when MGM bought the rights to make The Great Ziegfeld in 1936, which won the Oscar for Best Picture, they also made arrangements with Linda, the Witch of the North, Billy Burke, who was the second Mrs. Florent Ziegfeld, to basically buy the Ziegfeld name for future projects. And eventually there was a Ziegfeld Follies movie that Judy was in,

and we released that on Blu-ray last year. But Ziegfeld Girl was the first Ziegfeld movie from MGM after The Great Ziegfeld, five years after. And what's interesting in it is you have no Florian Ziegfeld character. You never see him. You hear references to him. And what they've done here is they've brought together Judy and her musical talent, musical numbers staged by the great Busby Berkeley. But you also have two of the most glamorous leading ladies from MGM's non-musical department, Hedy Lamarr, not Hedley, and Lana Turner, as well as some really fine leading men like James Stewart and a grown up Jackie Cooper and some great supporting players. And it's directed by Robert Z. Leonard.

And it was a big success at the box office. Because the three women's parts are split pretty equally between Judy handles the musical numbers, Lana handles the drama, and Hedy Lamarr stands around and looks gorgeous and is entirely believable as a Ziegfeld girl, obviously. But as George was saying, they had owned the rights to the Ziegfeld name for five years at this point. And as early as 37, 38, they were planning on making Ziegfeld Girl, but it was going to be Joan Crawford and Eleanor Powell and Margaret Sullivan instead of the next generation of MGM beauties. And it's wonderful to see how it evolved because we know the history. We know that as they filmed, they added more and more scenes for Lana Turner because her character was so interesting and she was handling it really well.

They had Judy to handle, as they used to say, the excursions into Stardust. She's the one who was a vaudevillian and who's the one who made it as a Ziegfeld star. Whereas Hedy Lamarr retires for marriage and Lana is the bad girl who falls into ruin by the end of the film. So there are all of these plots going on, but George mentioned some of the people in it. And my father, God bless him, used to have an expression about movies of the 30s and 40s, which is when he grew up. And he would watch them on TV and every time the credits ran for anything, he'd say, look at that. In those days, every movie had 10 stars. And that's not only because Stewart and Garland and Turner and Lamar were in this, but because Edward Everett Horton, Charles Winninger, Jackie Cooper, Ian Hunter, Tony Martin that kind of all-star cast. You get You Stepped Out of a Dream, which

is one of the great standards ever written for a Hollywood musical. And in this, it's a Berkeley production number sung by Tony Martin. But all three of our women are in it, plus Eve Arden is in it as the wisecracking showgirl offstage. And Judy has her big hot numbers for years, ever since she'd gotten to MGM when she was 13, when she was known for being a kind of a jazz singer, she kept asking Roger Edens, who did her musical arrangements, to write her a hot song. She wanted to sing a hot song for Clark Gable's birthday party in 1937, when she was 14. And Roger said, no, you're a little girl. You have to sing what I write for you, which gratefully turned out

to be Dear Mr. Gable. But by the time Ziegfeld Girl came along, and Judy was 18, he wrote for her this torrid kind of South of the Border number called Minnie from Trinidad, which is very oomphy. And Judy, to pick up on something George said, as soon as Ziegfeld Girl was over, Judy went back to being 15, 16 in another Andy Hardy picture. So again, MGM was really walking a tightrope with, okay, how old is she going to be in this one? We already know they had a baby earlier in 1940 in Little Nellie Kelly, but she's going to go back to being a teen. Then she got to be grown up in For Me and My Gal, which we can discuss. But after that, they sent her back to being a teen in Meet Me in St. Louis. She was just so good at all of it that they could cast her in a showgirl role, in a small town girl role, in a New York sub-debutant role. And you get those things in Ziegfeld Girl. You get her vaudevillian background. And it's really

one of the critics said the fact that Judy's the one of the three stars who makes it as a Ziegfeld headliner gives the film a reality it sometimes doesn't otherwise present. You don't you're not surprised that Lana and Hedy don't become solo stars, but Judy, of course, makes it real. And really, there she, I mean, for all intents and purposes, aside from the routine with Charles Winninger, she only sings two songs. I'm Always Chasing Rainbows and Minnie from Trinidad. And then there's the big finale number, which is a little bit of camera trickery, which we could talk about in a moment. But this is not really a musical.

This is a drama with musical sequences. And I think that's very important to point out. This isn't the kind of movie where people just break into song for no reason. movie where people just break into song for no reason. But in fact, for me and my gal, which we'll talk about in a minute, people really don't break into song for no reason either. These are not Joe Pasternak movies where people walk into a door and just start singing for no reason at all. There's a real credibility to when the singing starts. And I think that's what makes these movies and most of Judy's movies so appealing.

And I have to say, because we can't convey it on an audio podcast, these new masters are gorgeous. And if you're used to seeing these films not looking that great, they're immaculate. They've been restored where there are no blemishes of any kind to the film. Every speck of dirt is gone. Every scratch is gone.

And it looks like film. It's just wonderful, the work that our colleagues at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging have done on all three movies. And again, all three of these films were, and I talk about this a lot, subject to the tragic fire at George Eastman House in 1978, when a great deal of the nitrate MGM negatives went up in smoke. So we didn't have original negatives to work with. But when you look at these Blu-rays, you'll be shocked to think that we didn't have the original negatives because they have that MGM sheen and they kind of look like they came from nitrate and it's very impressive. Yeah, I was watching it just the other evening and

I was amazed at how good the image is and the sound was terrific as well, George, on my surround sound. I was checking that out and the numbers and everything just sound terrific. Well, we restored both audio and picture. A sound often gets neglected on older films by other companies, and we make sure both get the proper attention. So there's no crackles or pops or snaps. It sounds terrific. All three films. And we're very proud of them. which has an even more prominent place in film history for me and my gal, in which Judy was at age 20, guiding 30-year-old Gene Kelly through his film debut and for his whole life. And I did get to know Gene and spoke to him about Judy. He was grateful to her for the rest of his life because he was scared. Having only been on the stage and film acting is very different.

Judy made him feel at ease and they had a wonderful chemistry together. And it's a shame they only got to make three movies together because they Lord knows they could have made many, many more. But we're grateful for the three. And this first is a really well-written story about World War One. And of course, World War Two had just begun. And I'm going to let John take over on the production history because it's really quite fascinating. Well, again, we mentioned, go back to Arthur Freed. He was looking for a film a year and a half before they started for me and my gal that would showcase Judy's own vaudeville background. The fact that she started on stage when she was two and a half, the next decade of her life, she was doing four shows a day with her two sisters all over the country, becoming a great performer, a great interrelator with audiences, which is what

vaudeville was all about. And he came up with this script. It was originally supposed to be a girl singer and a girl dancer, and it was going to be Judy and Eleanor Powell. But Stella Adler, the great dramatic coach, happened to be at MGM at this time. She was out there to coach and advise. And she was so impressed with Judy, she said to Arthur, why don't you align the two parts? Judy can sing, she can dance, she can do the acting. If you're smart, you'll build it around her, which they did. And there is another woman played by Martha Eggert, the great operatic soprano. But she is there as kind of a red herring. She has a few scenes. She's a romantic threat to Judy and Gene and does one song and

then she's gone. And the threat becomes World War I instead. But they made this film. Gene Kelly was supposed to play the secondary part, the male part that George Murphy does in the film. George Murphy and Gene Kelly were actually supposed to switch the roles. Murphy was going to be the secondary part, the male part that George Murphy does in the film. George Murphy and Gene Kelly were actually supposed to switch the roles. Murphy was going to be the star. But Gene had just played the anti-hero of all time on Broadway in Pal Joey. And he had much more of the kind of cool, ambitious aura about him than George Murphy ever had. So Judy fought to get Kelly the lead and was successful in that. And then as George said, she coached him. She helped him to keep his voice down quietly on

camera. He didn't have to project to the back of a theater. She taught him how to sit down so that his head would stay in the frame while the camera was on him. And he taught her how to really hoof. was on him. And he taught her how to really hoof. She had been doing it in dance, doing dances and movies, but he polished her and everything he gave her, she was able to do. Again, Kelly was given a rough time by Busby Berkeley, who had wanted George Murphy for the lead. But eventually Berkeley came around. Berkeley later gave Fermi and Miguel as the favorite of all of his films, came around. Berkeley later gave For Me and My Gal as the favorite of all of his films, not to discount the Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, thousands of girls in waterfall moments of his past. But because For Me and My Gal had such a strong story, he liked that one best. The one problem they ran into in For Me and My Gal is when they put it together,

when they shot it across, it only took nine weeks to make the movie. And they took it out to sneak preview as they did in those days. And the original finale had Judy and Gene and George Murphy all together on stage at the Palace Theater singing For Me and My Gal. And you didn't know until that moment that Judy had chosen Gene over George. And when she did in the movie, 85% of the preview cards that the audience filled out for their comments didn't like the fact that Judy chose Gene Kelly. They thought she should have ended up with George Murphy because Gene was such a rat, slamming his hand in a vaudeville trunk to disfigure it so that he could avoid the draft long enough to

play the palace and marry Judy Garland. That's a pivotal plot point. There's a lot of drama in For Me and My Gal. So MGM brought the whole unit back together for three weeks, and they shot a couple of scenes that made Gene Kelly a wartime hero. And when it came back to the finale, Kelly and Murphy and Ben Blue, another of their vaudeville partners, were watching Judy, who'd become a star entertaining the troops in Europe in World War I. And she sees Kelly in the audience. She doesn't know that he survived. Murphy pushes him up on stage and Judy and the picture together with For Me and My Gal, which they'd already sung earlier. So Murphy lost out on the

big part. He lost out on the finale. He wasn't happy about playing, as he put it, the schnook who never gets the girl. But audiences loved it. For Me and My Gal opened here in New York at the Astor Theater on Broadway. And in the 18-year history of the Astor Theater, For Me and My Gal broke every single box office record. MGM launched it with a midnight community sing. They brought in all the vaudevillians, all the nightclub performers, and all the Broadway show people into Times Square to do a community sing of old vaudeville songs and World War I songs. And then they were all invited into the Astor for a special screening of For Me and My Gal. It got launched like nobody's business.

Judy was recording for Decca at that time. Decca put out a single, a 78 RPM record of Judy and Gene Kelly singing the title song from For Me and My Gal. And it was on the charts for 21 weeks and went as high as number three on the hit parade. So the whole country fell in love with Gene Kelly, fell ever more in love with Judy Garland. And I think one of the most significant things about the film is that it's the first movie where Judy Garland got full star billing. It wasn't The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland or Babes in Arms starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. This was Judy Garland in For Me and My Gal. And she went on to get that Judy Garland in The Harvey Girls.

MGM knew that you didn't really need anybody else's name on the marquee or on the posters. People would put their money down to see her. And you get that showcase for her in For Me and My Gal. Plus, George, talk about some of the other songs in the picture, because there are so many good ones. Well, they used all these World War I era songs. And where I was piqued by what John was just saying about Berklee saying this was his favorite film, he gets all the credit, deservedly so, for the amazing things

he did here at Warner Brothers. But from a cinematic point of view, there's this vast montage toward the end of the film that goes with Judy performing for the troops overseas and Jean and Ben blue performing for the troops over the seas. And there's songs like smiles and Oh, Frenchie. There's all these different songs of the period. Pack up your troubles. They all create,

they go, it's like a medley. It just keeps going. And ironically, there was a new song written for that whole collage of sequences. A new song written by a team of songwriters who had just come out to MGM from Broadway, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine. And they wrote a song called Three Cheers for the Yanks. And it would have been completely anachronistic from a musical point of view to have this song, which sounds very much like something written in the 40s or even later, perhaps. But it sounded like a song of the 40s amidst all these songs from the late teens. And so the song was cut out,

but the recording of the song survives. And what we did is we tried to do a recreation of what the musical number might have been like by using stills and some footage from the movie. And we did that for both Three Cheers for the Yanks, as well as the original finale, which was replaced by the finale John spoke about where Jean comes back into the theater, a hero, and Judy, the star, brings her on stage and they sing for me and my gal. And that's been part of one of the most meaningful things for me in doing the

work and as an archaeologist, really, in digging through all these recordings and reels of film that people had put aside and not paid any attention to. And we basically rescued all of the deleted Garland material that was still extant in the early 90s and have made it available one way or another for the public to see. And the way that we do things on the DVDs, that's one way. Another way was in CD sets. And we even did it on the big screen in 94 with That's Entertainment 3. But, you know, to be able to provide unseen material from a treasured legendary artist who left us far too soon is one of the greatest rewards of this kind of work. And the great thing is that both of these films

and the next one we'll talk about as well, they're wonderful, excellent films and really given first-class presentations of an unprecedented nature. And that's a great honor to be a part of that. And George, along with that, that extra of the song, this is the release that has the commentary with you, John, on it for those who want to watch the movie and hear your commentary on it. Well, I've done seven commentaries for George and the company over the decades, Oz and St. Louis, and for me and my gal, Girl Crazy, a whole bunch of them. And what I've always believed is that if you're nice enough to

be, they're nice enough to ask me to do it, that I should talk through all 101 minutes or 110 minutes or whatever it is. You can't write a script for that. Otherwise, you're just going to sound like you're reading for an hour and 40 minutes. But what I do is break the film down into segments, like 10 minutes and then the next segment. And I have a page or two of notes and streamers of photocopies of quotes from people about that segment and just talk. With all the stops and starts and the hemming and hawing

and the referring to him as Hip Yarburg instead of your par, you know, you'll do stuff like that. But it would take about three hours to do an hour and 40 minute picture. And the great thing is that when I did these, I had already done one book on Judy, World's Greatest Entertainer, which had 500 pictures and a full text. But when you're doing her entire career, you can't go into the detail. And Turner was wonderful to me because with the success of the Oz book in 89, they gave me carte blanche to do the first Garland book in 92. And they turned the script vaults open to me

and the music file records open to me and the picture files open to me and the legal files over to me. They said, there's this, there's this, there's this, and there's a Xerox machine. I sent back to New York 15,000 pages of photocopies. And when I did the book, what did I use? Maybe 1,200 of those pages of information. So then I would do the Rhino CD booklets for Fermi and McGowan, a lot more got in there. But when you're talking for that length of time under a whole movie, you can throw in a lot of information that isn't available, certainly altogether anywhere else. Lots of pressure. I don't think I've ever done anything more terrifying than having to sit down and do those commentary tracks because everybody's watching the clock and telling you not to be nervous, which only makes you more nervous. but at least they're there. And if anybody wants

the information, they can find a lot of it in those recordings. The nice thing about the recording tracks is that you can turn me off anytime you want to. But again, it's a joy to try to share this stuff because again, Judy's history is replete. And I would say she's probably one of the top 10 celebrities of all time about whom more hooey has been printed and more myths and legends have been perpetrated. And to be able to go back and say, no, that didn't happen. This is what happened. And this is how we know it happened. All the production files or the legal files and the memos and all the rest of it. And I think anybody's career deserves that.

But her career, because it's been so distorted in reporting, especially has deserved it. Well, I really enjoyed this movie. I love the whole vaudeville thing and how it just starts off. And as you mentioned earlier, it just has a great story. Because of that, I think the audio commentary is kind of extra mentioned earlier just has a great story because of that i think the audio commentary is is kind of extra fun because it's a great watch and listen to the musical numbers but like you said they fit just so into the storyline and so to get the uh the extra content that you that you add in the commentary is is a big plus thank you and we you. And we also have the radio show version, which we love adding those

when we can. And we have one of the famous MGM, Leo is on the air, radio promotion pieces. The head of publicity, not publicity, but that was Howard Strickland. But Frank Whitbeck, I don't know what department he exactly headed up, but MGM actually had a lot of their executives performing double duty because this guy had the most on. It wasn't a typical voice for narration, but he was a promotion executive and he did the narration for MGM trailers for probably close to 20 years. And like over 20 years have passed since this book. And, you know, it's it's Judy. She's back. You know, we have that on here, too. And we also have Judy's two early shorts.

I was going to ask you. Santa Barbara and in which he appears as one of the Garland sisters singing La Cucaracha. She appears as one of the Garland sisters singing La Cucaracha. It's a 20 minute Technicolor short and Judy's in it for about two minutes. But we have that here. And we also have her very first MGM short subject, which was sort of a screen test. She's there with Deanna Durbin in a 10 minute miniature musical short and the studio had to decide which one to keep. And thank goodness they kept Judy and let Deanna go with her unibrow over to Universal. I watched that short every Sunday and I thought it was fantastic.

And I just, I'm so glad you brought it to people's attention because I think that's one of the kind of extras that let's say, you know, you're a younger person, you, and you pick this up and you watch and you really enjoy the movie. Watching that short, you just get to see Judy Garland. She just pops. I mean, I don't know what age she is there when she did that, but she just pops off in that screen test. 14 or 13. 14. It was June, July of 1936. Just turned 14. by the least likely person in history. Google Mike Tyson talks about Judy Garland because there's an

interviewer who corners him and says, I can't believe this. Somebody said Judy Garland is one of your biggest influences. Tyson doesn't know Deanna Durbin, but he talks about seeing every Sunday and how these two girls sing and one girl just sings in one way. But he said in one minute, Judy Garland sings this way and then she sings that way. And the interviewer says, but Judy Garland and Mike Tyson says, oh, come on. What American doesn't know Judy Garland, which, again, shows how much she has permeated history. George, I have to say one thing, though, just because, again, every Sunday was not the screen test. The screen test. No, I said it served as a screen. I know it wasn't the screen test. Well, again, then I used the wrong phrase just now, but what predicated the

decision to keep Judy and drop Deanna was the exhibitor short that we don't have that they did in April or May of 1936. MGM filmed them in a Roger Eden's number called Opera vs. Jazz. And as Judy said, I had a dirty face and an apple in my hand, and Deanna was the princess of Transylvania or something. And it was a medley that Judy and Betty Janes then did later, or a variation of it anyway, in Babes in Arms. But that is when they dropped Deanna's option or didn't pick it up in time. They had the right to bring Deanna back for 60 days after her option expired. And when they found out that Universal had signed Deanna and cast her in Three Smart Girls, they brought Deanna back to MGM.

And that's when they did every Sunday. So Deanna was already gone, but they brought her back to do that short subject and pair the two of them just so they, I guess they had a Deanna Durbin film besides Universal having a Deanna, whatever the reason was. Every Sunday was an afterthought practically, but it's still history. And that's, that's why, John, you are invaluable because I had the general idea. He had the exact fact. And that's what makes him so special. That's a good way of putting it, George. Thank you.

You know, it really is. And for me, my first day as an employee at Mm ua home video when i was 12 um they said to me well we need to put out some musicals what musicals should we put out and i suggested that they release summer stock and they said oh we've put that out already. And this is my first day on the job. And my boss was, you know, what I considered an older man, probably in his late 50s. Exactly. But again, I was 12. So I said, please check again. And they said, oh, we released it in Japan. And that kind of gives you an idea of what goes on in most home video companies about people's knowledge of library. Anyway, they agreed to release

Summer Stock. And I said, oh, and to make it really fun, since that was Judy's last film at MGM. Why don't you put on the short every Sunday, which aside from a cameo appearance in La Fiesta de Santa Barbara, every Sunday was Judy's first film at MGM, albeit a short. And they said, what are you talking about, a short? They didn't know from shorts or trailers or any of this kind of thing.

And that was the beginning of the kind of change I tried to bring along. But that was it started with Judy. And why not? Every Sunday was released on videocassette in 1987. And I was Summerstock video cassette. And I will interject here because everybody who has loved the MGM UA home video product, the Turner home video product,

and now the Warner home video product of the classic films especially can thank George because he did institute the idea of extras, the idea of audio, the idea of radio tracks, the idea of trailers and cartoons and

appropriate short subjects. It is one thing that put those three companies, MGM, Turner and Warner Brothers at the top of the home video market since the late 1980s, because they have always given everything extra that they possibly could. The commentary tracks, laser disc, all of these things were not so much unthought of, but really unrealized because they didn't have anybody to tell them what they had or what should be looked for or what should be tucked into the package. And that's what helps these things sell. And then I started making trouble. And things got even better. What do you mean those white boxes over there have value? That's a perfect segue to move on to film number three, which is The Clock. And The Clock is a beautiful love story about two people who fall in love

with a World War II soldier in New York City on a break who meets a very lovely girl and they fall in love and get married over the course of, what is it, 24 hours or 48 hours? 48 hours. 48 hours. 48 hours. And it was originally supposed to be directed by Fred

Zinneman who had just graduated from making short subjects at MGM to feature films and Judy insisted that her new husband Mr. Vincent Minnell, be given the job of directing the film. Husband to me, George, at that point. I kind of thought I was off on that. Husband to me. They hadn't gotten married yet, but they were dating. And Judy insisted and Arthur Freed agreed. And Fred Zinneman wrote a very lovely note to Vincent Minnelli that I've seen on the internet, the actual handwritten note saying, I was really sorry

to have to leave the picture, but I know that you're going to do a terrific job and Judy will be happier that way. I don't know where I came across it, but it was recently. And it turned out to be well-received by the critics. Judy is wonderful in it. Robert Walker, whose life ended tragically early, he's really wonderful in it. They have a great chemistry together. Supporting cast is terrific. And although it's not a musical, there are two musical elements that are very important in this film. And one of them is the popular song, If I Had You, which runs really as a musical theme throughout the picture, and as well, the underscoring by George Bassman, who was one of the unsung scoring people at MGM, is quite haunting and quite beautiful.

You will remember the music from The Clock, not much less than you'll remember the music from any Judy Garland movie, even though she doesn't sing in it. And I think that's a lovely way to put it. Judy said jokingly at the time that she thought the clock should have been called without a song, just so that the people would know what they weren't going to get when they walked in to see it. But they walked in to the tune of nearly a $3 million gross in the United States alone for that film. And I think she got great reviews. I think as George mentioned, Time Magazine, all these people who said, you know, she is such an actress. And, you know, if you didn't know that before, you will know it now in effect

from seeing it with the clock. One of the things that Minnelli did that I think should be brought out that Zinneman, Zinneman had shot almost a third of the movie before he was removed from it. And they went back and started all over. They did some recasting. But Minnelli's major contribution, Jack Conway was supposed to be the very first director of the clock. And he came to New York and shot lots of background of the city in 1944, Times Square, Central Park, all of this, that they could use this process in the background. And you see it in the film. He became, El Zinnaman came in, but when Minnelli came in, he went to the script and he decided that there would be three starring characters, Judy Garland's girl, Robert Walker's boy, and the city of New York as their co-star. And you get that. Garland, Minnelli, and Walker weren't anywhere near New York when

they made this film. But you do not get that sense as you watch it. It is just masterfully put together. And they had all kinds of people who were masterful at MGM, but it was Minnelli who guided all of that. Just because we've mentioned their names several times in this podcast already, Arthur Freed, again, being the producer of The Clock and producer of many of Judy's films, he does a cameo at the beginning of The Clock when Robert Walker is the soldier coming into Manhattan at Penn Station and there are people all over the place. And he interrupts Arthur to ask a question and Arthur just lights a cigarette and gives him a lighter and goes off walking.

So Arthur has that little bit. And then later on, when Judy and Robert Walker have their first date in a little Italian restaurant off Times Square, they're way in the background. And Minnelli, in one of his great sweeping camera moves, is in kind of the front of the restaurant and pans over to them. And right close to the camera at the beginning, before it pans, you see a pianist playing in this restaurant. And it's Roger Edens, who did so much good work

for Judy over the decades. One other thing about The Clock, too, is that it was highly respected by the critics. The National Board of Review chose it as one of the 10 best films of 1945. And they didn't give out those acclamations very, very easily in those days. So those are just little side things that I wanted to the, uh, the letter I saw from Zineman because obviously he had put a lot more work into it than I was aware of. And I just watched it, uh, I just watched it recently. And the fact that, you know, the soldier, he's kind of, you know, he's new to the city. So you go with him in that point of view. He's looking up at the city and the high rises. And then when he's in Central Park

and all of the, all of the activities there, I loved it. I love seeing that it's a moment in time, you know, that you can see the city. And I loved all of that background New York shots. And the story is beautifully structured because they meet cute accidentally in a Penn Station. And by hook and crook, he convinces Judy to spend Sunday afternoon with him. They go to the park. They go to a museum. He asks her out on a date. She has a date already, but she breaks it to go out with him.

They have this wonderful night together. They end up spending the night together, but they're awake all night helping a milkman deliver milk. They have breakfast with him and his wife. Then Judy agrees to take Monday off work, but she has to go into work to explain that she's taking the day off. And the two of them, the soldier and Judy Garland, get separated on the subway, and neither of them knows the other's last name. And there is this panic for that morning as to how they will ever find each other in a city of 8 million people. And by the grace of God and MGM, of course they do. And they decide they have to get married. And there's the red tape and they only have till four in the afternoon. And they have,

They only have till four in the afternoon and they have, it is beautifully, beautifully structured and done. May I, may I do offer something here? You can cut it out if you don't want to, but when, when I was researching and I pulled this out, there was in the MG, in Arthur Freed's files at USC, there was a letter that he had kept. And I will read just a few lines from a letter. It was from a World War II hospital commandant. And this was in 1945. And he wrote to Arthur Freed, we showed the clock in a ward of 35 burned men, burned victims. The feeling that went through the

air during the picture was like a field of electrical energy. Every man there, some scarred for life, lived that story in their souls as it unfolded before them. They felt the romance as if it were themselves and the ones they love. Had they been men of tears, many would have cried at the closing scene of farewell. But as they were beyond outward emotions, what they felt was only mirrored in the lights of their eyes. And I had to quote that in one of the Garland books because that is the impact that that film had. Is it a big, a-budget, major MGM movie? No, it's a great, low-key MGM wartime story. But Judy Garland and Robert Walker and

Minnelli make it work. Thank you for indulging me in that. Whether you use it or not doesn't matter, but I wanted to ask. No, I think it's terribly important. And of the three films, The Clock is probably the least known and the least seen. And we could have picked a more popular and prominent Judy Garland unreleased film for the centennial. But I felt it was very important to give this side of her talent because it's so remarkable. She was capable of doing anything and doing it really, really well. And that's why we're so fortunate that we control the majority of her film work and a great deal of her recordings. And with that comes a great responsibility to

make it available to the public in the best form possible. And with these beautiful new 4K scans that created these beautiful new Blu-rays, I could not be more proud and excited. Well, you just mentioned, George, that there might still be a few that you haven't released. Oh, many. Okay. I was going to say, you've mentioned how many you have released, but she just has such a... Aside from the color films in which she makes a more brief appearance, She sings one song in Thousand's Cheer, and that's an all-star World War II film

that basically every studio during World War II got all their stars together and had them perform in one way or another. MGM made one of them. Every other studio made one of them, except for Warner Brothers, who made three. And I think that's because our studio, I think, not to say anything negative about anybody else, but I don't think anybody supported the war effort more than Warner Brothers did. It's just something to be terribly proud of on this terra firma as I speak to you from Burbank.

But Judy Garland, Thousand Shear, does a song called The Joint is Really Jumping Down at Carnegie Hall. And it's a duet with pianist Jose Torbi. And then in words and music, she sings I Wish I Were in Love Again, a fictionalized biography of the Rogers and Hart songwriting team. But Judy sings a number with Mickey Rooney. It was their last on-screen appearance together. And then they brought her back to do another song, Johnny One Note, which was one of her personal favorites. Right, John? That's one of the songs she hated. I know. That's why I was seeing if you were on your game, just testing you.

I love that song, but I love the recording of it when I heard it as a kid. It's a great recording. So even though she didn't like it, it's terrific. And she's terrific in the movie. And then lastly, she also makes another appearance in Till the Clouds Roll By, which is far more substantial. She plays Marilyn Miller, the stage star of the teens and 20s, and she sings Look for the Silver Lining and Who. sings Look for the Silver Lining and Who. It's the live story of composer Jerome Kern. And so none of those have made it to Blu-ray yet. Then we have other films with Mickey Rooney that haven't made it to Blu-ray yet, including three Andy Hardy movies. And then there's Little Nellie Kelly and presenting Lily Mars, which I think should have been made in color, but it was made in black and white. And I think I got them all.

John, check me. Everybody sing Listen Darling. Oh, thank you. Yes. The pre-Oz Judy movies. Everybody sing Listen Darling and Thoroughbreds Don't Cry. And Broadway Melody of 1938. So there's a lot more Judy waiting for Blue.

Wow. I didn't realize there would be that many still left, but it just makes it great for the fans that these three are making out to Blu-ray with those scans. or making out to Blu-ray with those scans. And, you know, Blu-ray has been around now for 16 years. And having been superseded by 4K, it used to be that we'd say about Blu-ray, it was the look and sound of perfect. Well, the thing that I take as a great compliment about our Blu-rays is people say, you know, watching this on my 4K TV, how could this look any better? And some films, in fact, don't really have 4Ks worth of information in them. It all depends. Whereas the 4K of The Wizard of Oz looks absolutely stunning. So I hope there is a lot more Judy to come in home entertainment releases, but I'm so grateful we've had this opportunity to bring these

three to Blu-ray at last. It's been a long time coming and well worth the wait. And I just want to interject here as we're winding down that as a Judy Garland fan since 1956, I want to say on behalf of all the other fans, if they don't mind my speaking for them, I don't think there's a single one of them who wouldn't want to express gratitude to George and the Warner Brothers team before that, the Turner team before that, the MGM team for doing everything for Judy in terms of home video that they have. They got her out there on VHS, then they got her out there on Laserdisc, then they got her out on DVD, and now on Blu-ray as often and as much as they can. And a lot of people work on these things,

but George is the one who picks up the phone in his office and says, this is what we should do next. And he's the one who makes it happen. So if you like this kind of stuff, get out there and buy it and support it and know that George is the person to thank or the head of the list of people to thank. I have to say that we're a team. There are many people here who make these things possible. make these things possible. And I'm just one of several. Yes, I can sort of be the more aggressive ringleader, but it takes, as our former first lady said, it takes a village. And we have incredible people at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging, as well as the production team and the marketing team. Those are the people that all make it happen. And it was that way as well at MGMUA.

And the films were owned by Turner by the time I went to work for MGMUA. And we distributed for them. And then they moved to Warner. And so did I. Hallelujah. I'm very glad to be here. Well, thanks again, George and John, for taking us through these June 2022 releases from the Warner Archive. It's been a real treat to have what I would call the dream team to talk to you today.

Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Tim. It's been a pleasure. Always. Thank you, John, for joining us. Thank you for the invitation, both of you. Thanks again to George Feltenstein and John Fricke for taking us through the June 2022 releases from the Warner Archive.

If you enjoyed our conversation, there will be another podcast where we will talk more about Judy Garland, her career and the wizard of Oz. For those of you interested in listening to more episodes on the Warner archive releases, you can find links on the website at www.theextras.tv. Also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at the extras TV or Instagram at the extras dot TV to stay up to date on the latest episodes and for exclusive

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Until next time, you've been listening to The Extras with 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.