The Extras - Warner Archive July 21 Release Highlights

Episode Date: January 23, 2022

This podcast is one of a series looking back at some highlights from the 2021 Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive.Warner Bros executive George Feltenstein takes us through the July 2021 Blu-ray releases of three films and one TV series, providing information on the preservation and restoration of the films and insights into the storylines and production.  First is the controversial 1945 war classic, "Objective, Burma,"  starring Errol Flynn and directed by Raoul Walsh.  Next is the 1948 Monogram film Noir "I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes," which was basically a lost film until this version, which is a restoration from the nitrate elements.  And finally, the gorgeous Technicolor classic "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra has an interesting production history and includes memorable extras.  George also details the work put into the restoration of the classic Hanna-Barbera TV series "Herculoids" and what fans can expect in the future from the Hanna-Barbera library. 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 Millard, your host. This podcast is one of a series looking back at some highlights from the 2021 Blu-ray releases

from the Warner Archive. In this episode, George Feltenstein takes us through some of the July 2021 releases, including Objective Burma, I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and Herculoids. So George, July was another busy month for the Warner Archive, and it includes quite a few films, some of which you want to talk about. And the first one is a bit of a controversial film, Objective Burma. Well, this film was released toward the very end of World War II and starred Errol Flynn. Errol Flynn very much wanted to fight in World War II, and he had some kind of physical disability that made him unsuitable to, you know, be in the armed forces. But he did his bit for patriotism by being one of the few leading men of Hollywood who could carry a movie and he made a lot of films during World War II that were extremely patriotic and representative of Warner Brothers being, in my opinion, all of the studios were united

in the war effort. But I think more than any other one studio, Warner Brothers went the extra mile. Now, there was war activity in Burma and the Burma Road, I believe, where remarkable rescues of people took place. And in the film, Errol Flynn leads a group of American soldiers. When in truth, the reality was that it was the British army that was responsible for the brave rescues that took place in Burma. five rescues that took place in Burma. So the film was banned in the UK until the early 1950s. And there was a little preface put in front of it when it was finally released there again, kind of apologizing and explaining, you know, that it was made for the American audience just to continue to support the war effort.

And it was directed by Raoul Walsh, who was a terrific, wonderful director and worked with Flynn very often. And it all worked out in the end, but it was very embarrassing for Warner Brothers. And it was kind of a little bit of dirty pool to take credit for something that one of the other allies had done. And Errol Flynn was actually from Tasmania, you know, Australia, New Zealand, you know, that part of the world. But certainly could and often did pull off British, you know, that part of the world, but certainly could and often did pull off British, you know, because for us Yankees, it's very hard to discern where the accents are from. Although I find it very clear now, I can tell the difference between an Australian accent and a British accent. It's very distinctive to me.

But I think nobody really knew exactly where Errol Flynn came from, but they never tried to pull him off as an American. And there's a very funny thing. I think it's either in Dodge City or Virginia City because he made a lot of Westerns and there's some line in one of those movies where he explains his accent, you know, it's a throwaway line, you know, the years when my, my family and I were overseas or something like, you know, but you know, he, he had quite he had quite a quite a career at Warner Brothers and was definitely one of the biggest stars of the studio from the mid 30s until the early 1950s. And this is a terrific film. And it's also been restored from the original camera negative.

And again, we restored footage that had been cut out for reissue. So it's a restoration and it's a wonderful presentation. But the history of it makes it even more interesting. So I highly recommend Objective Burma. Yeah, and the reviews when it came out in January, the war was still going on, but the New York Times review said this is without question one of the best war films yet made in Hollywood. So it received pretty good critical acclaim at the time. It just, the whole controversy probably cut back on some of the box office, though.

I don't know if the controversy was made public in the U S oh, I see. I, I, I've never looked into that. Uh, it may be well known that it was, I,

I just, I'm just not aware of that fact. Right. In any event, the film was an instant classic and lived a full life on television and home video, but it's never looked like this. If you look at the old DVD and compare it to this Blu-ray,

it will blow your mind how good it looks. Well, the next film I wanted to bring to your attention is the noir 1948 film, I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes. What can you tell us about the Blu-ray release of this film? Well, I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes was almost a lost film. And I say that in the sense that this was a very, very low budget film made by Monogram Pictures in 1948. And the producer of the film, it was his second film, is a gentleman by the name of Walter Marish, who recently celebrated his 100th birthday

and would go on to produce films like Some Like It Hot and The Apartment and West Side Story and The Magnificent Seven. He was one of the great film producers along with his brother. He started out at Monogram in his early 20s and he produced this little noir. It has a leading lady who you probably haven't heard of, Elise Knox, and a leading man, Don Castle, who you've also probably never heard of. But somebody who you might have heard of involved in the film indirectly was the gentleman who wrote the short story from which the film was based. And that's Cornell Woolrich. He wrote the story that Rear Window was based on,

Hitchcock's great classic. And this is basically about a guy who, his shoes are left out in the hallway and someone commits a murder wearing his shoes and he's framed for the murder. And it's really a nail biter to the end. Would I say that it is, you know, a magnificent motion picture, you know, a great lost masterpiece? No, it's not a masterpiece of cinema. There's nothing incredible about it cinematically, but it's very entertaining. And it had been on television

in the very, very early 50s. Most of the studios were not willing to put their films on television. They were afraid of the theaters boycotting the studios. So little independents like Monogram were making their films available and they had been so run to death that they kind of disappeared, a lot of them. And I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes was almost impossible to see. And I knew that we owned it because Warner Brothers bought Lorimar. Lorimar had bought Allied Artists, and Allied Artists was born out of Monogram. They decided they were a B picture studio and they decided to create an A picture division

that would make, you know, two or three higher budget movies a year. And after about six years, they changed the name of the company completely to Allied Artists. So that's a library that's owned by Warner Brothers or at least most of it post 1944-45. But a lot of the films were not properly taken care of by Allied and even Lorimar and I I wouldn't be in your shoes, hadn't been around in any kind of

legitimate distribution for decades. And I knew that there was nitrate material in storage at one of the archives where we keep our nitrate material. And I finally had them bring it in and we were able to restore the film and it looks really, really great. And this is an important noir, even if it isn't the most famous noir and it needed to be available. more and it needed to be available. And it took me a long time to finally get people to bring the elements in and put it all together, but we did. And it's now available for people to see. And I hope that it will also soon turn up on TCM and that Warner Brothers will use it in

on TCM and that Warner Brothers will use it in many ways all over the world. But it always gives me great pleasure when we can rescue a film that we own that has been buried for lack of people paying attention. And there have been several incidents of that. And this is one. There have been several incidents of that, and this is one. We got a lot of very positive response for having brought this out, and I'm very, very happy about it. 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.

So the next title is a lot of fun and that's Take Me Out to the Ballgame, which was released in 1949. What can you tell us about that restoration? Well, this was another Technicolor restoration from the original negatives. When this came out, the response from fans was that this was the most beautiful Technicolor restoration yet. The most eye-popping Technicolor. I think so many of them were that way, but people really loved this. This was the second of three movies that Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra co-starred in together. They first co-starred together in Anchors Away in 1945.

And the chemistry between the two of them was so terrific. It is a pity they made only three films together because they just had a great chemistry. And years later in 1973, when Frank Sinatra had retired from singing for three years and he did a number on the TV special called We Can't Do That Anymore, you know, referring to their age. And they weren't that old, to be to be honest. But, you know, they were looking back at that point, 14 years. But Take Me Out to the Ballgame was a huge success.

And it's very interesting in many ways. The story was an original story created by Gene Kelly and his associate, Stanley Donnan. Stanley Donnan really was like Gene's almost assistant director. Gene's almost assistant director. And when Gene did the dance with Jerry the Mouse and Anchors Away, Stanley Donnan was responsible for working with the animation department in making that happen. They were really partners and very close friends. And Stanley Donnan and Gene Kelly actually directed the musical numbers as well in Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

And it was their work in this film that led to Arthur Freed, the producer I was talking about before. Arthur Freed gave them the chance to direct a movie together as full directors doing on the town, which was released at the very end of 1949, December 30th, 1949 at Oba De Rated City Music Hall. And they co-directed that. And then the next film they co-directed was a little picture called Singing in the Rain. was a little picture called Singing in the Rain. But in Take Me Out to the Ball Game, you had a story about vaudevillians who in the off season, they were vaudevillians, but during the baseball season, they were baseball players.

Also in the cast, you have Esther Williams as the owner of the baseball team that Frank and Gene played for. And also Jules Munchen is part of like the trio of guys in this movie. They would also be teamed in On the Town. And Betty Garrett, who is also in On the Town later on, she plays Frank Sinatra's love interest. And the songs in the film were written by MGM's resident multi-talented tunesmith, Roger Edens, who really was very instrumental in building Judy Garland's career, and Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who came from the New York stage. They had written On the Town,

which was the next film that Gene and Frank would do. And they wrote the lyrics to the songs. So this is kind of like a preparation for what would happen later that year with On the Town. But the director of the film was the great Busby Berkeley, who had made such an impact in musical films in the 1930s at Warner Brothers. And Busby Berkeley had a drinking problem and it had a lot of, uh, tragedy in his life and setbacks. And he was in a very bad car accident. And, uh, there were just lots of between the drinking and all the different problems that set him back. Uh, he had directed most of the Mickey and Judy the different problems that set him back. He had directed most of the Mickey and Judy movies in the early 40s.

But when they made Girl Crazy together in 1943, they took Berkeley off the picture because he couldn't stay on time and on budget. And he really had some dark years. And Arthur Freed wanted to give him another chance to prove himself. So he gave him the assignment to direct Take Me Out to the Ballgame. But Busby Berkeley was smart enough to realize that Gene and Stanley really knew what they were doing and gave them the opportunity to direct the musical numbers. And of course, in the early 30s, Busby Berkeley would direct the musical numbers in films like 42nd Street or Gold Diggers of 1933, but he wasn't the actual director of the book scenes, you know?

So it's a delightful film. It's a short film. It's just a little over an hour and a half. And we have two outtake musical numbers that have also been restored from the original camera negatives. One of them is not complete. We're missing some footage, but it's called Baby Doll. And it was a number with Esther Williams and Gene Kelly.

And the song was written by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. And Esther Williams was basically taller than Gene Kelly. And the dance number looked very, very awkward. And the surviving footage tells you why it was cut out. I see. But MGM was never a studio to waste a good song. So the song was used three years later in a 1952 film with Fred Astaire and Vera Allen called The Bell of New York. And they do Baby Doll in that number. It's sung by Fred to Vera Allen and they do a dance number to it. So we have the recording of Baby Doll, the surviving footage, and we tried to fashion some kind of a number together from that. And then the other outtake is even more interesting.

It's a song called Boys and Girls Like You and Me. It's sung by Frank Sinatra to Betty Garrett. It's shot in one take, one continuous take. The song was written by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein, the second, for the Broadway production of Oklahoma and cut when the show was on the road in tryouts. And Oscar Hammerstein was very good friends with Arthur Freed. So they arranged to sell the song to MGM and Arthur Freed to use in Meet Me in St. Louis, which otherwise had an original score by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine.

And Boys and Girls Like You and Me was sung by Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, but not in the final release print because they cut it out of the movie. final release print because they cut it out of the movie. So strike one, it was cut out of Oklahoma on Broadway. Strike two, it was cut out of Mimi and St.

Louis, uh, sung by Judy Garland. Frank Sinatra records it and performs it for take me out to the ball game and Strike Three You're Out. The film was cut, the song was cut from the film. Thankfully, the footage survives and you can see it on our Blu-ray right from the original negative. Now, they did use the music from the song. The melody, I believe, was used in the television production of Cinderella. And when they put Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella on the stage,

I believe it was either Cinderella or State Fair, one of those Rodgers and Hammerstein non-stage originals where they interpolated the song. But Liza Minnelli sang the song on The Tonight Show for Johnny Carson. It's lived its own life, but it's famous for having been cut out of so many things. It's something that makes the disc a little more special. little more special. Well, kind of turning our attention to a animated title that was released that same month. What can you tell us about the Hanna-Barbera series, Herculoids? Well, Hanna-Barbera, I think we've talked about this before, but certainly with Jerry Beck, we've talked about Saturday morning cartoons

and the Herculoids were part of what I call phase two Hanna-Barbera, or maybe phase three. Phase one of Hanna-Barbera was them producing cartoons after having been at MGM as employees work for hire doing Tom and Jerry cartoons for theaters. And MGM closed the cartoon department and they were out of a job. And they went to MGM and said, we can make limited animation cartoons for television

for one quarter of the cost that we did for theatrical. And MGM said, sorry, guys, we're not interested. Boy, did they regret that. So Hanna-Barbera started their own production company and their first creation very quickly. They came up with Rough and Ready for NBC, and that was a Saturday morning cartoon. And then they created for syndication with support from Kellogg's cereals, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Quick Drum or Grow, all these cartoons that were syndicated to local stations. So that's Hanna-Barbera phase one. And then in 1960, you have Hanna-Barbera Phase 2, which is primetime television sitcom,

just happens to be animated, The Flintstones. And Hanna-Barbera was doing primetime half hour shows. Flintstones ran six seasons. They had one season of Top Cat on ABC the following year. Had one season of Top Cat on ABC the following year. That one season got rerun on every network on Saturday mornings for decades. And then the following year, they did The Jetsons. One season, ABC Sunday nights ran on Saturday mornings for decades. They ended up making new Jetsons in the 80s for syndication with the original voice

cast. And the original George Jetson was like literally on his deathbed when he recorded those cartoons. And then they did Johnny Quest, which was action oriented and aimed at young boys and adventure. It wasn't like situation comedy. And there's an artist, Alex Toth, who was very responsible for the look of some of the other Hanna-Barbera cartoons that would come in later years on Saturday mornings. And Space Ghost, I think, was really the first of those. And a year or two later came the Herculoids.

And the Herculoids were sci-fi animation on Saturday morning that really appealed to the comic book young boy crowd. And it was a very action-packed kind of animation. And it wasn't, you know, little soft, cute animals like Hanna-Barbera started with. And we released the Herculoids on DVD in the early days of Warner Archive and we were very successful with it. But we really wanted to bring it to Blu-ray. So we went back to the original 35 millimeter elements, did all new high def transfers. We cleaned the film damage from the animation, but we did not fix the problems that were inherent in the original animation, like cell dust or a spot that isn't where it's supposed to be because they would reuse the cells and wash them off and what have you.

If there was a film scratch, we'd clean that up. But if there is dust or detritus in the original film, we had it as clean as it was when it was first broadcast on network television in 1967. when it was first broadcast on network television in 1967. So we're very, very proud of how that turned out. One of the nice things about this Herculoid set, aside from the episodes looking so great and being remastered, is we have an extra behind the scenes that a lot of animation historians are part of, including our friend of this podcast, Jerry Beck, and a lot of people who worked at Hanna-Barbera at the time were part of that behind the scenes and really exploring the work of Alex Toth and the impact he had on

Saturday morning animation. So it's a very, very special release and it's affordably priced. And I'm very, very glad that it's available for everybody at home. One thing the fans have asked about is if there are any more plans for the Warner Archive to release more Hanna-Barbera in the coming future. Absolutely. There's great demand and people love it. And I'm hoping that we're able to release more in the future. in the future. There's a lot of really wonderful Hanna-Barbera material that is being remastered right now that hopefully will be available on Blu-ray in the future. So I think fans can look forward to that and be very happy about it. That's terrific news. Thanks again to Warner Brothers executive George Feltenstein for coming on the show today.

I hope you have enjoyed his review of the July 2021 Warner Archive Blu-ray releases. For those of you interested in learning more about the show, please check out our website at www.theextras.tv, where we also have a complete listing of all of our Warner Archive episodes. Also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at TheExtrasTV or Instagram at TheExtras.TV to stay up to date on the latest episodes and for exclusive images and behind-the-scenes information about the episodes and upcoming guests.

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