The Extras - Warner Archive June Release Announcement

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

George Feltenstein joins the podcast to announce the six new Blu-rays releasing in June from the Warner Archive. Warner Archive Store on Amazon Support the podcast by shopping with our Amazon Affiliate linkMovieZyng Affiliate The BEST place to buy all of your Warner Archive and Boutique DVDs and Blu-raysDisclaimer: 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 Gregory Orr, grandson of Jack L. Warner and producer of the documentary Jack L. Warner the Last Mogul, and you are listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras. I'm Tim Millard, your host, and joining me is George Feldstein to announce the June Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. Hi, George. Hello, Tim. How are you today?

Good. Well, you told us there were a number of upcoming releases that would make some people very happy and I think the titles we're going to be talking about today fit that bill. I heartily agree. I mean, the postings of them on Facebook and other social media have already gotten just a terrific amount of responses. But I know that when we're talking, it allows people to hear not just the titles that are being released, but the background on the restoration. Absolutely. And all of the extras. So

where would you like to start today to go through these releases? Well, I think we should talk about the feature films I think we should talk about the feature films and then we should talk about the television series. That sounds great. You wanna start alphabetically then, or do you wanna go from the oldest to the newest? Why don't we follow the alphabetic rule and that would be a very good way to organize

what we're gonna discuss. And the first film begins with an A, so that makes it kind of easy. The first film is 1948's Act of Violence, directed by the two-time Academy Award-winning Fred Zinneman, masterful director. This is a noir a lot of people have been waiting for. It is very popular when we released it as part of one of our film noir collections on DVD years ago, but it needed that upgrade and the new master is pretty luscious. It's gorgeous. Yeah, I know that noir fans have been really responding about this coming out with excitement.

And there are some extras on here as well. You don't always get a commentary with these, but I see you have one here. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that one? Well, we have a great feature commentary that was done for DVD for one of our film noir collections and that is done by Dr for one of our film noir collections and that is done by Dr. Drew Casper who's a very famous film historian. He's an author and held court as one of the premier professors of film at USC and this commentary is really insightful and great and has a lot of historical

references and it just pulls everything together from a contemporary view. And that's very helpful for a film like this. This film kind of takes no prisoners. It's emblematic of the way Zinaman was in wanting to confront a very modernistic post-war approach. You've got a cast here with sensational performances, especially from Robert Ryan and Van Heflin.

They're terrific. Even Janet Leigh is in this movie. It's a great cast. It's really well-made. We do have some nice extras on the disk, and I think people are going to be very, very pleased with the uptick in quality we get from a 4K scan of our best safety preservation elements. Yeah, I saw there's a feature as well on here called active violence dealing with the devil. And then you've got the trailer on there. So that's a nice amount of extras.

It's always great when we get these Noirs so that people can continue to add to their classic Noir collection. Well, people are asking to be able to upgrade on... We did five film Noir collections through the traditional mothership business years ago. And that was when we had the budgets to record commentaries and create featurettes. So we're able to carry those over. It's always a pleasure. And also a tribute to the fine colleagues who are no longer here, who worked on some of these projects. And there is one colleague who's still here, thankfully thankfully who worked on some of those projects. So it always makes an extra special meaning to me that we're able to bring that kind

of a featurette to the new Blu-ray presentation. What do you have next on here, George? Well we're going alphabetically. So the next film is The Man I Love, directed by the great Raoul Walsh for Warner Brothers in 1947. That's the actual release date. It was right at the beginning of the new year of 1947. And the copyright date is 1947, but the film was made and finished and ready to rock and roll at the end of 1946. So sometimes you'll see it mentioned with both years or one or the other. But we went with the time it originally opened,

which was right after the beginning of the year. In fact, it's copyrighted as a 1947 title. So that is the year attribution. What you have here is Walsh directing a sultry noir with the great Ida Lupino and many people noticed that we've had a lot of sensational Ida Lupino performances in the war archive over the years. Most recently, they drive by night, which really hammered home her abilities as an actress. But even going back to some of the films she did with Fritz Lang,

always exciting to watch an actress like Ida Lupino because she was operating on a different plane than a lot of her contemporaries. She has a much more contemporary way of approaching acting. And when you see her on screen, you can't take your eyes off her. She gets the audience very transfixed. She plays a lounge singer in this movie, and her character sings some very, very famous songs. Yet, Ida Lupino is not singing on the soundtrack herself. It was very common in those days for people who couldn't sing, especially well, to be dubbed.

Ida Lupino was dubbed in this movie by a woman that isn't very well known. Her name is Peg LaCentra. She was a vocal coach from what I understand. When they needed a voice double for I, Lepino and they did on occasion, it was Peg LaCentra on the soundtrack. What's very exciting about this release is a 4K scan off the original negative.

Our last master was made over 30 years ago from a fourth generation fine grain element. So the uptick here in quality is enormous. But even more importantly than that, this film now, as it was originally released, at a running time of 96 minutes. Everything we've been distributing, even if there are errors in the packaging as to the running time, has been 90 minutes. What TCM shows is 90 minutes. All our film elements were 90 minutes. When we were doing the work on this film, we encountered the fact that the running time

when it opened was 96 minutes. So why has everything been 90 minutes? Why did they cut this? I initially thought, well, maybe they reissued it and cut it for time because that's what Jack Warner would do often, make cuts in the negative, and then we have to try to find a second generation element to cover what was cut out.

It's very famous that this was done to films like The Seahawk and The Sea Wolf, but The Man I Love, I didn't recall it being the kind of film that would have gotten a reissue. So as I was researching this, it was really quite a surprise. It turns out that when the Warner Brothers library was being sold off in 1956, of course we didn't get it back until we bought Turner in 1996. When the library was being sold off, there is apparently a limitation on the song bill,

which is famous for being in showboat. When I looked at the documents for the sale in 1956, it listed the songs that had special licenses for every single movie. These books are like huge, multi-page bound books and so there was no license for the song Bill there and I looked on the cue sheet and every reference to Bill was scratched out and said remove June 1956. So we figured out that the likelihood was they didn't have a license that would have enabled them to sell the film to television because that

was the purpose of that sale. So they cut the six minutes out rather than pay the very high licensing cost. I'm happy to say that we did find a second generation nitrate fine grain that is the 96 minute version. So the missing six minutes are now reinstated. That's the only part you're not watching OCN. You're watching something from a 4k scan of a nitrate fine grain. And last but not least, we had to take out a new music license on the song. What's interesting is that song is listed in the film's credits and it always has been. And when they cut out the song, they didn't even bother to try to blur it out or take it out or change the title.

They just wanted to get that sale done. This is another instance where bringing this film out was something that was very important to us. We had promotional support on this and several of the others that we're going to talk about from the Film Foundation in that all the work, of course, was done here at MPI in terms of the preservation and the scanning and the alternate master creation.

But Film Foundation and Warner Brothers staff collaborated on coming up with a list of titles that they could support us with their unique tentacles to reach out to film lovers all over the world. So it's because of their support that this got a green light. And more importantly than that, I had suggested it because I knew it was one of Mr. Scorsese's inspirations when he made 30 years later the 1977 film New York, New York with Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro. Sure enough, when the list came back from the film foundation,

the man I love had a check mark saying, yes, go do it. I think people will be really, really impressed with what a good noir it is, how good I, Lepino is. Robert Alda as a leaning man also is quite impressive in his performance. And the music all the way through has that wonderful Warner sound. So I think people will enjoy that. And we have some cartoons on the disk as well as the trailer.

So it should be a lot of fun. Yeah, that's terrific news for fans of the film. And for anybody who doesn't know the film, they'll be able to finally see it in its entirety. And it's a really fascinating story. And for anybody who doesn't know the film, they'll be able to finally see it in its entirety. And it's a really fascinating story. You kind of have some of the backer to the business of why it was removed, but this is a great opportunity for people to see now.

All night. And I was on a detective mission to figure out what happened. So when we finally can resolve these questions and now bring the film back to its original length, that's a huge win for us. For everybody. Because we want things to be the way they originally were.

Right. So, Hail to the Man I Love, I think people are gonna really enjoy it as a juicy noir. Let's see, next I think we have, is it Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Yes, it is. And this is not with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

This is unique in that it is Alfred Hitchcock's only comedy film. Now, everyone will agree there are certain Hitchcock films that have an element of comedy to them. I mean, I can think of like North by Northwest has some very funny moments. And there are other films that have that as well, even Rear Window.

You know, no matter how serious the thriller was, he managed to get a little bit of humor in there. But this is really the beginning of his American career as a director. He directed Foreign Correspondent and directed Rebecca, and Arkayo assigned him to direct this picture, which is a frothy, delightful comedy with Carol Lombard and Robert Montgomery as a couple with Carol Lombard and Robert Montgomery as a couple who find out they aren't legally married after all. And Carol Lombard was so beloved during her very brief lifetime

because she was killed very young in a plane accident helping to sell war bonds beginning of World War II. This is, I think, her second to last film. I maybe corrected it by others about that, but I think it was her second to last. And she is just magnetic and sparkling, and Robert Montgomery is a perfect foil for her. And this is just a genuine delight.

And because Hitchcock is so beloved by a lot of people, including myself, people want to have all of his films. This is the only Hitchcock film in our library where we didn't have a Blu-ray. So it was something we just had to do. And now it's done. It's going to look a lot better than our DVD of 22 years ago or whenever that was. And we've added some cartoons. We have two different radio shows on this release.

There is a version of it that has, if my memory is correct, there's no Kara Lombard, but there is Robert Montgomery on one of them. And then the other one has Errol Flynn and Lana Turner. So it's really fun to be able to add those. And we also have a feature at, you know, kind of summarizing where this fits in Hitchcock's career. So it's a loaded disc. We even have a trailer, even though it's an

RKO film, we do have a trailer. So it should be a very nice package that I think people will really love. Yeah. I think there's a lot of excitement too for those completists, as you said, of the Hitchcock films so that they can have them all on HD now. So this is a terrific announcement for all Hitchcock fans. We've been trying to make it work for a long time. This is one of those films where unfortunately, there is no original camera negative.

And that led us to a worldwide search for the best secondary elements. And I think they've done a really, really wonderful job at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging by making this look and sound terrific. And I think it's gonna be a great seller because Hitchcock never lets us down. Right, yeah.

Well then next you have the last of the films we'll be talking about today, and that's The Shining Hour. Oh, this is a very interesting film because it's directed by Frank Borzegi, who is a director that is much beloved by cinephiles, but not as common a household name as, I would hope households names still include John Ford and George Cugar and William Wellman

and Vincent Minnelli and others as great. Frank Borzegi, people will buy a film just because he directed it. He had incredible talent. It was based on the Shining Hour film was based on a play that Joan Crawford had seen and she basically begged the studio to buy the property which they did and it's a very very enjoyable film and again this is another early Warner Archive DVD release that came from a very old master so we're really going for the upgrade here. And I think people are gonna enjoy it tremendously.

We did add as a bonus, MGM had a weekly radio show for two years called Good News of 1930 blank, meaning 1938, 1939. And when this film was being readied in 1938, it was already on good news of 1939 because they were in the fall season. It's like cars, you know,

they were pushing the next year's model. But anyway, the hour long show had, you know, vaudeville acts and singers and all sorts of things. So this is an edited version to eliminate most of the content that didn't have to do with The Shining Hour. But the radio adaptation does have Joan Crawford and Margaret Sullivan, great Margaret Sullivan, recreating their roles. I think people will really enjoy that. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

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direct from the voices that have lived in. Then you also have some classic cartoons on here and the trailers on here as well. Yes. Well, unfortunately, we're in good shape on MGM trailers after you get past like 1933, they're usually available to us. And the cartoons are just delights from the year of 1938 and they're in HD. And these are the first time they've been on a Blu-ray. So it should be a lot of fun. Right. Well, that wraps up the four classic films. And I know there were a lot of excitement

from the classic film fans out there. But now you have a couple more releases that I think people are going to be very excited to hear about. Well, we're really excited about both of them for very different reasons. And also the same reason, the same reason being that I don't know if the people who are interested in the first series we'll talk about, the Alaskans, will be the same group of fans that want the original series of The Flash from 1990-1991 season that ran on CBS. But both series, which only lasted one season, have dedicated followings. We'll start talking about the Alaskans.

The Alaskans was following the formula that William Teore, as head of Warner Brothers Television, he was building a group of shows that were either Westerns or detective shows. And this was kind of a fusion of a Western with maverick kind of thoughts set in Alaska of the 1890s. In the leading role on this series is a gentleman who had become a lot more famous later on. First is TV's The Saint, and then on the big screen is James Bond from 1973 to 85.

So Roger Moore is Debonara and Dashing. He and his friend played by Jeff York. They're swindlers basically getting involved in new adventures within the Yukon Gold Rush of the period. And even though it was only one season, a season in that era could yield anywhere from 36 to 39 hours. And so this is 36 hour long episodes. These have all been transferred from 4K scans of the original camera negatives, just like Colt 45. And this is a series that was not on any form of videotape, hasn't been seen in decades,

and it helps fill in the blanks. I'd like to hope that we'll be able to get to DVD upgrades to Blu-ray on the series that are so famous that we already did put out on DVD, but we really wanted to get to these series that weren't available at all. And the Alaskans fits that bill. And there's some really great guest stars as there are in Cold 45.

And it's gonna be a very handsome package and I think that they would really like it. Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, even though it's one season at 36 episodes, I mean, nowadays you're getting 12, 10 episodes and people are considering that a season of TV now. So to have 36, especially for one hour, is a tremendous amount of great episodes and entertainment. And it's really fun to see the young Roger Moore there in this one. And I'm looking forward to seeing how good this looks because you and I just talked about

obviously Cold 45 and I was just blown away by how great it looked. Well, I'm hoping you'll have the same reaction here. I think you will. Yeah. And I'm a big fan of this era of the Gold Rush. So I'm really looking forward to this. It's going to be a lot of fun.

And this is another one where we also had to do music clearance because they had Dorothy Provine as an up-and-coming young starlet and they gave her a lot of chances to sing. So a lot of things went into making sure this could happen and we're delightful to bring it to the fans. And I see here the guest stars include James Coburn, Ephraim Zimbalist Jr., Lee Van Cleef, who was also in Cold 45 episode, Alan Hale. Troy Donahue. Troy Donahue, Julie Adams. Yeah, there's a terrific list of great guest stars.

So, I'm looking forward to this. I think we were gonna have a lot of fun with it. And to answer your question, George, I don't know that there will be a lot of crossover, you know, in terms of TV fans for this to the flash, but count me in as one of the few that might get it. Well, in the same way. Yeah.

Because the classic TV, that formula that Warner Brothers had makes them kind of, you know, it helps them endure because you can just watch each episode, you know, you can can enjoy like with Cold 45, we were talking about how they were just like these bite-sized piece of entertainment and those were shorter episodes. But that formula makes it really great to go back and see these. But the fact now that we're also going to get The Flash, you know, it's terrific that that's coming out as well. The flash is a perfect example of another generation's most wanted list. It's been available on DVD for many years. And of course it got new attention when the new flash appeared, you know, 10 or so years ago.

But this was from what I understand understand one of the most expensive science fiction series on the air at the time. And both one of brothers and cbs had great hopes for it. against The Simpsons and The Cosby Show in the 1990-91 season. So it just couldn't get there in the ratings and it was so expensive to produce that they only did one season. But we have new 4k scans with the camera negative to create these new HD masters and I know that John Wesley Shipp, who's the star playing Barry Allen, the Flash, on the series is still very popular among fans and appears at conventions and so forth and so on. So, his fan base and the series fan base are surely going to be happy when they see the uptick

in quality here. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. I mean, just to get these in HD is such an improvement. And then this one, I mean, it's only 22 episodes, but that's still pretty good. You know, back to our discussion about how much shorter seasons are nowadays. That was the standard for broadcast television in the 90s. So, 22 episodes for one season, you get a nice...

Right. Noting that the 22nd episode, I mean, the first episode of the 22 is a double length because it was the pilot. Gotcha. Right. Which was pretty common back then, right? Yes, and from what I understand, the pilot was extraordinarily expensive and both CBS and Warner Brothers Television had great excitement for the show and unfortunately, it didn't last past the first season which was devastating to the creators and the cast members. But it lived on thanks to

continued television reruns here and there and more importantly a DVD set came out probably close to 20 years ago, I'm guessing, long before the new Flash television series was on the CW. This is very different than those shows. And it feels very much like an early 90s show, but I say that in only a good way. Right. Well, I know there's already been a huge amount of excitement for this release. So that just goes to show just how many people are fans of this and want to own it. So it's fantastic. That's my hope and my expectation because I knew the fans were out there and they want to see more of this stuff given a proper due and given an upgrade to HD and it'll be a beautiful release. I think fans are going to be very very happy. Well this is another terrific month, June, that we've been

talking about today so I know a lot of people are looking forward to it. So thanks again George for coming on and giving us. Always a pleasure. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to our consumers and let them know what's going on here. 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 if you aren't yet subscribed to following the show at your favorite podcast provider, you may want to do that so that you don't miss any of our future Warner Archive podcasts. 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.