The Extras - Warner Archive May 2023 Blu-ray Reviews: "The Boy With Green Hair," and "Hey There, It's Yogi Bear"

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive joins the podcast for a fun and informative review of two May Blu-ray releases.   We dive into the restoration and all of the extras on each release and share our insights into why these films are worth adding to your Blu-ray collection.THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR (1948) tells the supernatural-tinged story of an orphan who finds a safe haven in small-town America until the day his hair turns green.  The film is a call for tolerance with an inspiring statement that "different" doesn't mean "threatening."  The film boasts a fine cast (Robert Ryan, Pat O'Brien, Dean Stockwell), a popular theme song (Nature Boy) and the feature-film debut of director Joseph Losey (The Servant, The Go-Between).HEY THERE, IT'S YOGI BEAR (1964) was Hanna-Barbera's first animated theatrical feature film.  George provides background on Hannah Barbara studios and gives an update on the status of future Hannah Barbara releases.Purchase on Amazon:THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIRHEY THERE, IT'S YOGI BEAR 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 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. In today's episode, we'll be listening to the rest of my conversation with George Feltenstein of Warner Brothers

and our review of two Blu-rays released on May 30th from the Warner Archive. First up is the 1948 social drama, The Boy with Green Hair, followed by the 1964 animated film, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear. And I know we have a lot of Hanna-Barbera fans, so I think you'll find it very interesting to hear what George has to say about future Hanna-Barbera releases. So here's our conversation. Well, next is our 1948 film The Boy with Green Hair. What can you tell us about that film, George? This is a very fascinating motion picture. And the most important thing about the new Blu-ray disc is this is a 4K scan of the technicolor nitrate camera negatives, meticulously recombined using our proprietary technology. So as a result, I had never seen this film look this good.

It usually was brown, muddy, and ruddy. And even the titles, they almost look 3D. It was just amazing. And it is a parable. It was a very difficult movie to market and sell because the filmmakers were really trying to make a statement about how people are judgmental about differences within each other. And it spoke out against intolerance.

And it was made basically as like an anti-war film in a sense RKO spent a lot of money on it they rarely made films in technicolor at that time and to have Robert Ryan and Barbara Hale and Pat O'Brien not the Pat O'Brien we know from early 30s Warner Brothers movies, but a more aged Pat O'Brien. He's terrific in it. And of course, Dean Stockwell as Peter, the boy who wakes up one day with green hair, they borrowed his services from MGM to cast him in the role because he had already established himself as quite a unique child actor. And he just passed away in the last, I guess, 18 months to two years. He was one of the few that translated from child star to adult star and worked really up until his death.

And most people know him from his years on Quantum Leap. He was terrific. And he was a really great child actor. And that's one of the reasons why we added in the MGM short that he did prior to this movie.

Because I thought that would be a nice little extra. So overall, it's a sensational package. And the film has a lesson to be learned from that is very prescient. Yeah, I wasn't really that familiar with this film, but I mean, I just really was touched by this film. It came out in 1948. So we're talking right after the war and all that people were finding out about all of the atrocities.

I mean, that was still very fresh. And the whole element that this story talks about with the war orphans, and we won't get into the spoilers or anything, but it's a fantastic, just thoughtful, emotional, touching story. And very important, I think, as well to remember. But then it's highly entertaining. I love Pat O'Brien as Gramps and his whole circus kind of background and his Irish accent. So entertaining to me.

He really drives and keeps this movie going. And then Dean Stockwell, his performance to get that kind of a naturalistic performance out of a young child actor is really fantastic. So it really it really is a terrific film. I really enjoyed it. And I also really enjoyed the extras that were on there. marketing push because it's not that well known, but those who've seen it are really beguiled by it and interested in it. And it was directed by Joseph Losey, who would soon be blacklisted and end up working in England because he couldn't work here.

And I think this is one of the last pictures he made here before he had to flee HUAC. So this is a film that very much needs to be seen today in its cry out for tolerance of different people. And I really hope that people will get behind this movie this is another one that made its dvd debut as a warner archive disc early in our uh first year i believe and we were using shelf masters at the time we hadn't started remastering things at all yet. And it looks so much better than it did. I'm delighted with it. And I hope people will be too. Yeah. And it's the second film in May that stars Robert

Ryan. And we're not going to get into Clash by Night. But for those listeners who would like to hear a review on that one, you can look for that podcast where George and I talked about that. But I mean, Robert Ryan, he's always terrific in every movie and he's terrific at this as well. Absolutely. Well, for our last film that we talk about, I mean, I don't know, for the last two years, I think people have been stating in the Facebook page and everywhere, when are we going to get Hanna-Barbera? When are we going to get Hanna-Barbera? And so when I saw this pop up on the list for May, I was like, this is terrific. So many people have been asking for this. And this is Hey There, It's Yogi Bear from 1964. What can you tell us about this film? year of hannah barbara's operation for those of you who don't know hannah and barbara together

were part of the mgm animation department and they came together to make a cartoon about a cat and a mouse and the cat's name was jasper and it was supposed to be a one-off called puss gets the boot and it turned out to be such a huge hit. Theater owners are saying, we want more of those cat and mouse cartoons. That became Tom and Jerry. And for the next 17 years, almost exclusively, Hannah and Barbera made Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM Theatrical Release, Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM theatrical release, earning, I believe, seven Oscars for their cartoons over the period of time. And Tom and Jerry, even today, remain globally incredibly popular characters,

more so internationally than domestically. Because they don't talk, their whole sense of humor would cross any borders as being worshipped and appreciated worldwide. And MGM decided in 1957 they were going to shut down their cartoon department. And Bill and Joe were employees of that department. And they were basically given notice that their weekly salaries and employment and tenure would end. And they were freaking out, to put it mildly, because they had been doing great work. MGM foolishly thought that they could just reissue the old cartoons as they had been doing.

And cartoons were never really a big source of money for the studios. And as a result, they closed the cartoon department. Bill and Joe made one try to save it and said, we have this idea. It's called limited animation. We have this idea. It's called limited animation. Instead of drawing four frames for a movement, we can do one frame instead of every four. And we can cut the cost down dramatically and start doing cartoons for television. And MGM said, thanks made Anchors Away that had the Jerry the Mouse Gene Kelly sequence.

George Sidney was at Columbia Pictures at the time, and both he and Columbia Pictures invested in Hanna-Barbera Productions. Their first TV show on the air happened very quickly, shot in 16mm, called Rough and Ready. It was on NBC. It was very successful. And then the following year, they created the Huckleberry Hound show for syndication, sponsored by Kellogg's Cereals.

And on that show were, of course, Huckleberryuckleberry hound which what can you say about huckleberry yeah great character i loved him as a little child um and still do today and also on that show were pixie and dixie the uh mice and and Mr. Jinx, the cat. Right. And then the third character was Yogi Bear. Yogi Bear. Well, Yogi Bear was a breakout star and moved into his own syndicated half-hour series sponsored by Kellogg's the following year. And I believe he was replaced on the Huckleberry Hound show by Hokey Wolf and Ding-a-ling. But Yogi got his own show, and that lasted, I think, about two or three years in syndication.

And his popularity was, he was probably the most popular Hanna-Barbera character, probably until Hanna-Barbera tried primetime in the Flintstones in 1960. So they were on a roll with the Flintstones in 1960, Top Cat in 1961, 1962, the Jetsons. So it was in 1963, they started working on Hey There, It's Yogi Berra, feature-length motion picture that they would produce and release through Columbia Pictures. And it was finally released, I believe, in the summer of 1964. And this was not limited animation. This was feature animation.

So the Hanna-Barbera team had a larger budget to work with. And the voice of Yogi Berra was the same amazing talent that was the voice of Huckleberry Hound and so many characters, Dawes Butler. And he, of course, had been a voice artist at MGM. So most of the MGM animation department made it over the pass into Coyne Boulevard on the other side of the 101 where Hanna-Barbera Productions had their building. And that's where the making of this film took place. Quite successful when it was released. And Hanna-Barbera's financial ownership was multifaceted over the next few years. And they had different owners. And Hey There, It's Yogi Bear was actually re-released to theaters through a small, now long-defunct company called Atlantic Releasing in the 80s. Then in 1992, Turner Broadcasting bought Hanna-Barbera, and they made a big deal about, hey, there, it's Yogi Bear.

But the one thing they couldn't do contractually, because Columbia Pictures was no longer involved, the Columbia logos all legally had to be removed from any of the Hanna-Barbera productions that had Columbia involvement. So the DVD of this movie has no Columbia logo. And we have reached out to the nice people at Sony who own Columbia about being able to reinstate those marks. And it started with the Jetsons where we didn't have to take screen gems off the end credits. And it was a great thing to be able to just be very reasonable. We've done the same thing for Paramount because they own a lot of independent productions that were released by Warner Brothers in the 50s. And by contract, they're not supposed

to use the Warner Brothers logo. But we said fine. And that in turn enabled us to use the Paramount logos on the Popeye cartoons. So we're at a point now in history where it's worth making that phone call and everybody kind of is aligned in trying to preserve films as they were. So I know the burning question out there from everybody is, the Columbia logo was used on Hey There, It's Yogi Bear in a traditional form. Two years later, when they made The Man Called Flintstone, they did one of the funniest things, at least I thought so as a little child, of having the Columbia lady replaced by Wilma Flintstone holding up a frying pan instead of the Columbia

lady holding the torch. And I was a very precocious little boy, and I just thought that was the most brilliant thing to have done that. And they very rarely, you know, did that kind of thing with their logos. So right now we don't have any plans on the docket to do The Man Called Flintstone for Blu-ray. I hope we do, and when we do, we will reinstate the logo. And there's a lot of hope for that and for other Hanna-Barbera releases. I know people want a lot of them. 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. And that's one of the reasons why I put the Yogi birthday special on the end of this as a special bonus, because it was a kind of unique thing. I believe it was run as part of the syndication package with the Yogi Bear Show in 61. But all the characters that we love from those shows, they're all in it. And it's a very nostalgic, wonderful piece. But it makes people frustrated that more of that content isn't out. A lot of it isn't even out on DVD. And the reason for that is a lot of the music used in those cartoons were not composed by and created by Hoyt Curtin, the great musician who wrote so many great themes for Hanna-Barbera. They were licensed music cues. So trying to clear them

is very difficult and expensive. So it's not something that we're not looking at. And it's something that I've been like a dog with a bone trying to get it done. So I's not something that we're not looking at. And it's something that I've been like a dog with a bone trying to get it done. So I know the fans want to hear that it's not forgotten. And this goes back decades. I mean, it really needs to be attended to. But instead of talking about the glass half empty, let's talk about the glass bubbling over with, hey, there it's Yogi Bear. This feature, it holds up really, really well. It has a good story. It has good songs. We see why Yogi Bear became such an adorable, likable character. And I think it looks amazing. I'm so used to seeing it in the wrong aspect ratio and just all dirty and muddy and everything. And the soundtrack is very interesting because at some point for one of the theatrical re-releases, they did a remix and found the stereo music stems.

So it actually is a stereo track for the bulk of the picture the main title and end title music is mono but we have this wonderful stereo track there so it really helps those songs and trivia i think it says this in the credits but david gates who later was part of the group bread and also wrote the theme song for the goodbye girl he wrote the theme song for hey there it's yogi bear he must have been like still in high school or something i don't even know you know he's a guy from the 70s like you know how did he get that gig but he got a full screen credit card. And the plot very simply is Yogi ends up leaving Jellystone Park in pursuit of finding Cindy Bear, who has been captured by the evil circus owners

who want her in captivity. And Yogi and Boo Boo go on a quest to try to find Cindy. And the story doesn't overstay its welcome. The songs, there's one love ballad that Yogi sings to Cindy where James Darin does the vocal. And we can't forget that James Darin was later on Star Trek. He goes to all the vocal. And we can't forget that James Darren was later on Star Trek. He goes to all the conventions. And he also played Jimmy Darroch on the Flintstones. So he was quite popular in the 60s and had a very good sense of humor and was very kind to Hanna-Barbera to lend his vocal talents

for Yogi's romantic warbling but overall i'm i knew people would be happy with this release and there will be more theatrical feature animation coming in the next couple of months yeah and i don't have too much to add because you you just laid it all out there but it i just wanted to confirm how great it looks i mean it just is fantastic it looks almost like it is new you know obviously the style is different uh the hannah barbara style but the colors and everything looks terrific and then i was watching you know the birthday party extra and you can see obviously it doesn't look as good, but also that I was noticing like Cindy bear, she really evolved for this film and her look is so much more feminine and delightful. The voice acting of course is terrific, but not both, but it's kind of fun to see all the great

characters that we love from the TV show, but to see that, and then also just to kind of compare some of the animation and the look between the two, I just kind of enjoyed having those two on there to compare. Yeah. The Yogi's birthday party special is in high def and was remastered. It just wasn't given the pristine restoration that is so incredibly costly. But I still think it's much better than the black and white print I've seen of it. And it works well because it reminds people of that initial group of Hanna-Barbarians. Yes. Before they started, you know, in the mid-60s it started to go towards space ghost and the herculoids and johnny quest at network you know they started to move more away from

funny animals to uh you know the more sci-fi comic book kind of approach, which was a really smart move on their part. But their original creations were similar extensions of the kind of characters they created at MGM before Hanna-Barbera went into its own production unit. But it's a real throwback for a lot of people. production unit. But it's a real throwback for a lot of people. I didn't see this when it came out, but it was probably a few years later, my parents took me to see it at a kiddie matinee. And I was just going crazy being able to see Yogi Bear on the big screen. And now people's screens are sometimes bigger at home than they are in a movie theater, depending on the multiplex. people's screens are sometimes bigger at home than they are in a movie theater, depending on the multiplex. So I think people are going to be very happy with it. The animation looks great. And I think it's a wonderful group of films that we have this May and now it's June. So if you've

missed your opportunity on any of these to pre-order, they are now available for your purchasing pleasure. I did want to ask you, going back to this Hanna-Barbera, is it kind of similar in terms of from a sales standpoint to where we were talking, you and I and Jerry Beck, and we were talking about the importance of support from the collectors and fan base to purchase this Blu-ray to help lead to a volume two for the Looney Tunes. Is that going to impact the sales of Hey There, Jogi Bear, the support from the fans? Will that impact future? Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. If Hey There, Jogi Bear sells really, really well, that will enable me to get a green light for The Man Called Flintstone.

Gotcha. and that success enabled us to get a green light on the Jetsons and then Space Ghost and Dino Boy and Thunder the Barbarian and the Herculoids. So we would love to keep going with the Hanna-Barbera content and making it look and sound the best that it can be. Once we have a successful release under our belt and can go to our financial colleagues and have impressive results, that will be music to the ears of shareholders of the company because profit is the first requisite for us to be able to move forward with the project.

This is a public company and we owe our shareholders profitability. And it's very hard to balance that. If you're a private company and you don't have anybody looking at your books, people can do things a little bit differently. And we're not in that category. We have to be completely transparent. And we've been running a very profitable business and want to continue to do so. So with the support of our loyal customers, we're able to do great things. And I thank each and every one listening who has supported the Warner Archive, it means a lot to us.

Well, this was an amazing month, George. I was looking back at the eight releases. You have a release from the 30s, from the 40s, from the 50s and the 60s. So there's no complaints there. And then if you look at the Looney Tunes animation, that's more 30s and 40s, right? You've got five decades there covered. And then you've got animation. You've got comedy. You've got adventure. You've got romance. You've got drama. You have packed into this month pretty much every genre, every type, and you've covered decades. I just think it's an

amazing month and there's something for everybody. So I hope that we're getting the support and that you'll get the support for this fantastic work that you're doing. I really appreciate the kind words, Tim. And again, my thanks to the consumers who support what we do. Because right now we're in the midst of a couple of dozen projects and various state of completion. So that's a very exciting thing. Well, as always, George, thanks for coming on to talk and go through these films for the listeners. And I look forward to talking about the July titles with you before too long.

My pleasure, Tim. It's a pleasure. Well, it's always great to have George Feltenstein on to talk about the Warner Archive releases. And this may have a total of eight Blu-rays, which is the most in over a year. So there really was something for everyone. For those of you who haven't yet listened to the review of the other six May Blu-rays, be sure and look through our past episode list. And for those of you interested in ordering the films we discussed today, there are links in the podcast show notes and on our website at www.theextras.tv. So be sure and check those out.

If you're on social media, be sure and follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at TheExtrasTV or Instagram at The Extras.TV to stay up to date on our upcoming guests and to be a part of our community. And you're invited to a new Facebook group for fans of Warner Brothers films called the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog Group. So look for that link on the Facebook page or in the podcast show notes. And for our long term listeners, don't forget to follow and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify or your the podcast show notes. And for our long-term listeners, don't forget to follow and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media,

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