The Extras - Warner Archive November Part 1 Announcement: 5 Classic Films, a 4K PLUS MORE Animation

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Send us Fan MailIn Part 1, George Feltenstein announces 5 classic films, including a 4K  and a highly requested Hanna-Barbera TV series releasing in November from the Warner Archive. Almost all of these films are comedies, so this is a fun-filled episode.Amazon pre-order links:THE MUSIC MAN (1962) 4K/BDMY FAVORITE WIFE (1940)BOMBSHELL (1933)THE YOGI BEAR SHOW (1961-63)DOUBLE WEDDING (1937)THE DEVIL’S BROTHER (1933)SCOOBY-DOO AND THE WITCH’S GHOST BLU-RAY Moviezyng Affiliate LinkThe Extras Facebook pageThe Extras TV YouTube ChannelThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupJoin our new public Facebook Group for Warner Archive Animation Fans and get the latest update on all the releases.As an Amazon and Moviezyng Affiliate, The Extras may receive a commission for purchases through our purchase links.  There is no additional cost to you, and every little bit helps us in the production of the podcast.  Thanks in advance.Otaku 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.  [e-mail]

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricky. 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. I'm Tim Malar, your host, and joining me is George Feltonstein, who announced six Blu-rays, including another animated Hannah-Barbera TV series and one 4K, releasing in November from the Warner Archive. Hi, George. Hello, Timothy. How are you? Good.

And I am just excited for these titles we're going to be discussing here today because of the amount and then the fact that there's another 4K in here. Well, and that's why we're splitting the month's announcements into two podcasts because we'll be here until 2007. Well, and I don't want to truncate them because people want all the information that we There's a lot to say about all of them, so I'm grateful that we have the opportunity to talk about it because we're very excited about each and every one of them. Yeah, exactly right. Well, this is going to be a really fun discussion because we're going to be

talking about a lot of comedies. And we'll start off with my favorite wife from 1940. What can you tell us about this screwball comedy? I love this movie. I know I'm not alone in having a fondness for it. Right. Carrie Grant and Irene Dunn re-teamed after having first been teamed in the awful truth at Columbia in 1937. They also made Penny Serenade together for George Stevens at Columbia. But I think of the films they made together, this is my favorite one and my favorite one, my favorite wife. So this is an RKO picture, and it was remade 23 years later as, move over darling with Doris Day and James Garner at Twainth Century Fox.

And they even reference my favorite wife in it because it's a little bit of meta before they had meta, you know, in 1963. But basically, the plot of the film is that Carrie Grant is a, he assumes, a widower, His wife was lost at sea and an accident years earlier, and he's just about to get remarried. And all of a sudden, Irene Dunn, his thought, passed away wife, shows up back in his life. And it's just as he's gotten remarried and about to start his honeymoon. And it's true screwball comedy. They're terrific together.

And this is a very favorite film of a lot of people. and its absence on Blu-ray has been notable because it's such a great movie. The DVD looks pretty rancid. And one of the reasons for that is this is one of those Archaeo films where there's no original negative. Fortunately, we were able to locate good nitrate materials that are pretty close in quality level to an original. And the master's beautiful. The film is a lot of fun, great supporting characters. I don't want to tell too much about the plot,

except to say that it's a charming romantic comedy that you can enjoy any time of the year. Yeah. You know, one thing about the classic films that you just don't get nowadays is, you just don't get films nowadays about marriage that are funny and meant to be humorous because we live in a more cynical age maybe now.

And I just love these screwball comedies that have the whole element of marriage in it because so many of us are married. So really looking forward to this one. And you just packed it with extras. Yeah, there are a lot of them, especially on the radio show side, because the story was so popular

and the storytelling also was very conducive to a radio translation. So the first one was done about a year after the movie opened and does not have original cast members, but it has some pretty impressive actors. The Irene Dunn part is played by Rosalind Russell. That's hard.

Screwball comedy and Rosal and Russell and Russell go together. And the Carrie Grant part is played by Lawrence Olivier. So instead of him being, you know, Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights or, you know, playing one of his more dour, serious roles, he shows a little flair for comedy. A year later, they did a half-hour version on the Screen Guild Theater with Irene. Dunn and in the Carrie Grant role, an equally elegant Robert Montgomery, who I happen to be a big fan of, talked about him a lot here. Then Screen Guild did it again with Greer Garcin in 1945.

And then last but not least, Irene Dunn and Carrie Grant reunited with the film's director, Garson Canaan, for Screen Director's Playhouse. Right. So we've got four radio show versions on here. Plus, a Robert Benchley, MGM comedy short, home movies, and it wouldn't be complete without Warner Brothers cartoon. So we've got Porky Snooze Rail in glorious high definition in black and white. So it's packed with a lot of fun. But the main thing is the movie.

The movie's terrific. And I'm so glad it's finally on Blue Ray. Yeah, yeah. Looking forward to that one. So many people are very excited about that one. It's a good one to start off our discussion today. but that might be topped by this next one, because next we're going to talk about a 4K of The Music Man from 1962.

And this is a fantastic release. Tell us about it. Well, you've got a unique combination here because it is 4K, HDR, Dobby Vision, all the stops pulled out. It's from a 13.5K scam of the Tectorama original camera negative. And technorama was kind of like Vista Vision. It went through the camera sideways. We've talked about this before.

Anti-Mame was Technorama. Right. And this film also shares the same pedigree of having the same director as Anti-Mame. This looks absolutely magnificent. And we've created a new Dolby Atmos track to take advantage of the wonderful music in The Music Man. And we have the original 1962 theatrical mix. for purists who want to experience the sound as it was in theaters that had magnetic stereo back in 1962. The Music Man was released on Blu-ray probably, I'm going to guess, 15 years ago.

But the master that it came from was done 22 years ago and was cleaned up a little bit for the Blu-ray. It made me, like, ache to see. it didn't look terrible, but I knew what it could look like. And of course, in the early years, we couldn't go directly from VistaVision or Technorama elements. Right. Now we can. So all the stops have been pulled out on this. Most importantly, it was William Shakespeare who said, the play's the thing. This was a smash hit Broadway musical that turned Aristwhile, I would say, supporting player Robert Preston. He was never an above the title star in the movies, but he worked a lot. It was the Music Man on Broadway, which he had a hard time getting cast in, that made him into

a huge enough star that there's the famous story that's probably apocryphal, because it's applied to both the Music Man and My Fair Lady, where Jack Warner wanted to cast Carrie Graham. or somebody else in the role of the music man. And the response was, if you don't cast Robert Preston, I won't even go to see it. And the same story is applied to Rex Harrison, my fair lady. If you don't cast Rex Harrison, I won't go to see it. So it probably is apocryphal, but it's a very, it's like the Ethel-Merman story that I can't repeat on the air because it's dirty, but about, you know, cursing on the Loretta Young

show and putting money in the box. Like, we don't really know if that's true. It's a show biz legend. But the music man was a huge hit on Broadway. It sold for a million dollars to Warner Brothers to make the movie. And it's one of those, in my opinion, one of the very few Broadway musicals that was translated into a motion picture well. And the cast is superb.

Shirley Jones is his leading lady. Buddy Hackett was added to the cast. Hermione Gingold was added to the cast. Hermione Gingold was added to the cast, seven-year-old Ronnie Howard as part of the cast, Paul Ford, the Buffalo Bills. This is a favorite movie of a lot of people. And the show was just revived on Broadway a few years back

with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. It remains a part of the American culture. And because it's a period piece, it doesn't really date. But the thing I love most about this movie on a personal level, it is a love letter to the Warner Brothers lot because it was shot all over the lot and because of the forced perspective of the way the streets are designed, it was shocking to me when I finally came to Warner Brothers and saw, oh my God, it's River City, just like in

the music man. So for those who don't know the story, it is Robert Preston is a professor Harold Hill, a con man. That's not even his real name. He goes from city to city to try to sell people on boys' bands. He doesn't know a thing about music. And in the process, he gets suckered into the town and wonderful things happen. Great score written by Meredith Wilson. This won the Tony Award for Best Musical on Broadway over West Side Story.

It ran for way, I think over 1,500 performances. We have a wonderful new commentary track on this disc, which I think people really enjoy. And they'll learn a lot from a good friend of mine, Ron Fasler, who is a former actor, I should say. He is primarily a theater critic now and has written about the theater and has a substack. And he is an expert on The Music Man. So who better to talk about it, I thought. And we also have a documentary about the making of the film, here in River City, which magically is now in HD and looks spectacular.

We have an intro that Shirley Jones recorded a long time ago that also looks really great now. And here's a really interesting thing. Anytime a theatrical trailer has popped up on this movie, it's been 55 seconds long. Someone around here 45 years ago, I think that's when it happened. There was a theatrical reissue of the movie, and someone decided to cut up the trailer negative 55 seconds. So we had no full-length theatrical trailer until, not unlike finding those insert shots for Horror of Dracula. I went through like a burrow in the inventory, and I found a dye transfer 35-millimeter tectacolor print of the full-length trailer, which is almost four minutes long.

And so we remastered an HD. It's on this disc, too. But this is also authored and coded and compressed by the great David McKenzie at Fidelity in Motion. And it comes with a Blu-ray that is also remastered the same fashion. So if you only have Blu-ray, you're covered here because this combo pack covers both formats. And it is miles beyond what the Blu-ray looked like and miles beyond what you've seen on television. And it is what the film deserved. It's been a consistent, popular hit for the studio since it came out. And it was a big box office success at the time, was nominated for Best Picture.

I was a tough year with DeKillomockingbird and Lawrence of Arabia. There were some really amazing films that year. The only Oscar it did win, but it was quite deserved, was for scoring of a musical picture they used to call it, by Ray Hinddorf. Ray Hinddorf was the primary musical director here at Warner Bros. for years and years. And what he did with taking Broadway scores and embellishing them for the screen, he was incredibly talented. So look forward to the music man. It's something to celebrate. We're very excited about it. And we don't always talk about the price point, but I always think that these combo packs,

it's important to let people know that you're getting both the 4K and you're getting the Blu-ray. and the price point is only $29.98. So only $4 or $5 more than the individual Blu-rays. Always a great price. We try to keep the price down, so it's affordable, especially in these times when affordability is a big issue. Yeah. Well, next we have a pre-code film, George,

and I'm very excited about it. A lot of people are already commenting on how they're looking forward to this. and it's bombshell from 1933. What can you tell us about this pre-code comedy? I love this movie. That seems to be a theme. I love this movie because it's Hollywood making fun of Hollywood. And Gene Harlow was already a superstar when she started in this movie,

and it made fun of her persona, and it made fun of Hollywood and the Hollywood machine of the time. time. They actually have a scene in the movie, which her character is replicating a scene from red dust. You know, she's getting out of a bathtub type thing. One of my favorite character actors, Lee Tracy plays her press agent, and he doesn't stop talking through the whole movie. Some people have expressed that they actually have trouble with this movie because the dialogue is so fast-moving in Firecracker. I just think it's hysterical.

Frank Morgan is in it. Una Merkel is in it. Pat O'Brien is in it. Franchotone is in it. It was a huge hit when it came out. But it's really one of the early examples. It wasn't the first movie to make fun of Hollywood. You can go back to movies like Show People with Marion Davies in 1928.

And there were others even before that. But it's certainly one of the best. and it's very pre-code. The fact that we're able to make a beautiful Blu-ray out of it, it's long overdue. And I think people are really, really going to enjoy it. This is very exciting. Every time you get a pre-code,

but you've now released quite a few of the Gene Harlows. And so fans of Gene, of course, are going to be able to see it in HD. And that's going to be fantastic. Now, there are a few extras here we should probably talk about. Absolutely. We have a two-color, technical color short from MGM called Menu, which is really kind of a, it's very funny, very appropriate for this. And we have a Warner Brothers Bosco cartoon called Bo Bosco, which is not that easy to see. So it makes a very nice show when you put it all together. And I think people are really going to enjoy it. And then you also had the trailer for this one, which we're talking about. about a 93-year-old film.

Now, what's interesting about the trailer, this is the same thing we ran up against in Red Dust, and that is the only original surviving trailer has Spanish text. Oh. And I thought that was kind of cool. We did it for Red Dust, and now that's our only option for bombshell.

So the clips of the film in the trailer are English language, but all the superlative text is in Eng Español. I'm just grateful that it's there because the DVD that we released years ago had nothing on it. So it makes for a lot of fun. Yeah, that's terrific. Well, next we have a very highly anticipated Hanna-Barbera TV series, and I know we just talked about one for October, but this one is the Yogi Bear show that ran from 1961 to 63.

What can you tell us about this release? Well, he's smarter than the average bear. That's a given. Everybody knows that. But he was the breakout star of the Huckleberry Hound show. Huckleberry Hound had Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks and Yogi Bear as companion cartoons to Huckleberry Hound. And Yogi became so popular that for the third and fourth season of Huckleberry Hound,

yogi was off on the side doing his own thing, getting ready for his own show. And in fact, Hannah Barbera gave him his own show in 1961, not unlike Cuckleberry Hound or Crickdara McGraw, sponsored by Kellogg's, the best to you each morning. And I'm happy to say that the Yogi Bear Show theme song is intact here with the Kellogg's Best to You Each Morning promotions at the beginning and end of the episodes. This comes complete with the bumpers and bridges.

And I think there's even a commercial here and there. But most importantly, you get Yogi and Boo Boo and the constant frustration of Ranger Smith, telling people not to feed the bears, but Yogi always gets his stuff. And then there's the magnificent lion known as Snagopus and this famous exit, stay dry. I don't do a very good sniper foot. And then Yacky Doodle and Chopper, which is really, really a fascinating character to me because I felt that Hannah Barbera had kind of developed that

cute little bird earlier on in the 50s in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. It's a cousin, if you will, but Yaki Doodle was even cuter than the duck that was in the early cartoons. And so this was as big a hit, if not bigger, in syndication than the Huckleberry Hound Show. So you had Huckleberry Hound Show, QuickDrama Graw McGraw Show, and Yogi Bear is a trifecta for Kellogg's and for Hannah Barbera. And we're completing the trifecta because QuickDrawn McGraw is coming out this month, October. Yep. So people in November can look forward to another Hannah Barbera series. These have all been 4K scans off the original negative, nice new masters.

They look great. They sound great. I think people are really, really going to enjoy it. And are there any extras with this one, George? We're still in the middle of figuring out what we might be putting on here. So that is to be determined. We haven't announced anything yet because there's a couple of things I'm working on that I don't know if they're going to come to fruition or not.

So when they do, or if they do, we will certainly make it known. But it's going to be a great set no matter what. And I'll just state here that it is a six-disc set, and there's 33 episodes, and you have it at the great price of 39.98. So very affordable. These TV series that you've been putting out, I love the fact that they're so affordable for everybody so that we can all own them and enjoy them. And no one can take it off your shelf. That's right. That's right.

Well, we're just rolling here. We're cruising through with so much good comedy. So let's talk about another one. And this is double wedding from 1937. What can you tell us about this film? Well, these are people that we haven't really ever talked about on this podcast, but a gentleman by the name of William Powell and a lady by the name of Merna Loy. They just didn't make thin man movies.

This is a 1937 film in which they were teamed. and it's an adorable, I would say it's a screwball comedy. It's a little more sophisticated than the average screwball comedy. But there are basically two couples, one played by Myrna Loia and William Powell, and another played by the incredibly famous Florence Rice, and John Beale, this young girl played by Florence Rice, becomes infatuated with William Powell's character, much to Myrna Loy's chagrin, but everything works out as it always does in an MJ movie with a very happy ending.

This is well directed by Jack Conway, and it was a big hit when it came out. And it is a perfect example of why Powell and Lloyd together made magic on the screen so often together. Yeah. And this is the second month now that you've put out Powell and Lloyd. So the fans of those two are just loving it right now with all of these new releases. And you have a couple of extras on here we should probably run through. We have one of the harmonizing MGM cartoons, Little Buck Cheezer. And then we have a very interesting technical color short called Cinema Circus,

as well as the original trailer. Cinema Circus is a Technicolor short filmed in the three-color technical color process. And a producer by the name is of Lewis Lewin would do these 20-minute shorts for MGM, where somehow or other he would gather, like, huge stars from other studios. I don't know if there was some kind of charity aspect to it. Probably somebody out there knows a lot more about this than me. But there were six or seven of them that were released by MGM starting, I think, in 34, all the way up through, I'm going to say, the last one was a black and white short in 1940, I believe.

They're filled with a galaxy of stars. They're all entertaining and they have musical numbers and pretty corines and lots of comedy. And you never know who's going to pop up into Lewis Lewin short. So it's a lot of fun and it brings you right back to 1937. And I'm delighted that we're giving double wedding the HD treatment. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. The next film we're going to talk about is another comedy.

This is called The Devil's Brother from 1933. What can you tell us about this pre-code comedy? Well, this is, I think, one of Laurel and Hardy's best feature films, in my opinion. It's certainly one of the best. They did several operetta-type films where their characters of Stan and Ollie were put into a pre-existing operetta. In this case, it was an operetta that was called Fra Diablo, which translated in English, it means the devil's brother, by O'Bair, and I think it was written in the 1830s.

You have Dennis King, who was like a Broadway leading man operatic type singer as the bandit Fra Diablo and somehow Stan and Ali as there is Stan Leo and Alio, as they referred to in the film, get embroiled with imitating. They're saying that they are, you know, Fraud Diablo and his henchmen, when in fact they're just Stan and Ali, and they get to all sorts of pickles. It's a great deal of fun.

How Roach actually directed this himself as well as producing it, and it was released through MGM, but through various machinations, some of the films that Howroach originally released with MGM, stayed with MGM as of 1941, and therefore they're part of our library. We released Bonnie Scotland not too long ago. That's one of the big Laurel and Hardy films that Roach did that were retained by MGM. And the other one is the devil's brother.

And what can you tell us about the extras on this, George? Well, we have three excerpts from other Laurel Hardy features. or I should say other features in which you can find Lauren Lardy. The first is a clip of them doing a magic act from Hollywood Review of 1929. Laurel and Hardy were under contract to Hal Roach, and the Howl Roach shorts were distributed by MGM. So MGM called up Howl Roach and said, hey, can you send over Laurel and Hardy for a day? They did. They did their shooting in one day. It went like clockwork. And so that little excerpt is on this disc.

There's also an excerpt from an ostensibly lost film that was shot in two-color technicolor, which is probably the contributing factor. To my mind, this is the only all-talking, full-sound MGM feature film that is, for all intensive purposes, lost. It's the rogue song made in 1930. and Laurel and Hardy were brought into this operetta to provide comic relief. And a very short, like three-minute scene of them dealing with a bear in a cave, survived, probably because some projectionist cut it out of the print because he liked Laurel and Hardy. And it turned up, I think, in the 70s. And a couple of other things have turned up since then, but it's still lost.

So if it's under your bed, let us know because we'd love to put it out. And then the last excerpt is something we excerpted from on Bonnie Scotland, and that is Pick a Star. Pick a Star was a Howroach feature in which Laurel and Hardy made guest appearances. And we had some of them on the Bonnie Scotland Blu-ray, but the harmonica sketch, as the fans like to call it, is on this Blu-ray. So you've got three feature excerpts. And then you also have three gentlemen by the names of Mo, Larry, and Jerry, aka Curley, as they were part of Ted Healy and his stooges when they were making shorts at MGM into color, Technicolor.

And this film was called Hello Pop. This was considered a lost film until about 20 years ago, where a collector print turned up in Australia, and the collector was kind enough to lend us the print so that we could copy it and preserve it for our archives. And we've made it available before. But now it's an extra on this disc. So you get Laurel and Hardy, you get the three stooges in their earliest incarnation. You get two-color technical color.

You get a lot of laughs, a lot of music. It's going to be a really great disc. And Laurel and Hardy fans have been aching to have. these films come out. Bonnie Scotland just came out and now they can look forward to the devil's brother, aka Fraud Diablo. And I think, I'm not sure if you mentioned this commentary. Oh, thank you for reminding me. The commentary is, as we had on Bonnie Scotland, my friends and Laurel and Hardy Aficionados extraordinaire, Leonard Malton and Dick Ban, professionally known as Richard W. Ban, I love listening to them talk about Laurel and Hardy, and their commentary is delightful on the disc.

I think people are really, really going to enjoy it. Thank you for reminding me to mention that. Oh, yeah. Well, that's a pretty important one with your good friends. Without question. Yeah, yeah. Well, the last film that we're going to talk about today is an animated film, George, and that's Scooby-Doo and the Witches Ghost from 1999.

What can you tell us about this Blu-ray release? Well, if it sounds familiar to people, we've actually put this out before. We put it out in a double feature disc with another Scooby movie. However, as was done with Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, it comes with special packaging and a couple of very, very attractive extras. And it's the movie by itself, which Scooby fans want. They want each thing to be its individual. item. And so this has an O-card. So that's fancy packaging. And these adventures really take full advantage of Scooby and the whole gang in the mystery machine. It's one of the best of the Made for

video slash made for TV Scooby features. Yeah. And this is one with the hex. The hex girls. Yeah. I remember watching it when you released it. And it is a really good one. And I know that it's just going to be packed with a lot of extras here. We've got a music video on here too, and we even have the old DVD commercial. It's retro. What can I tell you? Yeah, yeah. This is fan demanded. Yeah. And we've answered the call. Yeah. Well, the other thing I wanted to note about this is that it is releasing on November 17th. So that is a little bit earlier than all of the other titles that we discussed today, which are scheduled actually for November 24th. So I wanted to get that on people's radar. I'm glad that you mentioned that because we've been having a problem as an

industry, not a problem within Warner Archive, but as an industry, there is a shortage of replication space for people who think that physical media is dying. I don't know if the replicator necessarily think so because they can't keep up with the demand. So many of our titles have not like they've become available a day or two after street date. And it's it's not our fault. It's not the fault of our partners at Allied Vaughn. We're just trying to get those discs across the border and into the warehouse to get to people. So if your title has been delayed, we apologize, but things are going to be a little bit wonky with the release dates. But with all the new things that we're talking about now, especially the new releases,

we feel comfortable that we've added in enough extra lead time. I noticed that some people thought that my having made the announcements so early in the month was indicative of something traumatic. No, actually, we were ready to make the announcements because the masters were ready and we were prepared and could do it. And that puts us back on a cadence that is more equivalent to where we were at the beginning of the year. And I'm hoping we'll be able to keep that going. As mentioned, this was part one of our November announcements. And pre-order links for some of these releases are already available so you can look for those in our show description.

Coming in part two, we will be reviewing six more Blu-rays, including a 3D Western and another highly anticipated 4K from David Lean. Until next time, stay slightly obsessed about the Warner Archive. 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 interest you, you can find the link on our Facebook page. or look for the link in the podcast show notes.