The Extras - Warner Archive November Part 2 Announcement: 6 Classic Films, a 3D PLUS a 4K

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Send us Fan MailIn Part 2, George Feltenstein announces 6 classic films, including a 3D  and a highly requested David Lean 4K releasing December 1st from the Warner Archive. Amazon Purchase links are available for select titles.BACHELOR MOTHER (1939)THE TWO MRS. CARROLLS (1947)JOHNNY EAGER (1941)THE BELLE OF NEW YORK (1952)DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965) 4K/BD pre-order on moviezyngSelect our Moviezyng link below to pre-order the above titles with a 10% OFF PRE-ORDER DISCOUNT. 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 of the Warner Archive to announce six classic films, including another on 3D, and all of them releasing on Blu-ray in November, plus a beloved David Lean film on 4K releasing in early December. Hi, George. Hey, Tim. Great to talk to you again about all these exciting releases. Yeah, this is the second part of our November announcement because you have so many coming out in November.

It's another fantastic month. And we'll dive right in. And I thought to start us off, we would talk about Babes and Arms from 1939 starring two very big MGM stars. What can you tell us about this film? Not only is it a good film, but it's a very important film in terms of it being a first on many levels. It was not the first film that Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland made together, but it was the first film where they were performing in stories that were basically affectionately referred to as Barnyard Musicals or Backyard Musicals or, you know, come on kids let's put it on the show right this is something that was lampooned years later and a

television special called hollywood the dream factory and then refined a little bit and used for comic effect and that's entertainment but putting mickey and judy together in these kinds of stories was tremendously successful for mGM they made four of these three of which were directed by Busby Berkeley and then the last, which was a remake of Girl Crazy, which had been a Gershwin Broadway show. Busby Berkeley directed the finale for that movie, but the relationship between Berkeley and everybody else at that point wasn't going too well and they were on location, so the rest of the film was

directed by someone else. But this was, Berkeley had just arrived at MGM from Warner Brothers. And he had done a couple of little side jobs, but this was like his first major directorial effort. So after cutting his teeth as an uncredited associate producer on The Wizard of Oz, Arthur Freed was given full reins as a producer at MGM. And his first production was Babes in Arms with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. And it was a very auspicious start to a career that would go on for more. than 20 years and innumerable phenomenal films made during his tenure there as a producer.

So Babes in Arms was a big Broadway hit with the score by Richard Rogers and Lawrence Art, and it was adapted for the screen. And it was often the case at that time that they would buy a Broadway musical to make it in Hollywood, but they wouldn't use most of the songs that were in the Broadway show. And I will name some songs that were written for Babes in Arms, one called The Lady is a Tramp. You hear it an underscore of the movie, a song called I Wish I Were in Love Again, which Mickey and Judy performed almost 10 years later in the biopic of Rogers and Heart, words and music. There were so many great songs written for the show by Rogers and Heart that they did not use,

which I've always been baffled by some of those decisions. And it wasn't just an MGM thing. It was a Hollywood thing. But they did use the ballad, where or when. They used the title song Babes in Arms. And it's really a terrific picture. The first song that you hear in the movie done by Mickey and Judy, was a song called Good Morning, which became very famous 13 years later,

having a prime spot in singing the rain. But Good Morning was what we would call a trunk song. It was written by Arthur Fried and his composer, partner, Nacio Herb Brown, and not used for anything. And they dug it out of mothballs and put it into babes and arms, and it fit in very well. But basically the story is it's a community of vaudevillians that live in a small town and they're dealing with the fact that vaudeville is dying. And so enterprising young Mickey Moran decides he's going to put on a show and raise money for the parents.

I'm simplifying the plot a lot. But this film was so charming, so well done, so efficiently made, and so impressive. because, of course, what they end up doing is something that kids could never do in their barnyard, backyard, whatever. And in these films, as they continued to make them, they became grander. But this really set the whole stage for those which were to follow. So it was very important. It was very successful. It opened almost immediately after The Wizard of Oz. So it was a great time for Judy Garland in her career.

It was a great time for Mickey Rooney in his career, because in addition to making multiple Andy Hardy movies, he also starred in The Adventures of Huggleberry Finn. I'm just saying this off the top of my head, but I think I'm correct. I think 1939 was one of the years where he was like top box office. And Mickey Rooney was nominated for Best Actor by the Academy, for his performance in Babes and Arms.

He was incredibly multi-talented. And all of these films, but particularly Babes and Arms, really showed that he could sing, he could dance, he could play musical instruments. He was a fireball, not to quote the name of one of his other later movies. He was also nuts. But I think we have his cinematic legacy to look at.

And this film is beloved. And we put out two of the, the Mickey Judy movies on Blu-ray about, I'm going to say six years ago. I think it was 2020. We put out Girl Crazy and we put out Strike Up the Band. But people wanted the other two, which are Babes in Arms and Babes on Broadway. So we're happy to be bringing Babes and Arms to Blu-ray and under very super ideal conditions that we didn't anticipate in that this is one of the films that the negative burnt in the fire, we were able to, in partnership with the British Film Institute, we were able to access a nitrate fine grain that they had in their collection.

So it gives us a much better source to work from, and it really looks gorgeous. Now, a lot of people will ask about this, and that's why I'm going to talk about it, when this film was released, one of the humorous big. in the big finale at the end of the movie, had Mickey and Judy imitating President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. And when the film was re-released in the, I would say, mid to late 40s after Roosevelt died, someone got the brilliant idea to cut that sequence out of the movie because FDR had just died. And that was a national tragedy for most people in this.

country because he was so beloved. But in doing so, they did not save the footage. And for decades, all you could see was this very awkward edit that cut out that portion. Now, many years ago, I found a 16 millimeter print with Spanish subtitles of the last reel of Babes in Arms. And we use that for, I believe, a laser disk that we were doing. Subsequently, better 16 millimeter materials without subtitles were found. But we thought that when we were getting this BFI nitrate fine grain, that it would have that footage in it. And, alas, it did not. However, strangely, the film stock dated back to 1939. So I don't know if someone cut it out of that print. but we do have a little bit of a segue from 35 millimeter to 16 millimeter to keep the film complete.

And it's not perfect, but it looks better than it ever has before because our scanning equipment is better than it's ever been before. So the new master looks and sounds wonderful. And this is long overdue. I sound like a broken record with long overdue, but literally there are, it breaks my heart that there are hundreds and hundreds of films that haven't made it to HD. Some haven't even made it to home entertainment at all.

And we've done a few of those this year. But our task ahead of us is quite overwhelming. And I'm hoping that we'll be able to make an even bigger stab at making more things available. Babes in Arms on Blu-ray is a big deal. Yeah. And we're very excited about it. Yeah. But I was excited to see that as part of your extras,

your good friend and friend of the podcast, film historian John Freaky, did an audio commentary. So maybe you could tell us more about those. Well, what we did, I think it was about 20 years ago, we did a Mickey Rudy, Judy Garland box set for DVD. And this is at the height of the home video business. when we could sell enormous amounts of units

and home video brought in more revenue to the entertainment industry than theatrical box office. Unfortunately, we're not there anymore, although we're doing really well considering the little niche business that we are now, and our profits are significantly higher than they were last year, so that's great for the business.

But at that time, we did this super deluxe box set. And people have been asking, well, where are the other two movies? We're finally able to bring one of them out, Babes in Arms. And I'm hoping we'll be able to get to Babes on Broadway at some point in the future. But right now, this is a celebratory movie because it isn't just the first Mickey Judy Backyard Musical. It's also the first Arthur Freed production. and Busby Berkeley changed his directorial style when he got to MGM.

He wasn't doing the kind of things he did here at Warner Brothers, but he was doing wonderful things. And it's a terrific film, and I'm so glad we're able to bring it to people with wonderful quality. And we've got not only John's commentary, but when we did this set, we made arrangements with Mickey Rooney to come in and shoot little intros for all four of the features.

teachers. And that was a very memorable moment. And I had already met and actually worked with Mickey when we did That's Entertainment 3 about 12 years before that. But it was a delight to have him come to the studio and do these little intro. So all of that's being carried over onto the new Blu-ray. Yeah, you've got an hour gang short. Yes. Dual personalities. You've got an MGM cartoon, the man Maestro. Really good cartoon. Yeah, 1939 Newsreel and then a bunch of audio-only bonuses. Leo is on the air, radio promo, three radio broadcast.

I mean, you really have a lot on here. It's a loaded release. Yeah, it really is. We like loaded. Yeah, yeah. And then just last month, you had a Judy Garland with Mickey Rooney for the Andy Hardy Hardy Love Finds, Andy. Yes.

So Judy Garland fans, Mickey Roe. Mickey Rooney fans, there's just been a lot of great stuff coming through the archive here in the last few months. And we ain't done yet. Exactly. Well, next we have the wonderfully named Bachelor Mother from 1939. What can you tell us about this romantic comedy? Well, Tim, you may recall that I think last month or two months ago, we were talking about

Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher and Bundle of Joy, which. was the sort of musical remake of Bachelor Mother. It had been my intention to bring both films out together, not in a double feature, but to release them both at the same time. Bachelor Mother is coming from the original Nitrate Camera Negative, which again is a super nice thing when you're talking about RKO. So it looks amazing, and it never did before. It always looked kind of awful. And this is a story about a sales girl and department store who comes upon a foundling on her way home, and people think that it's her baby when it really isn't. There is a slightly risque aspect to the storytelling, but it's really innocent fun. Jidja

Rogers was really at her prime here. She had really developed herself as a sophisticated comedian. Of course, when she was with Fred Astaire, magic happened. But on her own, she really underscored her versatility as an actress. In the next year, she'd win an Academy Award for Kitty Foyle in 1940. But Bachelor Mother is directed by Garson Canaan. It's got a great supporting cast. David Niven is her charming, leading man. And it is set at holiday time.

and despite the fact that it still feels like it's the middle of the year, we're actually getting towards Christmas. I had hoped that we would have these films ready for the holiday season. So with Bachelor Mother being a November release, it's ideal time for people to have a beautiful copy on their shelves. And I think people who've owned the DVD or seen it on television will be shocked how much better it finally looks. And you've loaded this one with quite a few extras as well.

Yes, because this was, not unlike some other films we've been talking about, there were multiple iterations of this story done on the radio. So we included various radio versions. People really enjoy those, especially since there are changes in cast, and you hear how they tried to condense a story into an hour or a half hour, and we're really very pleased about that. We've got a cartoon. It's just going to be a wonderful disc.

It looks like you have two Popeyes on here. That's right. We actually have two cartoons. We have never sock a baby. And the nice thing about these pop-eye cartoons is they've only been available as DVDs. None of them have been on Blu-ray yet. We really need to go back and redo the Black and White Popeyes. If we were going to release a set of them, they need to be of that, you know, pristine quality.

But the messrs. we have are not that bad. So Never Saka Baby is a typical Popeye cartoon. But the other one on here is what they call the Technicolor Special. It's actually a double-length cartoon. And the title is Popeye the Sailor, I think, in Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. I've seen the title referred to different ways, but there were three of these double-length Technicolor Max Fleischer Popeye epics. There was Popeye meets Sinbad the sailor, Popeye meets Alibaba and the 40 Thieves, and then in 1939, there was the Popeye Aladdin.

So I thought it would be a great way to get this out at least in HD, if not in the kind of shimmering perfection we would be able to achieve going back. back to the original negatives, and it's still my hope. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on around here lately, and I'm hoping that we just continue to be supported in growing our business so that a Popeye Fleischer HD set wouldn't be out of consideration. But for the meanwhile, it's not happening now, and this is a way for people to get to see these cartoons in HD.

And RKO shorts, I've mentioned before, were not resched. retained on our side. So we use material from the other studios, and I thought the Popeye cartoons that were originally distributed by Paramount would be a perfect thing to include here. Yeah. And both from 1939. Yeah. And speaking of 1939, George, we've talked about how that's one of the great years, if not the greatest year of classic Hollywood. And here you, we just talked back to back about two films from 1939. Absolutely.

And it was such a great year that there are certain films that don't even come up in the conversation about the year. Babes in Arms comes up in the conversation because it was Oscar nominated and because it was Arthur Freed's first produced film. But people don't talk about Bachelor Mother as much and they really need to. It's a great little story. and I think people are going to like having the film in their collection. For sure.

Well, next we have a 3D film, The Charge at Feather River. What can you tell us about this 1953 Western? Well, this was one of the next Warner Brothers' 3D Natural Vision films that followed in the footsteps of House of Wax. Guy Madison is the star of this movie, and it's filled with action. It's filled with color. The 3D, again, for those who don't know, this is true actual 3D shot with two cameras. The restoration that was undertaken by Water Tower Color, formerly known as Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging. Water Tower Color did a great job in working with the left eye and right.

eye negatives to bring everything together so that it's a superior 3D action film. And it's very, very well made. And it's got a great cast. Vera Miles is in it. Helen Westcott. But there's one other thing about this movie that people refer to a lot. And it's got a sound effect in it that's called the Wilhelm Scream. And a lot of people think that it was a really, originated in this film. It actually was used, I think, a year or two before for another film, but it's this film's use of that sound effect that is the most famous. But it's been very difficult to see these films in proper 3D.

And I should underscore that this is true stereoscopic 3D using the polarized process. You have to have special glasses. You need to have a Blu-ray player that's capable of playing 3D, which most of them are. What isn't as common anymore are 3D displays. And the industry kind of stopped making those 9, 10 years ago. But if you have a television from that era or if you have a projection system, you have no trouble watching this in 3D. But we know that a lot of people don't have that capability. So there is a separate disc in the set without an increase of cost for people to see the film in 2D.

But you're not just seeing the film because we have a 3D cartoon on the same disc. And it's the only Warner Brothers cartoon that was ever made in true 3D during the Golden Era. There were some later 3D things done in, I would say, the post-Golden era, a more recent vintage. couple of experiments done. But the only one done by the Warner Brothers cartoon studio in the 50s was Lumber Jack Rabbit. And it's a great Bugs Bunny cartoon that most people are familiar with in 2D, but most people haven't seen it in 3D.

And now they will get their chance to do so and do so at home whenever they want. So it's a great cartoon. It looks wonderful. And it's the same process. We had the left eye and the right eye negatives to work with, and the convergence is spot on, and it looks terrific. So it's a great little entertainment package, and we're very proud of it. I had the good fortune of seeing this lumber jackrabbit at the TCM festival a few months back, and it was a lot of fun to see it.

So people are really going to have a treat when they get to see that. Next, we have the two Mrs. Carrolls from 1947. What can you tell us about this film? Well, it's got star power. Bogart is a bad guy, not a bad guy in terms of being a criminal, but a bad guy basically dallying with two women, two beautiful women, Barbara Stanwyck and Alexis Smith. So it's a thriller, it's a drama,

it is Warner Brothers filmmaking of the late 40s in its prime. We feel there's a responsibility to try to get as much Bogart from the prime era as possible and even from the other eras. And it's a daunting task because there are so many films that we need to do. So we have a lot more in the pipeline. But right now we've got the two Mrs. Carroll's. The last master of this was not particularly attractive. This is from the original camera negative, so it looks gorgeous.

It's directed by Peter Godfrey, who worked with Barbara Stanwick quite often. It's definitely a lot of fun, even if Bogie isn't playing a good guy. So I highly recommend the movie. It's a psychological thriller. Do some people call it a noir, or is it more just thriller? If you go to Eddie Mueller and ask him if it's a noir, I'd say he would probably think no. It's more of a psychological thriller than it's in noir. Barbara Stanwyck and in noir, you know when that's happening.

You know, this is not double indemnity. This is much more. It's a little closer to sorry wrong number than a film noir. But she's obviously being psychologically tortured by, Bogart. And it's interesting watching Bogart's performance in this movie. He's, he's very, they're all really, really good in it. Yeah. And it's, it's just a fine Warner Brothers classic and something that people need to add to their collection. Yep. And you have some nice extras on here. You've got some Warner Brothers shorts. Yes. A boy in his dog. Which was an Oscar winner. Oh, really? Okay. Yep. And then you've got the

cartoon slick hair. Because of course, it's the Bugs Bunny cartoon where you see, you know, Bogart. Yeah. And Elmer Fudd is in the restaurant, you know, trying to get a rabbit for Bogart. And because he wants baby to have rabbit. Yeah. Of course, that's the Lauren Bacall caricature. It's very famous.

We've used it on some of the Bogart Bacall, Blu-Rays, but you can never have too much slick hair. It's one of my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons. Yeah, mine too. So I'm glad that it's here. Yeah, and then you have some classic radio programs on here and the trailer, so it's just loaded. Really looking forward to seeing that new HD Master.

Well, next we have a film noir, I believe. It's 1941's Johnny Eager. What can you tell us about this release? This is when film noir is really starting to crystallize. and this might be considered a crime film versus a film noir, but I think it has film noir qualities to it. Most importantly, you have a dynamite combination of talent, so much so that when MGM was promoting the film,

they were promoting it as TNT, Taylor and Turner. You know, watch Lana Turner and Robert. Robert Taylor explode like dynamite on the big screen. And Johnny Eager was a huge hit for MGM in 1941. It won Van Heflin, the best supporting actor Oscar for his performance in this film, which really put him on the map as a major screen presence to be dealt with after this movie. And it's a really well-written crime yarn, very well-treated crime yarn, very well-torn. very well directed by

Mervyn LaRoy and it looks terrific and I guess this is I guess 16, 17 years in the making because when we put Johnny Eager out on DVD it was one of the earliest Warner Archive DVD releases

and it really looked terrible and we had a better master at the time and because we were putting out 150 movies at once, that launch date of March 23rd, 2009, there were people working on this massive, crazy project we were developing, and they basically, they pulled the old master instead of the newer one.

So it was kind of egg on the face for me on that, and I wanted to make things right for Johnny Eager. It took a little longer than we thought, but we get to do so with a beautiful new Blu-ray master that is far better than the slightly better master we didn't get to use in 2009. So this is a very popular film. It was theatrically re-released.

Lana Turner is showing what she was all about in this movie, and Robert Taylor was so multiply talented in that he could handle so many different kinds. of films, Western films, war films, action films, crime films. This isn't the only crime film he made. He was even in musicals, although that really wasn't his thing. But you got to give the guy credit, and he had the longest tenure at MGM. He was there from 1935. I think he made his last film at the studio in 67. And he died relatively young from lung cancer, which is a a tragedy. But he had a huge screen career and not to take anything away from the Robert Taylor

of Modern Day, who is the star of Longmeyer, the great TV series that people need to see if they haven't seen it, available on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive. But the original Robert Taylor at MGM is what this movie is all about. I think if you haven't seen Johnny Eager, it's a must. And I love these when you go back to the original nitrate. And for an 85-year-old film, Some of them have been even older than that. When you put it in and you first see it, you think, how can this be that all? It's staggering. Yeah, they look so good.

And so many of the original nitrates don't exist anymore. So when something does, it's all the more exciting. And I believe we have two radio adaptations on here. I think we have a Lux Radio Theater. And we also have with Van Heflin, a 1949 episode. of MGM Theater of the Air. And that was an interesting experiment that MGM tried. As radio was starting to cede to the growth of television,

somebody at MGM decided they should get into the radio syndication business. Just as radio was starting to fall, let's start making syndicated radio shows. So one of the series they came up with was called MGM Theater of the Air. these were recorded in New York for the most part, by the way, which is very interesting. And a lot of New York stage people were in these pre-recorded radio shows. But I have a feeling this one may have been done here on the coast because Van Heflin was in it. Right.

And it's interesting to hear the different interpretations of these two radio treatments, but it's a nicely stacked disc because of that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Next, we have the Bell of New York. What can you tell us about this 1952 musical comedy? This is an MGM, Arthur-Fried, Technicolor musical that went into production the same day as another MGM Technicolor Arthur-Fried production called Singing in the Rain. Singing in the Rain went on to great fame. the Bell of New York, not as much.

But the Bell of New York is, I think, an underrated film. What gives it most of its heft, it's got a kind of a light story. Fred Astaire plays a gad about Playboy, you know, dating lots of beautiful women and not settling down. And then he falls for a missionary kind of salvage. Army, Prim and Proper Lady, played by Vera Ellen, and he's so enthralled with her charms that he falls in love with her. What makes the film special are the musical numbers and the musical score

written by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. There's some really terrific songs in this. But Vera Ellen, as a dancer, she didn't have as long a career as I, I think she should have. But in all the films she was in, she was very, very memorable. She was a wonderful partner for Gene Kelly and on the town and a small portion of words and music. She worked with a stair, the two years before this, in three little words, she was wonderful with him.

And again, they were paired together here. Interestingly, the Bell of New York is based on an old chestnut of a play. and Arthur Freed was trying to get this made with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland in the mid-1940s and just kind of got pushed on the back burner. But they finally went into production, and it's beautifully shot. This comes from the original Technicolor camera negative, so we use our patented recombination software to make it look amazing. It's eye-popping. It looks so good. And this is really to celebrate the dancing talents of Astaire and Vera Ellen. That is really the core of it.

Marjorie Main has a supporting role in this film. She's delightful. Keenan Wynn, supporting role, delightful. But Alice Pierce, who some people may remember from On the Town or her last professional role before her untimely death, as the first Gladys Cravets unbewitched. Alice Pierce is very, very funny in this movie. And Vera Allen sings a solo and dances a solo

because her voice was dubbed by a woman by the name of Anita Ellis. The song is called Noddy but Nice. Her character wants to be naughty but nice. And after she does her number, then Alice Pierce, who is, not a classically beautiful woman, does almost a lampoon of the Vera Ellen number right after. And it's really one of the high points of the movie. So here's to Alice Pierce that I highly recommend it.

I should also mention that this film is probably best known as the film in which Fred Astaire sings and dances to the song, I Want to Be a Dancing Man. and that was excerpted and that's entertainment part two. When they filmed it originally, this is taking place where he's a waiter, a singing waiter in a restaurant, and he kind of jumps, in his waiter outfit, jumps onto the stage and does the number.

That was the way they originally filmed it. And they looked at the rushes and they said, Fred needs a little bit more glamour and a little bit, this needs to be more substantial. So they changed his costume to a more appropriate costume for a Technicolor show-stopping number. And the beauty of it is that the first version was saved. It was saved as what they call the lift. It was lifted out of the review print.

And that lift survived. So when we were making That's Entertainment 3, we put the two together, and it was the same audio track, and you got to see how incredibly synchronized Fred Astaire was that these two completely differently shot performances of the same number. He was exact to the T. And it was one of the things I was very proud of that we were able to do in That's Entertainment 3 is take people behind the scenes a little bit and show the craft involved, and you get to see his craft. So when we were doing, that's Entertainment 3, we couldn't put every number on in its entirety,

or the film would have been eight hours long. So there had to be very careful edits made to keep the film moving at a pace. So you didn't actually get to see the entire original version of the number. But on this disc, we have the full. unused version as a bonus. So that adds something nice to the disc. Yeah.

And you have an MGM short music quiz? It's a Pete Smith short from 1952, same era, where there are questions to the audience about music, and it's just a lot of fun, as Pete Smith shorts usually are. Right. And then you have an MGM cartoon, Busy Body Bear, and the trailer. But that outtake, that's the, that's just a gem that you had that. And we had it on the DVD that we put out 20 years ago and we always like to make sure that we can carry over.

We did a little switch on the cartoons, but we kept most of everything else the same. And I'm delighted that we were able to bring over the outtake. Yeah, yeah. Well, this has been a fantastic group that we've talked about. But I'm very excited about this next one we're going to talk about, George. It's one of my favorite movies, and it's a 4K Blu-ray combo, and it's another David Lean. I mean, we just talked about one recently, and this is the 1965 film, Dr. Chivago. What can you tell us about this release?

I'm getting like little tingles just as we're talking about this, because this is a big deal. We've come a long way since those DVDRs. to be able to have a film of this importance and this stature be released by the Warner Archive Collection, especially with this new 4K HDR Master that comes from an 8K scan of the camera negative. And the technology involved here is really, really important because when adjusted for inflation, Dr. Chavago is the ninth highest grossing movie of all time. Wow. Dr. Chavago was a huge hit with audiences, and it ran and ran and ran for years.

It played reserve seat engagements, and then it played neighborhood houses for years, and MGM kept re-releasing it right up through the mid-1970s. Now, David Lean's prior film, Lawrence of Arabia, for Columbia, which of course won the Academy Award for Best Picture, was shot with the 65 millimeter negative. When you shoot with the 65 millimeter negative, it's twice the cost, especially when you're David Lean and you shoot a lot. Right.

So MGM, in its questionable wisdom, decided that Mr. Lean could only make his film in 35 millimeter Panavision and that they would blow up the release prints to 70 millimeter and six-track stereophonic sound. And they did that with the reserve seats. And the average consumer, the average moviegoer, didn't know that the film was blown up for its 70-millimeter release.

But because so many prints were made, the negative was used so often to make blow-up prints and to make 35 millimeter prints, and the negative was really in beaten up condition. And we were always dealing with elements that were substandard because of the damage to the negative. Film has not looked good in the past.

What we've done here is we've gone back to the color separations, which protect the original negative if it gets damaged. So if the original negative got torn, let's say one shot was torn, they would put in a dupe shot into the original negative. And so what you've been seeing all these years are dupe sections in front of pieces from the original negative.

Here you have the original negative and separations put together in such a way that it's really indecision. distinguishable and it looks better than it's looked probably since the day it opened. And the colorist who worked on this film at Water Tower Color, formerly motion picture imaging, Sherry Eisenberg, I really want to pay homage to Sherry. Sherry also did High Society for us. She's incredibly talented. Sherry had to deal with so many different. elements to make this look seamless.

And she spent months working on this master. I'm so proud that we get to bring it out as a beautiful 4K disc. And it's given the proper room to breathe. It is on two 4K UHD 100s. We have a lot of supplementary material, but they don't get in the way of an insensitive. high bit rate, which is great for the film. And of course, I have to mention the amazing magician, also an artist of the caliber of Sherry as a colorist, David McKenzie at Fidelity in Motion

doing the encode of the disc. When you have people like that who are the best in their field working on a David Lean movie, which was shot with such care by Freddie Young and written beautifully by Robert Bolton directed amazing. by David Lean. It's really awe-inspiring, and you're an amazing cast that was assembled for this film. I saw this film on a re-release as a kid, and those images really stuck in my brain because it's quite remarkable storytelling. But it does not feel like a 61-year-old movie. It doesn't feel like they had to make any kind of compromises in storytelling. Julie Christie is absolutely exquisitely beautiful as the amazing Lara,

Geraldine Chaplin in her film debut, as Tonya, who's married to Omar Sharif, who plays the title role of Dr. Chavago, and he's wonderful in the movie. Everyone in this film, Tom Cortinay, Rod Steiger, Sir Alec Guinness, Sir Ralph Richardson, Shobion McKenna, just an amazing cast gathered. The music by Maurice Jarre became almost as popular, the Lara's theme, which had lyrics written to it, Some Where My Love.

It was just an incredible event of the mid-1960s, and it earned five Academy Awards. It was up at the Oscars against a little picture called The Sound of Music, and both films did not get good reviews from the critics. Both films have stood the test of time and were enormous hits to the box office. So who was right? I'm thrilled at the quality of the film itself,

and I'm thrilled by the presentation we've been able to provide. and when I think of many times when I would stop over in Sherry's room and she was working on Javago, it was really remarkable to see how she struggled with each shot to make it as perfect as could be. One of the really amazing things about the process of creating this new master is that this film was released in the United States with East Wing, color prints processed by Metrocolor. But in the UK, there were dye transfer technicolor prints made.

I don't know how many, but there were a few. And my dear friend and mentor, Mr. Robert Harris, the gentleman responsible for restoring Lawrence Arabia, among many films, his private dyed transfer British technical color print of Dr. Chavago is he donated it to the Academy. And with his permission, we were able to borrow that print so that we were able to have proper color reference to know how the film is supposed to look. That was of invaluable help to Sherry as she was navigating through this. because with the 200-minute length, it's really the same as doing two epic movies, not just one.

And I am still just in shock that they were able to recreate 1917 Moscow in Spain and the enormity of the expense that went into the movie. We have hours and hours of special features. the most recent of which were created in 2010 for the Blu-ray release, we have been able to very carefully up-res the standard definition pieces into high-definition, and I was like 100% against any kind of up-reshing until I saw the new technology that we've developed. We used it on the searchers, we used it on high society for older, special features, but there are, I'd say there's close to three hours worth of special features on this disc, including Black and Right Newsreel footage and press interviews with

Sharif and Julie Christie and Geraldine Chaplin. It's all here. And even a documentary that I was involved with on a tertiary basis for the film's 30th anniversary when we did a big laser disc deluxe set when I was at MGMUA Home Video. And Omar Sharif hosted that. Omar Sharif is one of the participants on the commentary. It's loaded with supplementary materials. The supplementary materials span basically from 1965 to 2010. So you're not just getting the movie.

You're getting everything you need to know about how it was made, who made it, and why they made it the way that they made it. I don't want anybody to think that that's our only release for December. We have a huge release schedule for December, and we want to make sure we get that out in time for gift giving. I can't wait for everybody to see and hear it. Yeah, and speaking of hearing, maybe you could tell us a little bit about the audio. I know you've mentioned it before, but in case there's somebody who, for the first time,

kind of wants to know about the audio on these 4K movies. We have two tracks. You can experience the soundtrack as it was first heard at the very, very end of December, 1965 when the film opened. It was literally like they finished cutting and mixing like a week before the opening. It was that tight. It was terribly tight. But the original six-track 70-millimeter presentation, that audio,

is recreated here in basically a 5.0 and a 5-1 container. That's the best way to describe it. So you can experience it that way. Or you can have the wonderful option of hearing it in Dolby Atmos, and that goes for either the Blu-ray or the 4K in both of these cases, because we were fortunate enough to have all the pre-mix elements, to create an entirely new mix that takes full advantage of the amazing capabilities of Dolby Atmos. So I was on the dubbing stage when we were working on that, and it was overwhelming.

I could not believe I was listening to music that was recorded six decades ago. Amazing. And I also should mention that this is a four-disc set because the Blu-ray that comes with the 4K is of course this brand new master with all the bells and whistles and the new audio and all the supplementary material. If you haven't upgraded to 4K and you're content with the greatness that Blu-ray can deliver and it can and it does, the Blu-ray will knock your shocks off as well. So if you have somebody else in another room who wants to watch it on a Blu-ray machine while you're in your home theater with the 4K, everybody can be happy. That's why it's a four-disc set,

because we did not want to scrimp on the bit rate. So everything is worthy of the kind of encodes that Mr. McKenzie creates at Fidelity in Motion. So it's a first-class, I hope, and believe, a first-class release for a first-class motion picture. Yeah, and you have the pricing, once again, very reasonable for this combo set at 3499, and that's a fantastic for a four-disc set, as you mentioned. So, I mean, what more can you say about this movie? It is just one of the masterpieces of that century and of one of the greatest. I think it is aged very well.

You know, a lot of films that were made in 1965 can't, make that promise. But Dr. Chavago to me feels like a timeless classic that will hold up 60 years from now. Yeah. You just say the words Dr. Chivago and the music starts playing. Oh, yeah. And the emotions that that music brings up. I just recall as a child watching it on TV, small little TV. And the power, even in that small little TV captivated me as a young person, and I've loved it ever since then. And I'm really looking forward to seeing it on my nice 4K monitor, 4K system. I think it's going to make a lot of people happy. I certainly hope so.

Yeah. When you told me that this was coming out, I was over the moon. So very excited. So was I. Yeah. Well, what a month, November, following a fantastic eye. October and a fantastic September, but so many titles that are just amazing. And this is two 4Ks. I mean, Chevalgo is December, but it's right on the heels of November.

We really need to consider this November release because I didn't want Music Man to be overshadowed by Dr. Chavago. Yeah. You know, wanted to give them a little space, but the December releases will be the subject of one of our next podcast. Exactly. Not necessarily our next one. Yeah, exactly. Well, as always, George, these are really fun. And people are just really enjoying hearing about the specifics and the remastering and everything of these just top-level releases.

So thank you again. Well, thank you for the opportunity to share this information with all the people who support the Warner Archive, to whom I am incredibly grateful and indebted. Thank you. Well, as mentioned, this was part two of our November announcements. Twitter links for some of these releases are already available so you can look for those in our show description. If they're not there yet, we will post them when they become available. And just a reminder that in part one, we reviewed six Blu-rays, including a Hannah-Barbera TV series

and a highly acclaimed musical in 4K, so you'll want to check that out. 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 interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes.