The Extras - Warner Archive Release Highlights "Flamingo Road," "Neptune's Daughter," and "The Prince and the Showgirl"

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

George Feltenstein joins the podcast to discuss three new Warner Archive Blu-rays releasing on March 14th.  First up is the drama  FLAMINGO ROAD (1949), starring the Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Sydney Greenstreet. Crawford is an ex-carnival dancer who marries a local businessman to get revenge on a corrupt political boss.  The Blu-ray includes a nice batch of extras, which George describes in detail.Next George reviews the 1949 Technicolor musical romantic comedy NEPTUNE’S DAUGHTER, starring the talented Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalban, and Betty Garrett.  This film features the Academy Award-winning song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” by Frank Lesser. The release also has a robust amount of extras, and we discuss them in detail.And third, we review the witty THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL (1957) starring Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, who also directed.  This British romantic comedy was the first film produced by Monroe’s production company at Warner Bros.  This new Blu-ray release finally restores the film to the proper aspect ratio and with the new HD scan and audio clean-up, is a tremendous upgrade from all previous releases.Pre-order on Amazon:Flamingo Road Blu-rayNeptune’s Daughter Blu-rayThe Prince and the Showgirl Blu-rayThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify Warner Archive Store on Amazon Support the podcast by shopping with our Amazon Affiliate linkDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host, and today George Feltenstein joins the show again for a review of three new Warner Archive Blu-rays releasing on March 14th.

Hi, George. It's good to talk with you today. Tim, it's wonderful to be with you as always. There's actually four here in March, but we're going to only talk about three today. They're terrific classic movies. Which one would you like to start with? And we'll dive right into these. Well, I also want to mention that, of course, we have the ones we already discussed that are being released March 7th, Camille and I'll Cry Tomorrow. But on the 14th, we also have a fourth film coming out that day, which we're not going to talk about today because it's so special we're saving it for another podcast, and that is Confessions of a Nazi Spy. But we're going to talk about today the other

three films that are due to be released on March 14th. And the first of them is Flamingo Road, a deep favorite of mine from 1949, starring Joan Crawford under the direction of the great Michael Curtiz and co-starring Zachary Scott, who was Crawford's leading man, and Mildred Pierce, the film that won the Oscar, and also Cindy Greenstreet and David Bryan, who would later co-star with Crawford and other pictures going forward. It's really a terrific film, and it's kind of part of the Crawford films at Warner's that were made between Mildred Pierce and 45. And I'd say the last really great one she did at Warner Brothers was 1950. The Damn Don't Cry. It was every film was successful and quite pleasing to her legion of fans. And this is right at the top of the list. It's really a terrific movie.

And here we've had the opportunity to give it a beautiful brand new HD master from the very best elements. And it looks and sounds terrific. This is really the Warner machine at full speed because even the smallest supporting parts are played by really, really great people. And this was based on a play and a book, on a play and a book. And it is basically Crawford is seen at the beginning of the film as a carnival dancer. And she's stuck on the wrong side of the tracks. And she immediately meets Zachary Scott, who's the local deputy sheriff, and she takes a shine to him. And meanwhile, there's kind of the town bully who's the county sheriff, and that's Sidney Greenstreet's part.

And he's out to basically destroy Zachary Scott, the deputy, and destroy Crawford's character, whose name I really like, Lane Bellamy. I mean, that's really a very good name for a character. And the play that this was based on was written by Robert and Sally Wilder. And Robert Wilder also wrote the screenplay for this film. So it's very close to its literary roots. This basically is a soap opera. And there's a roadhouse in town where Lane Bellamy finally gets a job, and it's called Ludie Mays. and it's run by Gladys George playing Ludie May. Gladys George, people remember from her great supporting role in The Roaring Twenties.

She also played Doris Day's mother in Lullaby Broadway. She was in the 1937 MGM Madame X. She was in the 1937 MGM Madame X. She was truly what they would call a tough broad in the old Hollywood sense of the word. I don't mean that to beverse implication. It just meant a tough lady, you know, who stood up for herself. So in a way, it's kind of a 1949 version of female empowerment. But this material actually served as the basis for a short-lived nighttime soap opera in the era of Dallas and Dynasty and Knott's Landing. Among them, Flamingo Road ran a season and a half as a nighttime soap opera, loosely based on this material. And it was starring a very young Mark Harmon, among other people. But it didn't have very much staying power and is mostly forgotten today. But this feature has always been very, very popular. And what I'm excited about also, since we're on the extras,

is talking about all the extras that are on this Blu-ray. We have a high-definition Warner Brothers cartoon with none other than Porky Pig, Curtain Razor, which is a very, very funny cartoon. We have a featurette that we made a few years ago about the making of this film called Crawford at Warner's, and it covers the ground with lots of historians and film aficionados talking about this period at Warner Brothers where Joan Crawford was really of the quality of the material as Crawfords were being raised up.

Betty Davis left Warner Brothers in 49 after making Beyond the Forest. And Crawford was reigning supreme at that point. Although she too would leave Warner Brothers a few years later. So that feature deals with that. We also have the 1949 studio blooper reel, which is called Breakdowns of 1949. And this is actually the last one of these blooper reels. They were made by the studio for the employees to watch at a January post-Christmas

Warner Studio Club party at the downtown Biltmore Hotel here in Los Angeles. And every year they would show a gathering of bloopers from films that were made that year. And there was a little bit of a slowdown during the war years where they stopped doing them for a while. And they picked it up again in the late 40s. But this was the very last one. And that's included here for a bit of fun. And then last but certainly not least, we have a screen director's Playhouse radio show that not only has Joan Crawford recreating her role as Lane Bellamy, but we also have director Michael Curtiz using his fractured English, talking with the host and Joan after the program. And, you know, the concept behind Screen Directors Playhouse, which I think lasted about three seasons as a radio show, maybe four, was that the director of the film would direct the radio performance.

So some of those recordings are really quite priceless. And this is one of them, because we don't have a lot of Curtiz and his famous fractured English preserved, but here it is. And then to wrap things up, we happily have a trailer, the original theatrical trailer. So it's a great disc and a great film. It's a hell of a lot of fun. And I hope people will be happy with it. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of the Extras podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Yeah, you had mentioned, I think, in the last podcast that this group has a lot of great extras. And just from what you mentioned, I'm really looking forward to, you know, catching both the feature ad and then this radio segment with Curtiz.

Because, as you said, he's just so famous for his fractured English. And I haven't really heard that too often. So I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, it's very, very enjoyable. And it's truly a highlight. So I think people are going to be really happy with this disc. And it looks amazing compared to what we've seen before. It's really quite beautiful. Now, the next film we're going to talk about is from the same year, but from another studio whose classic works we are most pleased to own and shepherd and take care of. And that's from MGM 1949. And this is Neptune's Daughter in glorious color by Technicolor. And this is an Esther Williams and Red Skelton vehicle. But the difference here is that unlike Bathing Beauty, which is the film that put Esther on the map as a swimming on-screen superstar, Red Skelton is not the object of her affection in this movie.

He has a thing for charming, funny, wonderful Betty Garrett in this movie. Esther's leading man is a young man who MGM was very, very aggressive in supporting to build his career, and that's Ricardo Montalban. And if you only know Ricardo Montalban from Fantasy Island or commercials with rich Corinthian leather, or, of course, as Khan in the Space Seed episode of Star Trek, you're in for a surprise because he really was, he was quite an impressive young leading man. And we will have other of Ricardo Montalban's MGM work coming down the line for Warner Archive this year. But in this film, he's really terrific.

This film is a true confection. It has no pretension. It is a very charming, delightful, wacky story. And it basically sets up Esther as being not far from the truth. She's the chief model of a bathing suit manufacturer, and she wants to manufacture bathing suits herself. And Esther did lend her name to a line of bathing suits, not really that far away from this point in her career. And then later on in her senior years, she and her husband started a swimsuit company. So that's an interesting point of the story. But you also have Red Skelton for comedy relief.

And he basically plays like a masseur who works at the local polo club. And that's where Esther is often seen swimming. And that's where she meets Ricardo. And Betty Garrett plays Esther's younger sister. And she falls for Jack, the club club mister played by Red Skelton. And Xavier Cugat is there for musical comic relief and also some spectacular Latin American numbers with his orchestra. And you even get Kenan Wynn, who is seemingly in every MGM movie at this period in a supporting role. And he kind of narrates. The first thing you see

when the movie opens is Kenan Wynn saying, let me tell you this story. And the film is notable for having a musical score written by the great Frank Lesser. And Frank Lesser, shortly after this film was completed, headed to New York and wrote the score for a Broadway show called Guys and Dolls. If I'm correct in my chronology, he had written the music for Ray Bolger and Where's Charlie right before he did Guys and Dolls. So his Broadway, he kind of moved from Hollywood to Broadway. Usually it was the other way around, but he had been very prolific in Hollywood, did a little bit of work here at Warner Brothers and did some work at Paramount and had this opportunity at MGM. And then it was mostly Broadway for him, although he did also write the music for an original screen musical and Christian Anderson for Samuel Goldwyn. So he's very talented. Samuel Goldwyn. So he's very talented. I happen to be crazy about a show he wrote in 1961 for Broadway, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which was made into a really good film, notable for having its Broadway cast, for the most part, playing in the movie. So it preserves

a lot of Broadway performances. But I'm digressing away from Neptune's Daughter, and that's what we're here to talk about. But Frank Lesser made a very great contribution in his score because he ended up winning the Oscar for best song for this movie, a song called Baby, It's Cold Outside, which has become a perennial standard in the Great American Songbook. There's a little bit of controversy around this song because it won the Oscar for Best Song, but it was never publicly heard until this movie came out or was being prepared to come out. And several people recorded it. It was a very popular song and made for a great hit record. But as I understand it, the song was actually performed at parties by Frank Lesser and his first wife as a novelty song at parties. So there

is a little bit of a dust up afterwards saying, well, this wasn't an original song written for the movie, but that happened after Frank took home the Oscar for the song. And it was great for the studio, it was great for the picture. That was probably the thing that most defined this film. And the film also gives Esther a chance to have, of course, a big swimming sequence, spectacular musical one. And that's at the end of the picture. But there isn't as much singing as there is comedy and a little bit of song. And Baby, It's Cold Outside is sung initially by Ricardo Montalban, who has a very nice voice, by the way, and Esther. And then it immediately cuts to Betty Garrett playing Esther's sister, madly pursuing Red Skelton for great comic relief. It's very,

very enjoyable. This film was produced by Jack Cummings, who is kind of the third most famous MGM musical producer, Arthur Freed being, of course, the first. Joe Pasternak, who worked frequently with Esther, was very well known for his operetta type. The films he produced weren't necessarily operettas. I'm not really being correct in saying that. But he did a lot of films with Catherine Grayson, who was an operatic soprano. He did a lot of films with Esther and his musicals were very, very successful at the box office because he filled them with lots of novelty performers. And in the third position is someone who isn't as frequent to fall off the tongue for MGM musical production, and yet he produced some of the studio's very best. That's Jack Cummings, and he was L.B. Mayer's nephew, something that they didn't want to publicize too much. But Jack Cummings produced Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. He produced Kiss Me, Kate.

He produced some of the Broadway melody movies at the beginning of his career, all through from the late 30s all the way to the, well, really to the 60s. He produced Viva Las Vegas with Anne Margaret and Elvis. He was at MGM for a very long time and to great success. In his later years at the studio, he, like the studio itself, was moving away from musicals because they weren't as popular. But he returned to the genre with Elvis. because they weren't as popular. But he returned to the genre with Elvis.

But he had some great successes with comedies in the late 50s and the early 60s. So he had a very, very robust career. But this was a box office success for MGM. And not unlike Flamingo Road, this disc is filled with lots of extras. And some of them are a little quirky. First, we have a classic MGM cartoon. Happily, this one also is in high definition. It's Tom and Jerry in Hatch Up Your Troubles. And then we have a classic MGM Pete Smith specialty called Water Tricks, T-R-I-X.

And then we also have a musical number that was shot for this movie but cut before release called I Want My Money Back and it's performed by Betty Garrett. And trying to basically rescue these outtake musical numbers has been something I've long been involved in. And to be able to put them on the disc when we have them and can find them, and it's a particular treat. And this is a really fun number. You can see when you watch it that it would have slowed down the film and that's probably why it was cut, but it's here on the disc as a bonus extra.

And then we have a little excerpt from a 1951 movie where Esther Williams makes a cameo. It's a film called Calloway Went That-Away. It was with Fred McMurray and Howard Keel. And Esther placed herself in a cameo. So we threw that in there. And then we have an audio interview that was to promote Neptune's Da daughter with Esther Williams and MGM contract player Dick Simmons would do these interviews. And they were recorded in such a way that radio stations could play the interview with Dick Simmons interviewing the personality, or they would send a script and have the answers read by the star performer and the local disc jockey could ask the question.

Right. We've used a lot of these on our discs as we've been able to find them because the studio didn't hold on to them. And we've had to basically look on eBay for them from collectors. Well, we've we've gathered a bunch of them and use them on soundtrack CDs as well as our disc releases. So we have that here. And of course, we have the theatrical trailer. And I do want to say that this is a new 4K scan of the original Technicolor negatives. So those who've been used to seeing the film

before, where you didn't have the alignment of the three Technicolor records, and you were dealing with not as much sharpness, all that's been resolved here. The colors are bright and bold and the alignment of everything is just perfect. The registration is perfect. You couldn't get it this perfect in a film lab when the movie came out. So it's very, very exciting. in a film lab when the movie came out. So it's very, very exciting. And I hope people really enjoy the film and add it to their collection. It's one of Esther's most popular films. Yeah. And there was a lot of excitement on the Facebook page when, when this one was announced, because there's so many fans of Esther Williams out there. But the other thing that I, you know, you just

mentioned the technicolor restoration. I mean, people have just been loving and raving about the technicolor restorations recently. And so for the fans, this is going to be a great thing for them to see it in the restored technicolor that you have. When we do these technicolor restorations, it's particularly gratifying because in certain cases, the previous iterations were in some cases unwatchable because of the registration problems, a bad interpositive made by a bad lab, and films that were out of focus, basically. Now, Neptune's Daughter wasn't that bad, but the improvement here is dramatic.

And we have a lot more Technicolor restorations waiting in the wings and hope that there will be more. So people have a lot, if they're Technicolor fans out there they have a lot to look forward to this year and are there more esther williams um titles potentially planned for this yes yes there is more esther waiting in the wings as well and of course in tech color yeah so there's a lot to celebrate for fans of of of Esther. And she was a good friend of mine. I was very fortunate to have spent a great deal of time with her and her husband and some of her family members. And I had many, many fun evenings and afternoons with her. She was a brilliant woman.

She was a woman ahead of her time. She was a woman that wouldn't take guff from anyone. And her mind was a steel trap for every memory. So she had lots of stories to share with me. And I miss her very much. She was a very dear friend. So I'm happy that we can honor her talent by making this film available. She's very proud of her films. And she is a litany of fans all over the world because her films were popular all over the world, especially in Latin America. And I think that's why you see a lot of who got in her films, because he added to the attractiveness of these films when they played in Latin America.

Have there been very many Blu-ray releases of Esther Williams up to now? Well, the first one we did was one of her most famous, which is Million Dollar Mermaid. And that was about two and a half years ago. And that is not really, it's not musical.

It has like one song in it, but it has this enormous production number that supposedly takes place on the stage called the Smoke Number. And it's basically a Busby Berkeley choreographed astounding piece of cinema. of Annette Kellerman. And it was very, very successful, but not a typical Esther movie in terms of it not having as much music. You know, it was much more of telling the story of the Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman, her life story and how, you know, she had a career. It's very interesting you bring that up because Annette Kellerman starred in a silent movie

called Neptune's Daughter. No connection in terms of plot or anything else, but she was a famed swimmer who went into movies during the silent era. There really weren't too many other swimmers, say for Johnny Weissmuller being Tarzan, that made it in the movies. But that's all we have of Esther's thus far,

other than her small cameo in Ziegfeld Follies. She has a swimming sequence in that movie. But I would love to see many more of her films come out on Blu-ray. But we do have a few of them in the queue. So people have much more to look forward to. Well, we have one more film, George, and you want to give us a good review on The Prince and the Showgirl? Well, this is a very interesting movie because when you think of Marilyn Monroe, most of the films that come to mind are either the film she made at 20th Century Fox, where she really became the superstar that she became. She blossomed under contract there.

And it was after a few years of big parts and small parts and struggling. And then I think the other film that she's most famous for that wasn't part of the Fox group is 1959. Some like it hot. That might be possibly her most famous film. Certainly a Billy Wilder masterpiece. Yes. He's great in it, but not far from that chronologically. And the film she made right before it was her first and only Marilyn Monroe production.

She started her own production company with photographer Milton Green, who was her friend. And they arranged to purchase the rights to Terrence Rattigan's British play, The Sleeping Prince. And that had been on the London stage with Laurence Olivier and his then wife, Vivian Leigh. And Marilyn Monroe and Milton Green bought the rights to The Sleeping Prince. They wanted to turn it into a movie. And Marilyn would play the leading lady who falls in love with the prince,

who is played by Mr. Olivier. And Mr. Olivier directed the proceedings. And in order to finance this production, Ms. Monroe and Mr. Green made a deal with Mr. Jack L. Warner. And the first Marilyn Monroe production, sadly, because of her short life, turned out to be the only Marilyn Monroe production. But it was at Pinewood Studios in London, England, that The Prince and the Showgirl, as it was retitled for the films, was shot at Pinewood with Olivier directing and starring opposite Marilyn. And this was shot by the great cinematographer Jack Cardiff. And it's a beautiful film. Terrence Radigan wrote the screenplay

adapting his original play. And it's really a comic confection. It has great wit. But the thing I really want to stress is how phenomenal this looks. This film always looked rainy, washed out. You know, it's very cloudy in England, and sometimes the films are cloudy, too. Our DVD of this film was shamefully not in the right aspect ratio, But now we have a Blu-ray that is in the proper 185 aspect ratio, and the color is gorgeous, and it's been beautifully restored.

And this is a 4K scan off the camera negative. What's interesting about that is that this film was shot in late 1956 and wrapped up toward the end of the year. It was released in June of 57. And that period of time for Eastman Color negative stock was not good. And frankly, we didn't know if we'd be able to master this off the negative, or if we'd have to go to protection separations because of fading and a collapsed yellow layer in the original negative. Happily, that was not the case. The original negative held up beautifully thanks to the tools at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging. So that served as the basis for our restoration.

And it looks and sounds terrific. And it's so nice to see Marilyn Monroe seems to be really enjoying herself during the film. And Olivier is hamming it up. And he seems to be enjoying hamming it up then too uh but i also want to uh again shout out to jack cardiff because he's not only one of my favorite cinematographers but he also directed some very impressive films, including Sons and Lovers, which is not our film, and Dark of the Sun, which is, and which is available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive. He was an incredible talent. And there's a wonderful biographical documentary about him out in the Netherlands someplace, or I should say, Netherwoods, not Netherlands.

But it's out there, and I recommend it for anybody who's interested in his work. This is a beautiful production, and Warner Brothers was very proud to be involved with this production. And there's a great still, which hopefully we'll be able to use when we're promoting the movie of Jack Warner basically giving the key to the studio to Marilyn Monroe. I found it in the publicity stills for the picture. And of course, the film wasn't actually shot at Warner Brothers, but we distributed it and we own it. And now it looks better than it probably ever has. And I'm sure people will be really, really impressed by it her tragic death. She's still an icon and will be immortal forever. And a lot of people know who she is, but they haven't actually seen her work. And to see her work, especially at this point in her career, where she had made a serious attempt and a successful one, too, she went to the actor's studio in New York to study with Lee Strasberg.

They became very, very close. And she was married to Arthur Miller, the playwright, probably one of our greatest American playwrights. probably one of our greatest American playwrights. And she was trying to achieve a level of respect for doing more quality work and not being known just as a, quote unquote, dumb blonde. It takes brilliance to perform comedy well. And you have to play comedy like Chekhov so that the audience will believe you're being serious. And that will create comedy. And if you look at Marilyn Monroe in films like early films, like Gentlemen for Blondes, for example, her comic timing is genius. for example, her comic timing is genius. And in this film as well, the way she plays off Olivier, they're just terrific together. And I think this film, because it is the only Warner Brothers Marilyn Monroe film, it's never had the gravitas of being part of like a Marilyn Monroe collection.

It's kind of had to stand on its own. And the fact that our previous DVD and videotapes and whatnot weren't properly framed, now people get to see them the right way with color restored and a beautiful presentation. One thing this film doesn't have on Blu-ray is anything more than a trailer. I wish we could have come up with some interesting extras for this, but in order to get the release out, we didn't have the ability or the time to do that. But the film stands on its own as something that everybody's going to want to add to their collection. And we're very proud. Yeah. And I know the film from watching it on the DVD. And I just think it's a delightful film. And as you go along, she just, she just takes over the film, I think, you know, and it starts off

and she's just kind of the show girl. And then next thing you know, she's kind of pulling all the puppet strings there with, with Nicholas's son. And, and she really holds her own with, with an actor of the prowess of Olivier. And it just really, I just really enjoyed this film and I'm looking forward to seeing it with the new scan. Well, it also makes fun of royal family. Yeah. And she's like this American, you know, the uncouth and not very smart, supposedly. But she actually is very, very much in control. Very, very much in control. And there's a terrific cast of supporting actors in this film who are much better known in England.

But Sybil Thorndyke is wonderful. Jeremy Spencer, David Thorne, Richard Wattis, they're all exactly pitch perfect in their performances and i think it's it's it's a delightful confection and for fans of maryland monroe this is a must have and if you don't know her work this is a great way to start because this is something she was she's very proud of this film and having had been the driving force in getting it made. And, you know, sadly, there were only three more films after this before she passed away. But we have her cinematic legacy to treasure. And I'm sure everybody does.

And I'm hopeful that people will be very pleased by this release. Yeah. I'm excited that it's coming out in a fresh new, you know, Blu-ray and that there will be a lot of people who coming at it from the first time, you know, in many ways, like you say, just because it's a standalone at Warner brothers, it just doesn't have the notoriety of some of the others. So highly recommend. We do have a few other films of hers in which she has small roles, but they help to make an impact in building her career. And we will be releasing another film of hers in a few months in which she had a pretty significant, people could probably figure out what it is, but it is a film where she wasn't the leading lady, but she kind of had the second lead. And it's a dramatic film in which she has a very light role

and she was very impressive in it. And it was right before she became a huge star. So people could figure out what it is, but I'm not going to spill beans at this moment, but we'll be talking about it soon enough on the extras podcast. That's for sure. Well, you did previously mention Confessions of a Nazi Spy, and maybe you can tell us why we decided that it was worth saving for its own podcast, which you're not going to have to wait long for it. It's going to be coming out pretty much right after this podcast. But just to preview that, why did we decide that we should do that? Well, context is really necessary for this film because it isn't just the film

itself. The film was the first real Hollywood production to call out the threat of fascism, the Third Reich and the Nazis straight on. And it was based upon an actual spy ring in New York, Germans. And there was an enormous amount of fear in Hollywood to confront this. And Hitler actually had someone, some kind of foreign minister based in Los Angeles to keep their eye on what Hollywood was doing. And everybody was in fear of this guy, except for Harry Warner and Jack Warner. And they wanted to make this movie.

They wanted to call attention to what was going on in Europe and how horrifying it was. And people were afraid to be in this film. They were afraid of what would happen to their families that were still in Europe. And it was filmed under a fake title. And they had guards at the studio. And it was the bravery of the Warner Brothers to make this movie. And we're going to get into that in such detail. Not only the film itself, the craft that went into creating the movie,

the stupendous performance of Edward G. Robinson and other actors in the film, but also its role in starting the it, that it really deserved its own podcast and a discussion of the overall subject of what was going on at that time. So that's what we'll be talking about the next time we get together on the extras. And I'm looking forward to it tremendously. Yeah. And we have a special guest, your colleague, Jeff Briggs, who knows a lot about this film and he's going to be bringing all of his expertise into that discussion. And I think one other thing I'll mention is that this is the hundredth year celebration of Warner Brothers. And so that context also to talk about a film of this importance as a

celebration of the 100 year anniversary. That was really the motivating factor in wanting to give it its own podcast, because I did feel that this is tremendously important in the history of our company. And as we're about to celebrate the 100th year of its incorporation, I wanted to do something special with you and with Jeff, who is our, you know, he's not only our photo archivist, but he's a partner in crime with me in terms of protecting the studio's legacy and calling out what needs to be known about all the great things that happened here. And that's why we're going to join forces to talk about this and other things that were going on here at Warner Brothers before the war started. And once the war started, once we entered it, what Warner Brothers role was in all this. All the studios eventually got on board to support the war effort and did great patriotic things for our country. But no one did more than Warner Brothers. And that's what we'll be talking about when we talk about how it all began with Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Well, George, as always, thank you for coming on the podcast and telling us the background of these films and the restoration

and what's on the extras for this. So thank you. Oh, it's my pleasure, Tim. I look forward to the next time we get together. And thank you to everybody who continues to support the Warner Archive collection. It's always great to have George Feltenstein on to talk about the Warner Archive releases, so I hope you enjoyed that. For those of you interested in pre-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. And if this is the first episode of The Extras you've listened to and you enjoyed it, please think about following the show at your favorite podcast provider. And if you're on social media, look for our links in the podcast show notes and on our Facebook page so that you can follow us there. And we do have a new Facebook group for fans of Warner Brothers called the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog Group. So if you're interested in that, we also have links for that as well. And if you're on YouTube, we do have a YouTube link now, which also will be in the podcast show notes. And you can see some clips, videos,

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