The Extras
The Extras
Warner Archive August Blu-ray Reviews: Little Women (1933), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Father's Little Dividend (1951), Wichita (1955), Spinout (1966)
George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive joins the podcast for a fun and informative review of five of the August Blu-ray releases. We review each film, provide background on the restoration and all of the extras on each release, and share our insights into why these films are worth adding to your Blu-ray collection.
Purchase links:
FATHER'S LITTLE DIVIDEND BLU-RAY
THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA BLU-RAY
LITTLE WOMEN BLU-RAY
SPINOUT BLU-RAY
WICHITA BLU-RAY
GAY PURR-EE BLU-RAY
The Extras Facebook page
The Extras Twitter
Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog Group
As an Amazon 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. tim@theextras.tv
Hello and welcome to the Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies and animation and their release on digital DVD, blu-ray and 4K or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Lard, your host, and joining me today is George Felton, steve Warner Brothers, to review five of the August Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. Hi, george.
Speaker 2:Hey Tim, how are you?
Speaker 1:Good, good. Well, I've had a very fun, busy weekend watching these brand new Blu-rays, and two things come to mind before we kind of get into talk about each of them. One is I love the variety. I mean you've got from 1933 to 1966, little women to Elvis Presley, you know on the extremes. And then the other thought was the restoration of all these is, per usual, terrific.
Speaker 2:I have to attribute all that greatness to our talented colleagues at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging. I sound like a broken record praising them, but obviously I'm delighted with how they turned out and we put a lot of work into them and I was doing a lot of running back and forth between my office and their facility and you know the train keeps moving. We're working on things that will be coming out later this year and next year and it takes, I'd say, sometimes anywhere from six to nine months for a non-problematic title, from initial scanning to the disk being available to the consumer on street day. So these are things we've been living with a long time and to see them completed and have the extras put on, and it's truly something to be grateful for and something to be very proud of and very grateful for the inestimable contribution of the people at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging Can't say enough about them, so I've said it on virtually every extras podcast talking about releases. I'll leave it at that and say thank you, mpi. Well.
Speaker 1:I think the reason why it's noteworthy is just because I know you and Warner Brothers emphasize the quality and I know people often talk about why can't we get more of this, more of that faster? You know so forth, and you've made it clear many times why. And that is just because you're focused on A-list quality from Warner Brothers. If it's coming from Warner Brothers it has that stamp of quality and people may have to wait a little longer, but when they buy it, when they get it, they're going to know it is the best that's available as of right now with the work that you guys do. But, like you said, we've talked about it many times, but it still hits me especially. I thought we'd start talking with the oldest one here, especially when we look at these movies that are 90 years old, like Little Women from 1933. It's so impressive how it looks. Now it's not perfect, but you have this from what the best preservation elements, and it just looks so good.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit of a combination that the camera negative has deteriorated in certain spots and preservation elements were made before the deterioration. So you've got a combination of a little nitrate, a little safety preservation. I think we work from three different elements basically to the picture. And the DVD was the last transfer and that came out 22 years ago and that went through a very strange process and that was a lot of work for the people that worked on it. I think what we've achieved here is mightily impressive because this is another movie, not as severe as like Broadway melody or Simeron or even our dancing daughters those always looked dreadful. This last DVD of Little Women 22 years ago was a big improvement from what I saw on TV as a little kid or what came out on VHS. But the leak from DVD to Blu Ray here is pretty astounding and, like you said, for a 90-year-old movie to look that good and again sound that good and have to the Arcado sound department because they were pretty cracker jack very, very pleased at the results of this.
Speaker 2:And this is a film we've been wanting to bring out for a long, long time because it's so important in the canon of Catherine Hepburn's career, george Cucor's career and really in the history of RKO, because it was one of their earliest true classic films. And interestingly it was bought for remake by MGM who remade it eventually in 1949, and I think it was actually sold by RKO to David O Selznick, who sold it to MGM. But the point is when MGM remade a movie they usually buried the old version. We talked about that with Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with Frederick March In the case of Little Women. They never buried the Hepburn original.
Speaker 2:It did go into TV syndication and it was sold like a regular MGM movie, except of course they cut off the RKO logo and put a line in front of it. We obviously don't do that and even on the DVD it wasn't like that. So MGM never buried this film, it was always available, and that also, I think, contributes a little bit to why we had so much trouble working. It's usually we don't have a black and white original negative and fortunately this didn't burn in the fire but it succumbed to decomposition and deterioration. But preservation and buying grains were made early on and also later on, which is a better stock, and so by using these different fine grains and the camera negative where it was available, we came up with almost perfect image is what I would say.
Speaker 1:Right, and the music I noticed was by Max Steiner, and this must have been when he was at RKO before he came to Warner Brothers, and it's terrific in there as well. To your point, the sound on this comes across terrifically as well.
Speaker 2:And Max Steiner. Really I call him the father of movie music, modern movie music, because it was at RKO that he really developed music written specifically for the film that would convey emotion. I think it was Symphony of Six Million in 1932. That was like a breakthrough film for him. Of course, 1933 he did King Kong and Little Women and his talent just can't be overemphasized enough. And it was after a period of time that he made the leap across from Gower Street in Hollywood to Burbank and Warner Brothers was his home for, I think, probably 25 to 30 years. But his work at RKO is exemplary and that's why we're fortunate to have this. We have some recording session material as an extra scoring stage, material that we put together as kind of a suite and you get to hear the music as it was recorded for the scoring of the film in like classical suite if you will. And those recordings did survive a little bit. That we have and we're so grateful to be able to share that with the fans.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was really fun to listen to and it's a little bit different. It felt like, you know, being just musical, though once around I guess you do put those on. But the other extra that that I did want to mention, because it leads right back to the film and that's the trailer. So I'm watching that trailer and it's just really promoting this new young actress, catherine Hepburn. It was like her fourth film, but she'd only really started in her first film, like a year before that, so she was really on the scene strong, speaking of strong, you know she also has Christopher Strong, which came out in 1933, which is coming out you're bringing out in another a month or so. But that trailer really pushes her as this new actress on the scene and of course she's terrific in this film.
Speaker 2:And we're very fortunate to have that trailer because we generally don't have trailers on RKO movies. But when this film was sold the trailer negative went with it and because MGM preserved it, we have trailer elements. Usually on RKO we don't have trailer element or what we have is negligible or just horrible. But I'd rather have something horrible than nothing at all. Right, in this case it's a little weather beaten, but it's wonderful to see how they sold her and how important she was.
Speaker 2:She had only made her first film the year before, bill of Divorcement with John Barrymore, and she made such an impression she was literally an overnight superstar on film.
Speaker 2:And a few years later her career kind of went into a downward trajectory because a lot of her films weren't making money and so she went back to New York, did the Philadelphia story on Broadway, bought the screen rights and then when MGM wanted to make the movie, she said you have to negotiate with me and I need to be the star of the movie and I'm going to pick my leading men.
Speaker 2:But I'm getting ahead of the fact that I think little women is one of her cornerstone motion pictures and it would be unfortunate if I didn't acknowledge the wonderful performances by the other people in the film, whether it be Spring Byington as Marmy or Edna May Oliver as Aunt March, and then the other girls, jean Parker and Francis D particularly I found quite moving and it's just a terrific film and it is very emblematic of what Q-Corps brought to his films, and to have it in a presentation like this that looks so good is what it deserves. I wish we could do this for every film overnight, immediately. That's not realistic, but I'm hoping that someday we can do more Catherine Hepburn films and I neglected to mention the other sister, who is actually the second build, which is Joan Bennett, and she's pretty terrific in this too. They're all great and I'm delighted that we're bringing this classic to the people who want it.
Speaker 1:One last thing on this one. I was reading it Catherine was very proud of her performance in this one as well. Just in terms of later in life, I think if you're Catherine Hepburn, she has quite a career and this is one that you definitely are probably going to want to own this Blu-ray because of the restoration you've done and just that it's a cornerstone of her filmography.
Speaker 2:So completely agree, and I don't say this about most films, but if you're building a classic film library, this one is an essential. This is a very important film on so many levels, and Catherine Hepburn was very modest and didn't really like to talk about herself. She was somewhat private and yet her seeing the praise of this film and her lifelong friendship with George Q Cork and they worked together up through television movies and when they were both in their senior citizen days it speaks so highly to how it all began in the early days of R Kale. Their friendship and their workmanship is wonderful.
Speaker 1:If anybody's on the fence. You've thrown so many extras in here. The two Mary Melodies are really fun. I really enjoyed those in the dough. The short film with Jack Haley that's quite hilarious, I thought, and then you have another one with him, so it's just a terrific package as well. But I'm watching it and I just got so nostalgic. As I was watching it I couldn't help but think of just that time, that era. You know my mom watching these old films with her. It just really takes you back and I just thought this was a real highlight release of this month, I think.
Speaker 2:Well, I had hoped that we could bring more of that experience of what it was like to go to the movies 90 years ago, and so we try to do that whenever we can and make sure that we're putting content on there that people will really, really enjoy, and that is always a great pleasure and a great privilege.
Speaker 1:Well, next up, another terrific film from the 30s, and that's the life of Emile Zola, and this restoration I also thought was very noteworthy.
Speaker 2:Well, this isn't one of those occasions where we had the original camera negative to scan. And I've seen comments where people are thinking that the original camera negatives to the Warner Brothers films are at UCLA and that is wrong. On the pre-49 Warner Library the original camera negatives that are extant are on deposit with the Library of Congress and we bring them there for that. The original negatives to Warner Brothers post-50 movies that were shot on nitrate, which only represents basically, I think, two or three years' worth of films, those are at UCLA because we don't keep any nitrate on the lot. But we have to acknowledge the partnership with the Library of Congress and how they take care of everybody's films, but especially ours. And we moved in the camera negative and did a 4K scan and created this new master. And this film is very important to our studio because it was the first Warner Brothers feature to win the Outstanding Motion Picture of the Year Award, aka Best Picture Oscar, for the Life of BMilzola and the year before Paul Muni had won Best Actor for the story of Louis Pasteur. So this is one of his many historic biographical motion pictures. But again, it's also important because it gives an amazing performance.
Speaker 2:It's also important to note that this is representative of the Warner Brothers using historical events to warn people about the dangers of extremism and censorship and false accusation. And they did so by setting historical stories rather than you know later on, starting with Confessions of a Nazi Spy. They had the courage to state what was going on at the time. But even the same year of Confessions of a Nazi Spy, they made Juarez with Paul Muni and Betty Davis in 1939, because they used every they pulled every lever they could to make good, important, entertaining films. But that also would shine a light on things that were of a social nature and this was incredibly well made and prestigious and it was a huge hit at the box office and it's certainly part of the Warner Brothers follow-up fame. And with the 4K skin off the camera negative, obviously, it looks magnificent and we're very, very proud of it.
Speaker 1:This had 10 Academy Award nominations, did it not? And it won. Of course you said best picture won, best screenplay, best supporting actor for the gentleman who played Captain Dreyfus, joseph Schildkraut, and that was a huge movie from that year. And yet Paul didn't win, which I thought was maybe surprising. But he's terrific. I mean the fact that he goes from early days of Zola to the very end. I mean the range he shows in it is terrific. Now the story I thought was fun because it does show the early stuff, but it takes you a long time to get to the Dreyfus trial and Suzanne comes in and they show all the different things from his career. But then when it comes to the trial, I mean he's just a force. It's just really terrific. I thought it was really fun. And once again here you got music by Max Diner, you got Halby Wallace as the producer, quite a crew of people from Warner Brothers top A list behind this one.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. And Paul Muni losing the Oscar. He lost the Oscar to another one of our films, one of the films that we own, that we didn't make but we made at MGM Captain's courageous, spencer Tracy. I mean, like, how do you pick who's the best? Right, it's kind of like those Oscar competitions that are so close. How do you choose, and you end up with one person winning but you know the other person was really equally deserving and the fact that he had won the year before, I think, probably had something to do with it. But then again you have Spencer Tracy winning for Captain's courageous in 37 and winning for Boys Town in 1938. So they were not necessarily against successive Oscar winners, but it was very rare.
Speaker 2:And this is certainly a wonderful film and we're very, very proud of the release. And I know the Warner Brothers put so much work into this film that they always were very, very proud of it and we're delighted to release it. You know this is something that was done as a needed element of the 100th anniversary. Right, we can have a Warner Brothers film that won the Best Picture Oscar, that wasn't available and we're trying to get all of our Oscar winners out there. I'm delighted that it is available.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we'll talk briefly here about the extras. You've got a couple short films on here. You got the Lux Theater Broadcast, you got the trailer. I mean it's also really packed so that for the fans of this film, for the fans of Paul Mooney, you know, for that era, this is a really great release for everybody to own.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, and I'm hoping we can do the same, and more, for everything as we continue to struggle along. It's all good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a terrific film. Like you said, so many people want to own the most important films of Warner Brothers and they're looking for that this year in the 100th, so it's terrific that this comes out and they can purchase it so well. You just mentioned Spencer Tracy, so I think next we might as well jump right into the discussion of Father's Little Dividend from 1951.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how about that for a transition? That's perfect, but it's like the opposite end of the spectrum from the life of Emile Azola, in the sense that this is a light comedy by one of your favorite directors.
Speaker 2:Yes, I always will call out my unending admiration for Vincent Vannelli. Some people think of this as a trifle because it was a sequel and it was made very efficiently and quickly after the first. But aside from series films, which were even then a rarity, sequels were not that common place at this time. Not only that, but the fact that they made this as in a picture at MGM, with the same director, same cast, for the most part the same screenwriters, everybody got together and the timing of it was just like perfect, because it was made in between. It was shot in between, they had completed shooting most of an American in Paris and, as I understand it, if I have my history correct, that Vannelli made Father's Little Divide and why they were getting ready to shoot the ballet for an American in Paris.
Speaker 2:And this is a film that like, if you go back and read the reviews in the major newspapers and the trade papers, everybody said that it was as good as, if not better than, father the Bride, which is a very heady compliment. I know not everybody thinks that way or feels that way, but this film is beloved and it's been circulating in despicably ugly editions that are not authorized, and this is going back to the original negative and creating a beautiful 4K scan that can make a new blu-ray is an honor, and it's important that we get as much of Vannelli's work available in the proper format with the proper quality as possible. So we've got a lot of work ahead of us because there are a lot of needy cases in the library still waiting that attention. But Father's Little Divide is surefire entertainment and we're so proud to bring it to the fans.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you got Vannelli behind this, you got Spencer Tracy, then you've got Joan Bennett, who we just talked about in Little Women, almost 20 years later now in her career, playing Tracy's wife and the grandma, and she's terrific in this. And then, of course, you've got Elizabeth Taylor, who is their daughter Kay, about to have the baby, and so it's a great cast. I mean there's so many fans of all of those actors and directors that I think would enjoy this, and you know you watch it and it just flies by. It's just like fun. And then, of course, you've got the Voice Over with Spencer Tracy, which is really well written.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was a novelty back then, so that's why it worked so well. The style of the movie was really quite wonderful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the style really does feel like quite a change from the 40s. I mean this is 51 to a much more. When I say modern, I mean modern for the next step of the 50s and 60s style of filmmaking. It just feels like a real step forward to that 50s style. And then you loaded it with a couple of Tom and Jerry cartoons, a Pete Smith short film, the trailer. So it has a robust amount of extras as well.
Speaker 2:Well, it's like a night at the Lowe's Theater in 1951. And that is our goal.
Speaker 1:Right. And those cartoons again, they fit the same mood, or tone, I should say, of this movie, of being just like fun.
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of these are making their HD disc debut. They have not been on Blu-ray before and the first way you can get them is on this disc. And that is the case for a lot of the cartoons that we're adding, and we're adding them to create entertainment, and people who buy the movie have the benefit of having these little extras, and that's always nice, but right.
Speaker 1:Well, next let's jump into a serious Western here, wichita from 1955. And when I say serious, I mean Joe McCrae. He's like this big, imposing presence playing white herb, and this is the story of how he becomes a lawman, really. But before we get into the story, I have to say that from the very first shot, from the very beginning, the restoration of this technicolor film and the synopsis scope is fantastic From the get go.
Speaker 2:Well, this was a very significant restoration effort because it's a 1955 movie, which means Eastwind color stock at its worst and the original negative had very bad fade. We use the original negative and the yellow separation to create a sharp, colorful image. You know, I've looked at our old DVD. It doesn't look deplorable as some of our old DVDs do, but this was to me revelatory when I saw that they had recombined the yellow separation with the camera negative the color, the sharpness, the clarity and this is very early Cinemascope. This is like two years into the use of cinemascope.
Speaker 2:And the other thing that's very notable about this first and foremost, joe McCrae, a tragic and tragically, in my opinion, underrated and underappreciated actor because even though he had a career in films for 30s, the 40s, the 50s, into the early 60s, people don't know his work well enough. And he was wonderful. He made a lot of westerns but he also did like comedy and drama and what I understand, he was a great person. Certainly I don't know anything about his personal life other than I've heard that he was very well respected in the filmmaking community and if you look at the great directors he worked with, that speaks volumes. And he plays Wyatt Earp in this film and some people said that he was a little too old to play Wyatt Earp. But I think you can suspend the age judgment for the performance that he gives, which is so taught and so tight, and I think one of the reasons why he's so good in the film works so well is the director, jacques Ternure, who is a personal favorite of mine. He's directed some of my most favorite films, including things like Out of the Past.
Speaker 2:He Was Great at Noir and then he made social films like Stars in my Crown, which I'm hoping we can restore for Blu-ray someday. But he also directed some of the best Valued movies like Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. So his versatility as a director, his works are incredibly important and I think you know he went from making future films to doing a lot of television. But during his lifetime I don't think people appreciated how talented he was and that's why he's one of the auteurs that certain people will buy anything that he directed. And we did release one of those obscure films a couple years ago Great Day in the Morning with Virginia Mayo, as an archao film made right after Wichita. And the reason we put that film out was it needed restoration and, more importantly, it was a Jacques Tourneur film and we have our work cut out for us with the other Jacques Tourneur films that are not yet available on Blu-ray. So they're coming, folks, just give us time.
Speaker 1:So when you say you have your work cut out, is it just in terms of the restoration and everything?
Speaker 2:The amount of titles that need to be mastered and restored, and there's one film where the original negative is missing, which is very, very strange, but we've been looking for it for probably over 20 years.
Speaker 2:Because we have secondary elements, but we want to work from the best if we can. So we need to either confirm that it's gone or that it is someplace, and then we make a decision as to what we're going to do from there. That's the story on handful of titles, but very important that we know exactly where we stand on everything so we can make the best possible product for the consumer.
Speaker 1:Well, just going back a little bit to Joel McCrae, he obviously is so associated with Westerns and in real life he was a rancher. He had a lot of property and he bought a lot of property out by where I live here and you know the.
Speaker 2:Western part of the valley.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Western part of the valley going towards Thousand Oaks and up toward that area of Ventura County, and he basically bought a lot of that land for his ranch which has now been turned into the city there. But just yesterday, just total, total trivia and side note but I'm driving back from visiting some friends over there and I drive by street and what's the street name? Mccrae Street, and I was like wait, that's no accident, that's no accident at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but he's so comfortable on the scenes where he's riding the horse and you know he started off as a stunt double, so he very comfortable there and he looks terrific when he's doing all of those scenes. But his presence, I thought, really carries the film. Yeah, he might be a little bit older, but just that presence that he has on screen it makes him the lawman. Or as they say in the film, he's a lawman, he just doesn't know it yet, basically, and he brings that across, which I think is terrific.
Speaker 2:And the other thing to note about this film is there is a key player in why it's so great and why it holds up. That is the producer, walter Mirish, who started at Monogram in I guess the late 40s and really developed as a creative guide and produced many films as the company morphed into Allied artists and he honed his craft at Allied. That's why this is like an A picture for them as opposed to a B picture. Cinemascope required the licensing of the technology for 20-30 bucks and within about three years he was part of the Mirish Corporation who made A-level features for United Artists for Lease and the Oscars started flowing with the apartments in the heat of the night and the films that didn't win Oscars but that are so famous, like the Magnificent Seven and Some Like it Hot.
Speaker 2:The Mirish pictures for years were regarded as such high-level, a-plus entertainment and basically between James Bond and the Mirish is they kept United Artists in business for many, many years. So Walter Mirish just passed away. He was over 100 years old. He was very much a part of the Academy, he was the president of the Academy for a little while and he was the producer of so many great motion pictures West Side Story, I could go on and on, but he cut his teeth at Monogram and Allied and we have the proof on celluloid of how wonderful he was as a producer and between Walter Mirish, jacques Tuneur and Joel McCrae, with a stellar supporting cast including Paramiles and Lloyd Bridges, which Todd as a Blu-ray experience is top-flight might.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to add a couple more pieces of trivia. One is that supposedly Joel met White Ur back in 1928, which is true or not I don't know, but that's kind of interesting if that's true. And then Vera Miles she lived in Wichita for a time and graduated from high school there and she was a Miss Kansas in 1948. So there's a few small little kind of interesting little links back to this film. But she really, I thought, brought a fun. You know the love interest to the character and you know she's beautiful and they. That kind of builds slowly into the storyline and of course it ends up becoming very important by the end. But it's a terrific supporting cast. I have to say I just wish it was longer, I wanted it more.
Speaker 2:I felt the same way yeah.
Speaker 1:I was so enjoying it and I was like, oh, now we're starting to get into the love story, and so there was both the balance of the, of the, him becoming the Laman, him enforcing it, you know, and I just it's a shorter film and so I just wish it had been a little bit longer, but that's just because I was enjoying myself so much.
Speaker 2:So I'm glad you did. I'm really delighted. And there are more Joe McCrae, westerns and nonwesterns that we want to tackle as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have to bring up the extra George, because I was laughing out loud. I mean, not every cartoon do I laugh out loud, sometimes I'm just smiling, but this deputy droopy was just downright funny. And then the tech savory the first Batman with dinosaur Dan. That's kind of brilliant, I thought. I thought those were really worth mentioning.
Speaker 2:Well, what I try to do is put cartoons that are not otherwise available, that have some kind of thematic or yearly relevance to the motion picture. In this case these cartoons have been available on prior Blu-ray tech savory collections but they fit with Chita really well. They're not exactly from the same year but I thought thematically it made for a better show.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And people will notice that there isn't a trailer. We didn't have a trailer to put on here. I'm sure there are probably 30 collectors out there that have trailers of this movie, but we don't. And that's pretty typical of Allied artists and monogram, kind of like RKO. The trailers are rare and hard to find, so let's talk about the next film. Yeah, jumping to 1966.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is a total different kind of film for this month and it's so much fun Spin out with Elvis Presley. I mean this one, you watch it, you pop it, you pop in the Blu-ray and the colors just like literally pop off the screen.
Speaker 2:I was so shocked how great this looked. And when you go back to the original negative and this is a period of time where the original piece of color negative was made on good stock that isn't subject to fate and we had a 4K scan of the camera negative and the colors pop off the screen at you the costume design is deliberately created to create the most colorful film and having Elvis be a race car driver and all around good guy. I think what's interesting about this film is he doesn't break down the fourth wall but he doesn't take anything too seriously. You can tell he's having a good time and, most importantly, he gets to sing a lot, a lot. The plot is fairly lightweight. The supporting ladies that are in the movie are all quite wonderful. You have Debra Walle and Diane McBain.
Speaker 2:And this was directed by by Norman Taurav, who directed Broadway melody of 1940 and had been at MGM for years, and it was produced by Joe Pasternak, who produced a lot of great musicals at MGM in the 40s as well as comedies, and as musicals faded out he started shifting to dramas and comedies and rare musical efforts. But one of those several of those actually were Elvis films and Elvis was working primarily at MGM in Paramount around this time, and his fans really want everything he ever did, so we've got our work cut out for us. There needs to be more Elvis from our library on Blu-ray and we're working on it. We may have some more to announce in the coming years, but in the meantime, spin out, I think, is just a confection and a delight and fun, and we also did put some cartoons on there too.
Speaker 1:Right, you have the two Tom and Jerry cartoons and you've got the trailer and those are a lot of fun. But to go back to the dancing and the songs and the costume design and the art design, I thought it was terrific because it so captures that time, it so captures that era, 1966, middle of the 60s. I mean, they're grooving, they're dancing, the dance moves, they take plenty of time to enjoy that because of while he's singing, to really highlight all the people dancing, whether it be by the pool or inside one of the places where he's performing or wherever, and that brings, I think, a lot of fun to watching it because it just transports you right to that. That art direction just transports you right there. The hair, everything and of course, his songs from that era, that style of Elvis from that time.
Speaker 2:The songs are really good. And when I was mentioning the Leading Ladies before, I was specifically going to reserve commentary to call out the appearance of Elvis' Leading Lady in this film that we had worked with the year before on Girl Happy was Shelly Faberay, who had established herself as the older daughter on the Donorito on television for many years and she left the series toward the end of its run to be on the big screen and I think Spin Out was probably her fourth movie. But she had a contract with MGM for a brief period of time and after she did Girl Happy with Elvis she did Hold On with Hermann Sermitz and then she was in Spin Out and then MGM Late lent her out for the UA Film Clambake with Elvis and her film career was somewhat limited but she is, I think, one of the more well-known and well-liked Elvis Leading Ladies because she did three pictures with them, which is unusual.
Speaker 1:And for people who have seen her in some of her more recent TV shows. She was also in the TV show Coach in the 1990s and I remember her being very good in that as well.
Speaker 2:She's terrific and I believe I'm not certain about this, but I believe she's been one of the Elvis Leading Ladies who has participated in events at Graceland. I think she's very supportive of talking about her collaborations with Elvis, so I really think this is a lot of fun, and the Elvis fans have already proven that they've wanted this film because the pre-orders were very, very empowering for the guys.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a terrific lineup of these five films. Now some people listening might say isn't there six films this month? And we will be talking about the six film. Gaye, parie and George and I are working on it. We hope to have some special guests join us for that one.
Speaker 2:Yep, that is really a highlight of the month and we thought it would be nice to give this film a special podcast, because it's a very different, special film that I think in this new Blu-ray that we have available, people will see it as they've never seen it before certainly as I've never seen it before and it looks amazing and we'll have some experts to talk about various aspects of the film on that next podcast. So that'll be terrific.
Speaker 1:And it is, of course, available and the podcast will come a little later. There are a terrific amount of extras that are included in that release. So if you purchase it before you listen to the podcast, I think you're really going to enjoy it. But listen to the podcast, you're going to get some real insight that I think you'll really enjoy. So that'll be coming up in the near future. So well, thanks, george, for coming on the podcast. As always, it's fun to go through these with you and share just some of my insights into both the restoration and the films themselves and to just let fans know that all the things you promised in those announced podcasts where you talk about the restoration and what these films are that I can validate. I've seen them and these are terrific and it's so much fun to go over them with you and to share with fans. Hey, if you're a fan of these actors, if you're a fan of these films, this is what you're going to get in this Blu-ray package from the Warner Archive.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And, as we say it again and again, it is always an honor and a pleasure and a privilege to be with you and to be able to get the word out to our loyal consumers a little bit more minutiae than we're able to communicate otherwise, about what makes these films and these releases special. And, most importantly, thank you to the consumers that support our efforts, because without you we wouldn't be here, and we're very grateful for your continued support and patronage.
Speaker 1:For those of you interested in ordering the films we discussed today, there are links in the podcast show notes and on our website at wwwthexpresstv, so be sure and check those out. If you're on social media, be sure and follow the show to stay up to date on our upcoming guests and to be a part of our community. And, as we mentioned earlier, that will also let you know when we are going to be releasing the special episode on Gay Paris and you're invited to join our Facebook group for fans of Warner Archive films, called the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Cadillac Group. So look for that link on the Facebook page or in the podcast show notes as well. And for our long-term listeners, don't forget to follow and leave us a review at iTunes, spotify or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time you've been listening to Tim Mellard, stay slightly obsessed.