The Extras
The Extras
Warner Archive March Release Announcement
George Feltenstein joins the podcast to announce six March Blu-ray releases, PLUS he provides an update on why there were no February releases. George includes background on each film or TV series, the new HD master, and more clarification on the extras that will be included. And he always drops some knowledge about what is being worked on for the future. There is no better way to learn about what is on the Warner Archive schedule than to hear directly from George.
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Hello and welcome to the Extras. I'm Tim Millard, your host and joining me is George Feltenstein, and we're going to be talking about the March Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. Hi, george.
George Feltenstein:Hey Tim, how are you?
Tim Millard:Good. Well, before we dive in, george, I know people are anxious to hear about what's coming in March, but before we dive in, I did want to take a minute to thank the listeners of the Extras, all of you who reached out with your concerns and well wishes for myself and for George and other guests that we've had here that you know live in the LA area. When we were dealing with the horrible fires here in January here in LA and I was under evacuation orders for a short time as one of the fires broke out on the hill behind my house, but fortunately the fire moved away from us so we were okay. But this has had a huge impact on LA, on the industry and, I'm assuming, george, for Warner Brothers as well on the industry and I'm assuming, george, for Warner Brothers as well.
George Feltenstein:Oh, absolutely, the studio was never in the direct line of fire, but many people who work here, their homes, were threatened and some people lost their homes.
George Feltenstein:We basically were working remotely for about two weeks and my own personal situation is that I was between the two fires, but I also live in an area that is prone to fires, so it was very touch and go and difficult.
George Feltenstein:But all the kind words from people there were many who I noticed had empathy for what we were dealing with here and as we record this, it's raining out, which is really a wonderful thing for the area, so we're grateful. But it did also hamstring a lot of what we had planned and there was just no way we were going to be able to move forward with February releases. So we have our March lineup to talk about today and then also I'm confirming that two titles that had been previously announced for January, where we ran into production issues, that are now on the street date of March 25th along with the new releases, and that is Cheyenne, the Complete Series, as well as the Ryan Reynolds comedy from 2005, just Friends. So there'll be actually eight new titles hitting the market on that very clogged day, but it'll be one with a little something for everyone, which I think is kind of cool.
Tim Millard:Yeah, in some ways it's surprising that maybe there weren't more delays, you know from the January releases. So to have those two move into March is fortunate that it's just just those two, because that was obviously. The focus is on everybody being safe and and your home and your family and everything. So we're just glad to kind of have the rain now and hopefully have that behind us and and get to back to the business of of doing what we do. So and I know, george, you look at all the physical media in your house and you think, oh, my gosh, what a loss. You know it's scary.
George Feltenstein:Oh, I couldn't even think that it's scary decades and decades of collecting.
Tim Millard:And so, oh, I couldn't even think that scary decades and decades of collecting, and so, thankfully, I couldn't even let yeah yeah exactly, but in terms of all of my research materials and everything, it's just not anything I could think of.
George Feltenstein:I had packed a go bag for, you know, essential items, medications, food for the dogs, that kind of thing. We had to be ready to move at any time.
Tim Millard:Yeah, that was just hair raising two, three weeks. It did really, it sure was.
George Feltenstein:But we're here to talk about good things that are coming the way of consumers in March and we're excited about that.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and there's a fantastic lineup here for March and I know many people are excited about these releases and I thought we would start with the oldest of the releases, because they go all the way back to 1921 and the silent film, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. What can you tell us about this release, george?
George Feltenstein:Well, this is something we've been working on since 2022. I think this is probably the longest project in terms of initializing it and getting to completed final master that could go into production. It was complex in the sense that we were working with multiple film elements and there was a new 35 millimeter print made by our very small pieces of footage that weren't in the MGM. Preservation elements had to do was pull all the film that we had and then match exactly what Kevin Brownlow and Patrick Stanbury had done in terms of tinting and toning and so forth and so on. For that 1993 35 millimeter print, which also became a Video Master. That was never released on tape and never released on DVD. It did get released as a LaserDisc in 1997. That was something that I was not involved with because it was after I had left MGMUA and had come to Time Warner. So there were very few of those printed and that 1993 Master has standard definition Master has been running on Turner Classic Movies basically since its inception. But people have basically since its inception. But people have wanted this film on DVD and, more importantly, to be able to do it on Blu-ray, scan everything at 4K, have a beautiful new master for the Blu-ray for the Blu-ray and, most importantly, I needed to make sure that Kevin Brownlow and Patrick Stanberry at PhotoPlay approved of our work and that it matched what they had intended, because their name is on this restoration. It's a new master based on the creative choices they made in terms of the tints, and it has a magnificent orchestral score. We had to make sure that stayed in sync with the picture. It was an enormous amount of work for our folks at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging, folks at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging, and we were sending files back and forth to the UK to make sure we were on track. And ultimately we got the enthusiastic approval of Kevin Brownlow and Patrick Stanberry at PhotoPlay to move forward, which I could not be more grateful for, and I wanted to make sure that they were pleased.
George Feltenstein:This film was made by Metro Pictures Corporation before Metro was merged with Goldman Pictures under the aegis of Lowe's Incorporated and Louis B Mayer joined that company and that became MGM. So this is a pre-MGM Metro Pictures production and it's most notable, I think, for two reasons. First of all, it is a very visually stunning film directed by Rex Ingram, who made some magnificent silent films and did not transition into the sound era for all intents and purposes. But his silent films are quite remarkable and this film has a very strong anti-war sentiment to it and it is also notable for having been the breakthrough film for the leading man, rudolph Valentino. There's a tango sequence in this film that is very, very famous for having catapulted him into public stardom.
George Feltenstein:But the importance of Ingram's work and what is done cinematically here for a film that is now 103, no, 104 years old. Fortunately this 1993 iteration that we have now upgraded with the 4K scans of the elements and the HD master finish that's on the Blu-ray people will see clarity and most importantly and I think this is something that Kevin always strives for in his work his late producing partner, david Gill, worked with him on this 1993 iteration and Patrick Stanbury is now Kevin's partner and has been for decades, and they have done so much magnificent work, including work on several films in our library and many films that they did work on that come from the early days of MGM and the silent era. A lot of people have been wanting to see those arrive on Blu-ray and the only thing I can say about that is that several of the most important films are licensed to one of our partners and have been for many years, and people should start to see them released soon. I don't want to discuss what our partner's plans are that's not my place to do so but I do want people to know that the other films are certainly not being ignored and, more importantly, I really would love to do more of our silence in this fashion, with a class A, four-star treatment. And if this release is as popular as I believe it will be, this very special film and the work done here is quite remarkable. The success of that will pave the way for more from the silent era to come with that kind of gravitas. So it's a very, very important part of film history.
George Feltenstein:Rex Ingram is not as well-known beyond silent film enthusiasts and deserves to be. A lot of the directors from the Silent Ear made their transition into sound, so their reputation continued. The people who really know about the work of Rex Ingram are few in number outside of a small circle of cinephiles. Release will really grab new audiences who may be turned off to silent films or think that they're. You know, people who are not enlightened about silent films are not supposed to look all sped up and rickety and it was a purely visual art form and there has been tremendous progress. And I do say that no one individual did more and has done more to continue popularizing and teaching and exposing people to the art of the silent cinema than Kevin Brownlow. I read a book of his in my childhood called the Parade's Gone by and it was all about the silent era. Kevin and his partner, david Gill, did this amazing miniseries about the silent era called Hollywood, which is a remarkable multi-part work. They did a great service to film history by Teaching people through that miniseries how to look at silent film and how to understand it and appreciate.
George Feltenstein:Itmen of the Apocalypse is one of the early examples of that. Smaller parts, a young Wallace Berry and Alan Hale, who is a stalwart supporting player here at Warner Brothers for years. People know him from the Adventures of Robin Hood and hundreds of other films not hundreds but dozens of other films and they have small parts in this to. It's just really remarkable the musical score created for the 1993 restoration, of which our presentation is a digital remaster, taking advantage of the tools to help remove more dirt and film damage so you're going to see the film clearer than you ever did before and Carl Davis, who just passed away, I believe in the last year or year and a half, was this amazing composer and conductor who wrote magnificent scores for so many silent films, magnificent scores for so many silent films, usually working with Kevin Brownlow and his associates.
George Feltenstein:And Carl Davis's score for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to me may have been one of his best, if not his best. But it's kind of like saying which one of your children do you like the most? Because his work is just. It was beyond compare, and there are so many very talented people that did and continue to create their own music for silent films to make them more exciting, a presentation for contemporary audiences. I don't think very many people would argue with my belief that Carl Davis was truly among the top people to do so, and he recorded these scores with massive orchestras, these scores with massive orchestras, and then, in concert with Kevin and Patrick and Photoplay, there would be 35 millimeter print screenings with live orchestra playing for the films, just the way that in big cities during the silent era, big films were accompanied in big theaters in big cities by full symphonic orchestras that were residents of that particular theater.
George Feltenstein:The coming of sound put a lot of musicians out of work. But in small towns there was a pianist. There was always music associated with film. Small towns, there was a pianist. There was always music associated with film.
George Feltenstein:But this presentation has glorious stereophonic music written by Carl Davis and beautiful picture quality. It is astounding when I looked at it. This is over 100 years old. Look at how great it looks. So the proof will be in the pudding.
George Feltenstein:And when people do get their disks and see this, I really hope it will enable me and empower me to go to management and ask for more. And that leads to a very important point. I am not empowered to select whatever I want from our library and have it come out. Those decisions are. I can suggest and plead and beg and I have done all of those and I have to also be able to defend our expenses financially. And with results like this, in terms of what I've seen and what this disc will look like and this presentation will look like, if the sales are strong enough, it will open up the door for more, as well as the films that are planned to be released by our partners. So there will be more silence coming from us. Fans of silent film and I'm among them are very vocal in their desire to see a lot of the films in our library with phenomenal quality, and I really hope this will be the beginning of that kind of next renaissance.
Tim Millard:Yeah, well, that's an amazing backstory to this film and the importance of this film so great that you finally have it available for the fans, so let's hope that people support it.
George Feltenstein:I certainly hope so.
Tim Millard:Well, our next film is going to make a lot of Joan Crawford fans very happy, and that is Sadie McKee from 1934. What can you tell us about this one, George?
George Feltenstein:French O'Tone, edward Arnold, gene Raymond. People don't necessarily know this film as well on its own, as they'll recognize a clip from it that was excerpted in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, for the Blanche Hudson character watching her movies on TV. And also this film was the vehicle to provide the introduction to the famous song All I Do Is Dream of you, which is throughout Singing in the Rain. It was written for this picture. It's not a musical at all, but the song is prominently featured in the film. No-transcript. There's a good guy and there's a bad guy, and then there's old, drunk, rich Edward Arnold, who is not right for Sadie McKee, but he's got money. So the story on which this screenplay was built was written by a popular, auth, popular author of the era, veena Del Mar. It's got a nice brisk running time of 93 minutes and it's one of many 1930s MGM hits that I would like to see more of come out through our efforts.
George Feltenstein:So anytime we're able to do this, this film previously was on DVD with a not particularly nice looking master. This is also one of those films where the original negative burnt in the fire. So we worked from the safety preservation elements made in the 1960s to scan it 4K and come up with the new master. It looks absolutely gorgeous. It's got a great art deco. Look to it Because it was made right before the production code enforcement. It's a little bit more on the risque side than the later Crawford pictures of the 30s at MGM were. We had put this in a Joan Crawford DVD collection probably about 17 years ago sometime around then, and it was well-received at the time. But now it's on its own. It's on Blu-ray. We've thrown three wonderful 1934 cartoons in HD onto the program, as well as the trailer, and it's a nifty disc and I think people are really, really going to enjoy it Because Crawford is terrific in it. So is everybody Right, right?
Tim Millard:Yep, and it's a great team up. Of course, crawford, clarence Brown, great cast. So looking forward to seeing that one with this restoration. Well, our next release is something a little bit different, at least for me, george. So I'm excited to hear about this Monogram Matinee Volume 1 release. What is it and what films are included with this?
George Feltenstein:Well, this opens up a whole larger discussion, which I will for the sake of time. A poverty row studio, as it were, that made low-budget films. They were always kind of teeter-tottering on financial instability. Their most famous work includes the films of the Bowery Boys, the 48 films that they made after they stopped being the East Side Kids, which they also did for Monogram. And Monogram also was primarily a home for Western cowboy movie heroes, cowboy movie heroes, and throughout the early 1930s John Wayne did some small films that were released by Monogram, and as you hit the 1940s you had other cowboy heroes, kind of Saturday matinee movies, as I like to call it. That's why we're calling this the Monogram Matinee, volume 1. I'm hoping that this is the first in a series of films that we can bring to Blu-ray of monogram films.
George Feltenstein:And Monogram in 1947, I believe, decided to dip their toe in the water of making bigger budget films A-movies as you may call them and that new division was called Allied Artists Pictures and eventually the Allied Artists name became the name of the whole company and Monogram went away. Monogram B pictures were still produced by the entity, but after 1950, I think late 1953, everything went out as Allied Artists. So you know, the Bowery Boys series ran from 1946 to 1958. They made 48 of those features during that time and at a certain point the productions go from being monogram pictures to allied artist pictures. So we came to own this library of monogram films by virtue of allied artists, went bankrupt and were purchased by Lorimar. Warner Brothers purchased Lorimar in the late 1980s and the films came to us. Now what's really important here is that I have documentation from allied artists, from Laura Marr and even from early days at Warner Brothers Television in the early 90s where people were saying, with rare exception, these films are worthless, these films have no audience, it's okay to let them rot. Nobody at Warner Brothers said that, by the way, but people certainly we have it in print where they said it's okay if we don't want to do anything to protect them of the film elements. And this had been ongoing really through the 90s and continues up till today.
George Feltenstein:The Monogram Library was also cherry-picked twice. There were close to 200 films that were sold off that are mostly pre-1946. And there's no rhyme or reason to what was cherry-picked for the most part and those are with the current MGM company. So there's a lot of monogram movies that we have no rights to that. We have no rights to Pretty much everything. It starts in the mid-30s and is kind of checkerboard as to what we have and what we don't, and the ownership pretty much gets locked in around 1946. To add to the confusion, there was a sale made by Allied Artists of Allied Artists and Monogram movies to a company called National Telefilm Associates, which later changed its name to Republic Pictures and, through various machinations, is now with Paramount.
George Feltenstein:So there's always a question as to well, what Monogram stuff and what allied artist stuff does Warner Brothers have? So I made it a mission many, many years ago to clarify what we owned, what had copyright protection, what films were protected, what films needed to be preserved needed to be preserved, and this has been an ongoing project for so many, many years. We did 10 DVD sets of the Monogram Cowboy collection and those were primarily Western, starring Johnny Mac Brown, jimmy Wakely, rod Cameron, whip Wilson, and those sets were very, very popular on DVD. But there were a lot of the films that we hadn't been able to get to yet, especially because what survived of the nitrate was in many cases some reels were at one archive and then the rest of the feature would be at another archive and we wouldn't know until we brought the nitrate in if we had the whole feature. And I'm heartbroken to say there are some monogrammed films where we just have no film elements because people were careless in prior decades, pre-warner Brothers ownership. But there has been a continual, perpetual motion to master and protect these films and create preservation materials and so these three 1949 movies represent, in my estimation, what it might have been like if you went to see a triple feature of monogram movies on a Saturday in 1949.
George Feltenstein:So the first film is called Mississippi Rhythm and it's hard to call it a Western because there are no cowboys, no cowboy hats, no horses, no elements that are that specific to the genre. But there's bad guys and good guys and it takes place on a riverboat on the Mississippi River and the hero is a gentleman named Jimmy Davis who is a country music performer who had done some films previously and he made one film for Monogram before this, called Louisiana, which I'm happy to say was recently preserved and protected. That could be a future release. But the success of Louisiana led to Monogram casting him in Mississippi Rhythm, which is basically a Western on a riverboat, for lack of a better word. This was also kind of an A-level picture for Monogram in the sense that it runs over an hour. The other two films on the bill are Crashing Through with Whip Wilson, who's the cowboy hero in that movie, and the monogram.
George Feltenstein:Western cowboy movies usually ran between 53 and 55 minutes each. They were really like a television hour-long program and, as a matter of fact, because Monogram wasn't a major studio, their films ended up on television years before any Warner Brothers, mgm, paramount, 20th Century Fox, columbia movies, universal Major studio movies didn't really start to hit until the RKO Library was sold for television in 1955. So in those early days these were among the first the Monogram movies and other small studios like it. Their movies were the first to hit television, along with a lot of British films as television started to permeate America in the late 40s. So we have Whip Wilson in Crashing Through and then a personal favorite of mine who I didn't even know about until I started working on this project. I knew the name but I really didn't know the films and I didn't know how much fun they were, and that was Johnny Mac Brown. He was a big cowboy B-picture Western star. Before Monogram he worked at other studios and then he was at Monogram for almost 10 years and before that MGM tried to make him into a leading man and he was in some important films, like the early version of Billy the Kid, I believe and it didn't work for him at MGM and he found his home in B pictures and being a Western hero, gm. And he found his home in Bee Pictures and being a Western hero and he made dozens and dozens of these Bee Westerns as well as serials and this one Western Renegades. He's a US Marshal.
George Feltenstein:The pictures all follow a very similar theme but they're very, very endearing. They have good supporting players. There's nothing particularly, you know, remarkable between one versus the other. They all follow a very specific formula and the formula works and the only thing that ended the making of these kind of films was in fact the importance of television and a lot of film cowboys made the transition to being TV stars. You had Hopalong, cassidy, bill Boyd specifically, and Roy Rogers. Their films were so popular they were made in other studios. They were so popular when they hit television that eventually they started making new TV shows. So Johnny Mac Brown did not do that, but when we were putting the Monogram Cowboy Collections on DVD together, which are still very much available.
George Feltenstein:All 10 volumes. It was a real crash course for me in learning and seeing these films and finding them very enjoyable. And the sidekicks. And I also liked the fact that not in Western Renegades but in some of the earlier movies, they used the same pieces of stock music in every film. So it was like the Argan comedies or the Laurel and Hardy comedies used the Leroy Shield and Marvin Hatley score stock music pieces. In all the Hal Roach comedies In the Monogram movies there were their own particular pieces of music that were used over and over again.
George Feltenstein:So you put these three films together. They've all been scanned in 4K and the new HD masters we've created have gotten all the same TLC that we give everything else, so they look really terrific. That we give everything else, so they look really terrific. And this is going to be really a trip back in time to what it would have been like for a monogram matinee in 1949. We say volume one because we have several other volumes planned. That will happen if Right, if this is welcomed by the public, that will give me the ammunition. I need to have more follow and I've got them all planned out in terms of what films and thing about these three films is they were never on videotape, they were never on DVD.
George Feltenstein:This is their home video debut and I'm not in the least way saying that these are cinematic masterpieces. They're just a lot of fun and it's a whole different kind of experience that I know there are passionate enthusiasts for these movies and they have communicated with us, especially when we released the Monogram Cowboy collections in the past. We had a lot of people letting us know how much they enjoyed that Right, and we have many series films that I would like to see more of come to Blu-ray. So that's what this is. It's good value three films for the price of one. And their rarity, I think, also underscores the importance of it why there are holes like Swiss cheese in our monogram holdings because so much had been sold off prior to what we ended up with when we bought Lorimar. And I'm very, very grateful to be able to share the film preservation story that once it became under Warner Brothers, we finally had the approval to aggressively go after these films and protect them so that more of them aren't extinct. So that is Monogram Matinee Volume 1.
Tim Millard:Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm really looking forward to it. I mean, this is one that falls directly in the nostalgia, I think, category. If you grew up seeing these, or you remember them on TV or you just, you know, want to see these B-level films. I love the concept of the matinee and I hope that people will embrace this so that you can bring out those additional volumes.
George Feltenstein:Thank you, sir, from your lips to the universe's ears.
Tim Millard:Well, and the thing of it is is that we talk about this all the time, george, is that when you see the older films and you haven't seen them in decades- or they haven't been restored like this and you see them in HD.
Tim Millard:It gives you a whole new perspective and appreciation for these. Absolutely so. I think that'll be the case here. I'm looking forward to it. So well, george, you've been releasing a lot of films from the 1970s, and you have two coming out in March as well. They both look very interesting. The first one I thought we would talk about is this sci-fi film, earth 2, from 1971. What can you tell us about this release?
George Feltenstein:Well, this was a very ambitious project for MGM. The intention was for MGM Television to turn this into a series and they made a telefilm pilot that would go into a two-hour network time slot, and I believe the reason that it never went to series was because of the expense. Was because of the expense Because I did research the production files and I found out that they spent $250,000 on the special effects. Wow, now that might not seem like a lot of money today, but that would be like spending $3 billion, let's say, on special effects for a pilot in 2025. So they put a lot of money behind this. I think MGM deliberately cast Gary Lockwood in the lead of Earth 2 and the Perspective series 2 and the Perspective series because he had just been one of the two stars of 2001 A Space Odyssey as Dr Frank Poole. They also spent a great deal of money on research for this, and the people that wrote the screenplay or the teleplay, depending on how you want to talk about it were also the producers of the series. So I tried to find studio files indicating why it didn't go into series, but I could not find that. I did find the bill for how much they were charged for the special effects and I thought that might be the clue as to why it didn't go to series Right.
George Feltenstein:There are some great supporting people in here, including Gary Merrill, the actor Hari Rhodes, who was on the Doctari television series for MGM TV. And talk about series films. You've got Lou Ayers in a special guest star role, and Lou Ayers of course, had many important screen roles going back to All Quiet on the Western Front at Universal, but at MGM he found a home as Dr Kildare In all the Dr Kildare movies. He made nine of those, so they really had a good group. Marriott Hartley is in this film, a good supporting cast.
George Feltenstein:And here's the best part we scan the original camera negative at 4K and the quality is gorgeous. Earth 2 is one of the many telefilms. When we started Warner Archive Collection as a DVD business, we tried to put out as many made-for-television movies as we could, because that was a category that had been neglected internally, and so we released Earth 2, probably around 2010. I never anticipated we'd be able to do a 4K scan of the camera negative and release it as a Blu-ray. But here we are and there are about four or five extra minutes of running time in this version because the intention was to possibly get a theatrical release internationally.
George Feltenstein:So we've kept that footage in. It's longer now. But we've also maintained the four by three television aspect ratio because I looked at the film. The film will always tell you what it's supposed to look like and a lot of heads would have been cut off if we had gone for the 16 by nine, 185 or 166 even so. That's why we're maintaining that television aspect ratio. But I think people are really going to enjoy this and it sold well as a DVD, so I'm hoping it will continue that trend as a beautiful Blu-ray.
Tim Millard:Well, I watched the trailer and I think that's included in the yes yeah and it's a fascinating trailer. It's really got that feel and you can see all you could just see how much it costs for the effects, because they're pretty good in that trailer. So I'm looking forward to seeing the whole film.
George Feltenstein:Well, I think you're going to be very impressed with it and I'm looking forward to the disc arriving at your door. That won't happen for a while, but it will.
Tim Millard:Right. Well, you have another 70s film here, from 1972, and it's another urban action film. What can you tell us about Hitman?
George Feltenstein:Well, hitman is one of the many urban action films sometimes referred to. We're going back to the 70s in the industry and variety doc black exploitation movies. Mgm had such huge success with Richard Roundtree as Shaft that they made it their mission to make more films that had an urban feel to them and gave work to a lot of actors and actresses that didn't have much opportunity to be stars on the screen. And MGM was not the only studio to do this. The whole industry was paying more attention and making more films that could be enjoyed by everyone. Frankly and this is actually a remake of the movie Get Carter with Michael Caine it's basically the same story but it's set, you know, in a not in the UK, but in American big city. And what's notable for me is the two leads really were becoming big stars on the big screen because of the many movies they were doing at the time. Of the many movies they were doing at the time. The leading man is Bernie Casey, but the leading lady is the amazing Pam Grier who even today is still known by so many people thanks to Quentin Tarantino casting her as Jackie Brown in 1997, which was Tarantino's own homage to all the films that Pam Greer did in the 70s that made her really a screen superstar, and she was probably only about 22 years old when she did this movie. This is very early in her career.
George Feltenstein:It's very fast-paced, very well-directed and it is also a 4K scan off the camera negative for this brand-new master, so it looks a lot better than our DVD did.
George Feltenstein:I will say that with 100% confidence. So there is a very, very big fan base for these particular kind of films and if you look at what we're releasing this month, this represents a very broad and varied group of releases that appeal to different audiences, different likes and dislikes, and you know there are people, of course anybody will take the opportunity to, you know, throw us under the bus. Why are you releasing X when the fact is that X actually has a huge fan base that the person complaining has no affiliation with? That other person likes a different film. There are people that may want the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse 1921 as well as Hitman, and there will obviously be other people who would not be interested in one or not interested in the other. What we're trying to do is bring a varied group of different pockets from our library that we feel will appeal to someone and we're never going to keep everybody happy it's impossible but we're doing our best to serve the library and serve the shareholders with profits.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and if you're a fan of Pam Greer, I know that the 4K of Jackie Brown came out. So what a great time to be releasing this, because you know those who are adding that to their collection. They can now get this in Blu-ray and I think that's part of it. You have such a diversity in your catalog the Warner Brothers catalog, the MGM catalog, you know, just as you've talked about in this podcast today monitoring and everything. It's just a huge diversity. So of course, you're not going to be some niche company releasing only one specific thing. The Warner Archive is going to be releasing the breadth of this catalog, and so there's always going to be something for somebody that.
George Feltenstein:That's the goal.
Tim Millard:That's what we're trying to do well, speaking of that, animation fans shouldn't feel left out, because we have one more uh release and it's a very special hannah barbara release that you have. Maybe you could tell us about it.
George Feltenstein:Well, this is a big one in that it does a great deal to repair errors of the past. This is the McGilligurrilla Show which premiered in January of 1964 from Hanna-Barbera in syndication and there were 23 half hours. Magilla is the gorilla for sale in the window of Mr Peebles know very well, and when prior colleagues decided to release the McGilligarilla show on DVD they left out the theme song and there was no legal reason to do that. I don't know what the thinking was, but it was like are you kidding, right? So what we've done is we've scanned the original negative Z4K. We have not only included the original theme song, the openings and the end and everything, but the McGillicuddy Gorilla Show and the Peter Potamus Show were produced pretty much at the same time under the sponsorship of the now defunct Ideal Toy Corporation and Ideal Toys and their logo were visibly seen in the main and end titles and the word ideal was even in the theme song for both McGillig gorilla and Peter Potamus. Within a few years, everything relating to ideal visually, because they were no longer the sponsor you'd hear McGilligurilla. They'd say he's really ideal, which is fine, but it was not particularly saying the toy company, but where you'd see the Ideal Toy Corporation logo in a balloon. Instead it was just McGill's face. Restored the ideal toy opening and closings, and that's a big deal because people need to see these and experience them as they originally were. And we did it for Peter Potamus on DVD about, I'm going to say, nine years ago, maybe a little more than that. But now we have these great, beautiful new masters from the negatives and we also have bridges, little, you know, little 20 second things that go between the titles and the cartoons.
George Feltenstein:And all of these materials were basically ignored or people were too lazy to put the shows together as they originally were. Um, it was only about the segments. So the segments with mcgilligarilla and his four companion characters, there's ricochet, rabbit and droop cartoons and there's Mushmouse and Pumpkinpuss cartoons, so you get one cartoon of each character in a half-hour slot program. There's also a little musical curtain call before the end credits and you didn't see that on the previous release. All of that was gone.
George Feltenstein:We went to great lengths to try to piece together everything we could and this extraneous material was basically left for dead and our preservation, restoration and mastering people and I helped. We were on a huge treasure hunt to find these pieces, not just for Megillah but for other shows that we're putting back together to the best of our ability. Megillah and Peter Potamus came out at the same time, around the same time. They were produced at the same time, but Magilla ended up being the breakout star, peter Potamus not so much. And then Hanna-Barbera flipped things around and they moved Ricochet Rabbit into Peter Potamus and some of Peter Potamus' compadres went into the Magilla show and everything got very messed up. So it was much easier to just keep everything in segments and that's how you saw them on Cartoon Network and the USA Express.
George Feltenstein:A great deal of work went into reconstructing these shows as they were, and we've got the eight additional McGillis Gorilla cartoons, the eight additional McGilligurilla cartoons. And then we have as bonus material featurette that ran on stations that were about to premiere McGilligurilla called here Comes the Star or here Comes the Star, which shows how they develop character and what Hanna-bara did. It's really quite fascinating and unique on its own. Then there is a series of interviews with a guy named jerry beck, who's this animation historian you may have heard of right oh he's, he's part of it.
George Feltenstein:and then, uh, jerry eisenberg, an animator that worked on this series, and alan melvinvin, who provided the voice for McGilligurla. They were all part of this interview. All these interviews were shot for the DVD release in 2004. Interesting piece of film of Bill Hanna and Hanna-Barbera musical director Hoyt Curtin singing the McGilligorella theme song. So a nifty little bunch of extras that are carried over from the DVD on this Blu-ray set and I think the fans are going to be very, very happy about that.
Tim Millard:Yeah, I mean, what a terrific release. I mean I'm so excited that it's now back to you know the way that it should be, with the theme song and all the things that you've done for it, so it's fantastic that the fans can now get it in HD. With all of these extras, this sounds like a home run and hopefully people will step up and purchase this and it's kind of like a a string now, george of great hannah barbera releases that you've had in the last three, four months, um, and it's going to continue.
George Feltenstein:Is that right? Okay, that will make a lot of people really happy, and then people who don't particularly care for this stuff think it's yeah. Yeah, of course they need them and sorry we're we're we're going to give a lot of fans what they want. Yes, depending what fan group you're in or if you're in a lot of them, my hope is that we'll have something for everyone and be able to continue on a consistent cadence. That will be rewarding for our customers, to whom we are always grateful.
Tim Millard:Yeah, this is a great month, George. Thanks for coming on the Extras as always to take us through this, because you just give so much more background than a simple press release or social media post can do, and this allows people to hear directly from you about all that history and the restoration and remastering that went into these and what a great package they are. So thank you.
George Feltenstein:Well, thank you, tim. And I do want to again thank all my colleagues in our preservation department, our restoration department, our mastering team and our amazing colorists and scanners at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging, because for many of these projects, they've gone far above the call of duty to make them a reality. So if I was wearing a hat, I'd tip it to them, but I'm not wearing a hat, right, right.
Tim Millard:It's always great to hear from George directly about these new Blu-rays that are coming from the Warner Archive. There's just so much information that we get directly from George, so hope you're enjoying them. If you are and you haven't yet started following the show, appreciate it if you would do that at your favorite podcast provider. And just as a reminder, two titles from January did move out to that same March release date, and that is the TV series Cheyenne and the film starring Ryan Reynolds, just Friends. So there's now a total of eight releases for March. As always, thanks for listening to the Extras. Stay slightly obsessed.