The Extras
The Extras
Warner Archive June Release Announcement PLUS New 4-Film Collections
Warner Archive announces six spectacular Blu-ray releases for June, along with new value-priced four-film collections and the Looney Tunes Collectors Vault Vol. 1. George Feltenstein shares details about each release, including the meticulous 4K restorations from original camera negatives that bring these classics to life like never before.
• Four-film collections featuring Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, and Elizabeth Taylor are coming in June, with 24 collections planned overall
• High Society 4K street date moved to June 10th to ensure "magnificent" presentation with Dolby Atmos and original mono tracks
• Looney Tunes Collectors Vault Vol. 1 offers 50 cartoons for just $3 more than the previous single-disc releases
• The Citadel (1938) - King Vidor's critically acclaimed drama about the medical profession with Robert Donat and Rosalind Russell
• A Date with Judy (1948) - Technicolor MGM musical starring Jane Powell and a 16-year-old Elizabeth Taylor
• The Enchanted Cottage (1945) - Fantasy romance restored to its full 92-minute version after decades of circulation in a cut form
• Executive Suite (1954) - Corporate drama featuring a stellar cast including William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck, with Oliver Stone commentary
• His Kind of Woman (1951) - Noir comedy starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell with a scene-stealing Vincent Price
• Splendor in the Grass (1961) - Elia Kazan's powerful drama with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, now properly restored after years of poor transfers
Purchase links:
Clark Gable 4 Film Collection releasing June 10th
Elizabeth Taylor 4 Film Collection releasing June 10th
Gary Cooper 4 Film Collection releasing June 17th
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Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog Group
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Hello and welcome to the Extras. I'm Tim Millard, your host, and joining me is George Feltenstein to announce the June Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. Hi, George.
George Feltenstein:Hello, tim, great to be with you again, as always, my friend.
Tim Millard:Well, this is another great month, and though we're talking about six Blu-ray releases today, there is more actually that we're going to talk about, because some you announced already previously. So June is really a robust month. So, before we talk about the six individual Blu-rays that you announced yesterday on Facebook, I did want to ask you about this four-film collection that you announced just a few days ago as well.
George Feltenstein:Well, what we're doing is picking up something we started a couple of years ago and had to put on the side for a little while. We had put together four Hitchcock films in a four-film collection with a value proposition, so that people basically get four films for $39.98 SRP. There's great value in that and it's aimed more at a casual collector or people who are starting out collecting, and it's a great way to dive in and it's always been a successful way of curating particular groups of films and getting them out to more people. And so we did it with Bogart and Bacall, we did it with Film Noir, we did it with Hitchcock, and I had been making the plea that we start doing it on a more broad basis. So these first three, which are Clark Gable and Gary Cooper and Elizabeth Taylor I was trying to remember it all in my mind because we've actually planned out about 24 of these, wow.
George Feltenstein:So we'll be doing two or three a month for the ongoing future. A month for the ongoing future and, given that we're almost at a 500 Blu-ray release count, we've got a lot of back catalog to work with. And I want to stress that these collections there will be some that will be six film. There's going to be one or two, that will be six, but mostly there'll be four. They won't all be star-driven, some will be theme-driven, but they will all be previously released title.
George Feltenstein:The cool thing is that some of them will be films that were initially released through the mothership, through Warner Brothers Home Entertainment, on Blu-ray, and I wouldn't take just anything but if they were good quality when they came out, then they're going to enter this portal so we're going to be able to make the selections a little more broad in their appeal by including some films that went to retail as opposed through Warner Archive, but with my filter of making sure that some of the things that are out there that don't look particularly good or may have something wrong with them, they're not going to be part of these collections. I want these collections to really be successful, of course, but I also want them to be part of these collections. I want these collections to really be successful, of course, but I also want them to be well appreciated and hoping that they garner new fans that will open them up to joining the ranks of those of us who understand the importance of physical media.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and that's a really new development to have the Warner Brothers, the mothership Warner Brothers Home Entertainment titles in there. Only a few.
Tim Millard:But I like the caveat that it has to hit that quality level that you are creating and have created with this Warner Archive brand and all of these amazing restorations. So that's great to hear Archive brand at all of these amazing restorations. So that's great to hear. I have the Thin man six film collection and I really, really enjoy having that and it's great because each film, each disc is the original one you released with the extras, whether it be from the Bogie and Bacall collection or the Noir collection. So it saves a little space. And I like the artwork. I just like those all around. So sometimes I double dip, so it saves a little space and I like the artwork, I just like those all around. So sometimes I double dip, so they're great.
George Feltenstein:Well, I hope that the fans will really enjoy this additional method by which they can add films to their collection.
Tim Millard:Yeah, yeah, it's really great, and to hear so many are coming and so many are being released each month is a great one for the fans to hear. Well, there was a little bit of housekeeping news too that I wanted to ask you about, and that was about the High Society 4K and Blu-ray.
George Feltenstein:Yes, we moved the street date to June 10th because we're still working on finishing the presentation and we want to make sure that it's as magnificent as it can be.
Tim Millard:So really, that's what like to June 10th now, is it?
George Feltenstein:Yeah, we moved it out two weeks and I'm very encouraged by everything that's going on. I think people who love the movie will be very pleased with what's been going on.
George Feltenstein:And we're so fortunate to be in the hands of David McKenzie and Fidelity in Motion, who's doing the authoring and encoding compression of the discs, because the Blu-ray and the 4K will both have the same content. The 4K will obviously have more definition and more pixels and Dolby Vision, but the Blu-ray, which will be packed in the 4K Blu-ray combo or the Blu-ray standalone, will benefit from having the Dolby Atmos and the original MonoTracks. I'm sure it's going to look amazing just on Blu-ray. So on 4K it'll be all the more because of VistaVision. It's very exciting. So that's moving to June 10th.
George Feltenstein:Of course, the other big news we have in June, which we've already talked about, is June 17th the arrival of Looney Tunes Collectors Vault, volume 1. Is skew in the packaging indicating that it is a blu-ray disc but not saying the blu-ray disc using the blu-ray disc association's official logo and that usually indicates bdrs and as long as I have anything to say about it, there will never be a warner archive bdr. I'm very much about the replicated disc and the packaging. That was first on our Facebook page and we're having that error corrected, but as soon as I saw that I reached out to people to get it fixed. Hopefully by the time people hear this, it will have been fixed, but most definitely they are discs being replicated in Mexico as, as we speak, right.
Tim Millard:Well, I think that was just a a good thing to let people know in case there is confusion out there. So I didn't like the, the, the illustration, so I just used the original one, cause I like that one better anyway on our Facebook and our social media, because it has that three dimensional on it. Yeah, it kind of didn't didn't bother me because I didn't even like it. I was like something wrong with that one and I well it's it.
George Feltenstein:Given that it just went up for pre-order and it's selling very well, I'm hoping that that will continue. But I didn't want anybody to be concerned that it was going to be some kind of change in direction for us not after 13 years of replicated Blu-rays.
Tim Millard:And George, I saw the price point. It's only $3 more than the one disc. That's right.
George Feltenstein:And you get 25 more cartoons. You know, basically it's 50 cents a cartoon. I think and hope people will be pleased by the value proposition that offers.
Tim Millard:I don't know it's, it's terrific. When I saw that price, I guess I was expecting it to be a little bit higher than that. So that puts it right in the no brainer category, which you pretty much already was if you were a fan of Looney Tunes. Puts it right in the no-brainer category, which it pretty much already was if you were a fan of Looney Tunes. But at that price point that really really just pushes it up there to the. I'm going to buy this right off. So well, let's turn our attention now to the individual Blu-ray releases for June, and we'll go alphabetically. That means that first up we have the 1938 drama the Citadel. What can you tell us about this film?
George Feltenstein:This is an exceptionally fine film and it is from a small group of films that MGM produced in England, at least before World War II, where basically there had to be a certain amount of films made in the UK in order for them to allow films from the US or other places to come in. As I understand it I'm not quite sure of all the intricacies of that, not quite sure of all the intricacies of that but Warner Brothers had the Teddington Studios in England and MGM opened up a studio in terms of creatives and at least one or two actors or actresses to the UK for these kind of productions and the efforts ended up being stymied by the start of World War II in the UK. And then MGM picked up later, in a different way but a much bigger way, after the war was over. But the first two titles, first two films made at the MGM British studio were A Yank at Oxford with Robert Taylor and the Citadel with Robert Donat and Rosalind Russell, and this was directed by the great King Vidor. He's one of the great film directors of all time but certainly his association with MGM, you know, went back to films like the Big Parade in 1925. His work is quite remarkable in my opinion. And this is based on a very best-selling novel of the era by AJ Cronin and it's about the medical profession and it's a really really well-written, finely performed drama. And Robert Donat, who would later go on to win the Oscar in 39 for another MGM British production.
George Feltenstein:Goodbye Mr Chips. He stars in this movie. Mgm British production. Goodbye Mr Chips. He stars in this movie. Rosalind Russell was under contract to MGM and went from Hollywood to London to be in this film and then later to be. Sir Ralph Richardson is in this movie and, of course, a very young Rex Harrison with hair. It's a really really compelling it's. The story is very efficiently told and, uh, it won, uh, the new york film critics circle best picture as well as the national board of review best picture for the year and, uh, it earned four Oscar nominations.
George Feltenstein:So MGM's efforts in the UK were off to a great start.
George Feltenstein:That was unfortunately put to pause by World War II and after World War II they became quite aggressive in making a lot of films at the British studio, which was basically in high operation from the mid 40s right up until 1970.
George Feltenstein:That was the period where MGM kind of fell apart, when Kirk Corian became the main stockholder and started destroying the studio assets, and the London studio was one of the ones to go, but that was actually a different physical studio base than this studio. This was a different physical studio base than this studio. This was a different studio and there were only a handful of films that came out of there before the war, but they were all really really good and the Citadel, most importantly, is a film that's looked really really awful until now and we have a new 4K scan from our preservation elements and it looks and sounds terrific. My colleagues did a wonderful job. Presentation is really wonderful and we've put some 1938 MGM shorts on the disc and just because it's about the medical profession, we crossed studios and put on a Warner Brothers cartoon, the Daffy Duck, which speaks for itself and the trailer's on there. So it's a wonderful package.
Tim Millard:I'm looking forward to seeing this with the restoration, with the 4K scans of the best preservation elements. It was nominated for so many awards, so I'm really looking forward to watching this.
George Feltenstein:The Citadel is probably the least known of these six new June releases we're talking about today and I'm hoping that with this release it will become far more popular and well-known thanks to the quality of the Blu-ray presentation. Well, next up, george, is a MGM musical. A Date with Judy from 1948. What can you goes into working with Technicolor negatives for these restorations and the efforts we're able to achieve. It almost looks like 3D. It's just remarkable. This is yet another one of those films. It also happens to be a film that was a big box office success when it was released and kind of an unusual thing for the era. It was an adaptation based on a very popular radio sitcom. A Day with Judy was on the radio for most of the 1940s. I think it ran from like 1940 to 1950. And on this Blu-ray disc we're going to put two episodes of the 1940s I think it ran from like 1940 to 1950. And on this Blu-ray disc we're going to put two episodes of the radio show so people can hear what its aegis was.
George Feltenstein:But MGM thought it was attractive enough to take some of their I don't want to say juvenile, but some of their teenage performers and have them be focal points within a story. It's quite a delightful film. It has a lot of music in it. I tend to think of this more as a comedy with music, because there aren't that many musical numbers in it per se, and it doesn't. It's not the kind of film where the story is moved forward by the music. Music happens mostly in a performance setting right, and that's just. That's fine, you know. That's wonderful.
George Feltenstein:But it's really a very cute story about judy foster, who's a teenage girl, and her boyfriend Oogie Pringle and her best friend, oogie's sister, carol, played by Elizabeth Taylor. Now, elizabeth Taylor was 16 years old when she made this film and she had blossomed very quickly from an incredibly gorgeous child to an incredibly beautiful woman. She looks like she's 22, not 16, you know, but she's also terrific in the picture. Everybody in the film is really good. It's basically a family-oriented sitcom and you have the added bonus of Carmen Miranda making her journey from 20th Century Fox, where she had been under contract, and coming to MGM to make two films, both of which were with Jane Powell, the other being Nancy Goes to Rio.
George Feltenstein:But Carmen Miranda along with Xavier Cugay and his orchestra they provide a lot of the musical performances, as well as Jane Powell herself, and this film is best known for the song it's a Most Unusual Day, which became a very big hit era of 1948. And, most importantly, it's just MGM Entertainment from the land of Pasternakia, and when I say that, I'm referring to Joe Pasternak, the producer, who made more populist films with music, as opposed to Arthur Freed who made the more sophisticated musicals, and that's why you have Carmen Miranda and Xavier Cugat, and Jane Powell will sing popular music as well as operetta type music. It's all in here and it's a hell of a lot of fun and it was one of the most successful movies MGM had in 1948. It was a big box office success. And Wallace Beery, who's always very tough and gruff he actually is softened in this movie playing Judy's father. He's quite funny in the movie. It's just really a confection. That's quite delightful, but most importantly, it's going to knock people's socks off when they see how gorgeous the Technicolor looks.
Tim Millard:Right, yeah, technicolor released by Warner Archive, you got to own it. If you are into musicals, so that's a pairing that now over the last three or four years we've been talking on the extras about. It is just always a home run. And you have a classic Tom and Jerry on here. I can't remember if you mentioned that, so I want to throw that in there.
George Feltenstein:Professor Tom, we did carry over the same short and cartoon that were on the DVD, but we added the radio shows to give it a little more heft, and one of the radio shows has Frank Sinatra as a guest star, so it's really just a lot of fun. It should make a great disc to add to the collections.
Tim Millard:Well, next up, george, is the romantic film the Enchanted Cottage from 1945. What can you tell us about this film?
George Feltenstein:Well, this is actually based on a play by Arthur Wing Pinero and it was first made into a movie in 1924 with Richard Barthelmess as the star, but RKO decided it needed an update for World War II. This was released theatrically toward the end of World War II, but it was very much a world-weary audience that was looking for something in terms of a love story that also had a fantasy aspect to it, and this is the kind of film that many people really loved because it was very different. It's a different kind of love story. Robert Young plays a soldier who comes back from World War II with scars from the war and he believes, because of his physical damage for lack of a better word that he's no longer worth being loved. And he meets a woman played by Darth Maguire. She also thinks that she isn't attractive and their love story actually blossoms into something quite beautiful. I don't want to spoil the plot, but it was so infectious that it was filmed, obviously more than once, and we have on this disc two different radio broadcasts that kind of consolidate the story. The first is a Lux Radio Theater adaptation that's an hour long that stars Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young, the stars of the movie, but the other one is from 1953 and it's half hour long from General Electric Theater with all different performers. So it's really the underlying play that is kind of transcending generations in its popularity and this is a film we've had a lot of requests for.
George Feltenstein:It was very successful for RKO. Rko re-released the movie, I believe, in the early 1950s and they cut, I think, about 15 minutes out of the negative. So I've said that this is a 4K scan of the original negative. But the original negative was unfortunately cut so we had to use secondary nitrate elements to fill in the footage that had been cut out. So for a long time all people could see was like this 70 some odd minute version. This is the full 92 minute version as it originally appeared and looking really beautiful and I'm just so excited. This is yet another that looked awful until now and it was just shown at the TCM Film Festival.
Tim Millard:I was just going to say that when I had Scott McGee of TCM on to talk about the TCM Film Festival, he mentioned that the director, john Cromwell, is the father of the actor. Yes, james Cromwell Was going to be at the festival to introduce this film, and that was kind of interesting.
George Feltenstein:And that's yeah, I mean.
Tim Millard:Well, and another thing that I noticed here. I was kind of looking at the date of 45. This is the 80th anniversary of this film.
George Feltenstein:So yeah, we at the Warner Archive aren't magnetized by anniversaries. You don't need an anniversary to celebrate a great movie. Just happens to be the 80th anniversary. But I think the anniversary edition concept has been kind of lazy marketing.
Tim Millard:Well, we talked about this, George.
George Feltenstein:I started it so I'm responsible for it. I did it when nobody else did it, but that was when I was a youthful lad. I don't think you need to call that out. It's convenient, it's nice and you know, a 50th anniversary of something, a 25th anniversary of something, that's really significant. But you know, when I see like 15th anniversary, 35th anniversary, it's like really, how about the movie? Isn't that really what you're talking about? Do you need you know what anniversary movies do we have this year?
Tim Millard:Yeah exactly.
George Feltenstein:We try to aim a little higher in what we do. So, yes, it's an anniversary, but most importantly it's a great movie. And I'm glad that you brought up John Cromwell, because he is not that well-known past cinephiles as a great director. And he was a great director. He directed many magnificent films and he deserves more credit. Tcm, when they were planning their festival this year, they decided to have fantasy be one of their thematics, and I knew that they were going to show the film, and I was very concerned about it because I knew that everything we had looked like not so nice, let's just put it that way. So I huddled with the powers that are and said don't you think it's time we gave a new look to the Enchanted Cottage so that when it shows at TCM it'll look beautiful and we can therefore release a new Blu-ray? And everybody was in agreement and here we are, yeah yeah, yeah, that's great.
Tim Millard:Well, those are all side notes. It's great that this film is finally coming out, but it's interesting and it's great to see different parts of the company working together to be sure that these restorations happen.
George Feltenstein:I mean, that's one of the great things that I would love to share with people that are listening or watching this. One of the really wonderful things that has happened at the company that I've been kind of jumping up and down about for many years was we're really unified between divisions, especially with TCM now having been brought into Warner Brothers officially and my good friend, Charlie Tabish, who is TCM in a sense but is the SVP of programming and has been with the network for 25 years. Charlie reports into Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi, who are the heads of Warner Brothers Pictures, and to have people who are making new movies, who love movies, and to have TCM under their imprimatur has well, it's saved the network basically and it's enabled there to be a TCM tour here on the lot, and I myself have always been working closely with TCM, but now it's a company-wide initiative to recognize how well we can collaborate because we all have the same aim and that's to please the classic film fan and, more importantly, to cultivate and grow new classic film fans.
Tim Millard:Yeah, because, as we've talked about here on the podcast before, we're already in 2025. So films before 2000 really are, you know, already 25 years old and that's hard to imagine Matrix is 26 years old. So it's like where do you call it classic, where everybody has a slightly different definition, but from a just a business perspective. You know, you've got to. You've got to introduce younger people and younger fans and I when I, I mean under 50, under 40 to some of these great films.
George Feltenstein:I'm also talking about teenagers and people in their 20s. If something is great, it's going to transcend time and will always capture new audiences. They just need to be led to it. Audiences, they just need to be led to it. And it's hard because with each passing year, there are more and more new films made and there's also great television being made, and all of this competes for the eyeballs. So we have to make sure that people really take advantage of the great library that we happen to be fortunate caretakers of here at Warner Brothers Discovery and making it available to new audiences.
Tim Millard:Well, next we have a drama, directed by Robert Wise, from an Ernest Lehman script.
George Feltenstein:If you think Robert Wise and Ernest Lehman, you're also thinking about the Sound of Music and West Side Story.
Tim Millard:Well, I had to mention that they are teaming up on this one.
George Feltenstein:And the cast for this movie is pretty remarkable, I mean the fact that they were able to get that many huge stars of the era and it's a great movie. We're talking about Executive Suite from 1954, william Holden, june Allison, barbara Stanwyck, frederick March, walter Pidgeon, shelley Winters, paul Douglas and Louis Calhoun, plus Dean Jagger, nina Foch and even Tim Considine, who is the oldest of the first, my Three Sons sons and even Tim Considine, who is the oldest of the first, my Three Sons sons. William Holden was an Oscar winner. By that time. Barbara Stanwyck had not won an Oscar. She had been nominated many times, but Frederick March was an Oscar winner. Shelley Winters was an Oscar winner. I mean, this was like a mega super cast.
George Feltenstein:And one of the cool things about this movie is when it starts you hear the lion roar the mgm lion roar but you don't hear any music. There's no music through the entire movie and at the beginning of the movie you just hear a bell ringing and, uh, our DVD of this, I believe, was not in the proper aspect ratio. This was MGM's widescreen ratio, when they weren't using CinemaScope, of 1.75 to 1. So this is in the proper aspect ratio. It's a 4K scan off the camera, negative. I know that's starting to sound like it's a repetition and I speak of it with such pride each time, because it doesn't get better than that. This is a very modern feeling movie for something that is ostensibly over 70 years old. It's about the drama of the corporate world. Corporate world has certainly become a lot more complex in the 70 years subsequent, but Robert Wise was already established as a fine film director and he did some really good work at MGM in the 50s and then went elsewhere to do great work elsewhere, had a long, wonderful career. I'm happy to say that I did get to meet him a long time ago. Just an amazing, amazing individual, and this film deserves for people who haven't seen it to get to see it.
George Feltenstein:If I were putting double features together, I would say watch Executive Suite and then watch Network. It know it's that kind of thing. This has got melodrama to it. There's love stories intertwined.
George Feltenstein:I love the fact that Barbara Stanwyck and William Holden are working together again here, because she was really responsible for him starring in Golden Boy in 1939 in Columbia. Columbia really didn't want to give Holden the role and she fought for him, and there's a wonderful clip from the Oscars that people can see, courtesy of the Academy, on YouTube, where Barbara Stanwyck was given a special Oscar and thanked William Holden. William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck was given a special Oscar and thanked William Holden. William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck were presenting the year before he, of course, died relatively young in an accident and in between him saluting her on the Oscars one year and her getting a special Oscar the next year, holden had passed away. She got her oscar and said this is for you, my golden boy.
George Feltenstein:I get all choked up just thinking about it, but uh, I love so many of the people involved in the making of this movie and the film holds up really well, and that's thanks to incredible writing of ernest leman, based on a best-selling novel at the time by Cameron Hawley, and Ernest Lehman was a genius at adapting other literary material and this is a perfect example of that. So this is the collaboration of two people who brought so much cinematic splendor to our history. I'm delighted that we're adding this to the Warner Archive collection in Blu-ray.
Tim Millard:Yeah, I was looking at the cover and you can barely fit the. There's so many names of so many stars the promotion. They had a hard time limiting it because it was just full of stars both the behind and in front of the camera. And then I noticed on here I couldn't miss it that you have a feature commentary.
George Feltenstein:By Oliver Stone, yeah, who certainly has a perspective on big business, right, you know, having made Wall Street many years ago. That commentary is terrific. It was obviously created quite some time ago for the DVD release, but a great commentary is forever great, like a great movie is, and I think people really enjoy hearing Mr Stone's thoughts on the film.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and then you have some lighter fare on there the Tom and Jerry cartoon and a Pete Smith special, and then the trailer. So a lot of good extras on this one as well. So this is a fantastic release.
George Feltenstein:I'm looking forward to seeing it myself.
Tim Millard:Yeah, well, next we have, I think, the only noir for the month, but wow.
George Feltenstein:It's the only noir for this month. There are many more coming. Oh, okay, yeah, just for June.
Tim Millard:That's the 1951 RKO, His Kind of Woman. Tell us about this one.
George Feltenstein:Well, the most important thing about this film is it was the first to co-star but not the last to co-star, robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, and they clicked on screen and made more films together at RKO. This is almost a noir comedy. It's a very serious noir. But Vincent Price plays a kind of crazy guy. He's like this egotistical gun collector. He's just so wacky that he basically steals the movie. And it's pretty hard to steal the movie away from Jane Russell and Robert Mitchum. Everybody in this movie is terrific. It's very well written.
George Feltenstein:We do have a commentary by film historian Vivian Sobchak. We also have a trailer. I'll say it up front now RKO did not have a trailer department, so they farmed out making their trailers to National Screen Service and, as a result, when the library was sold there were no trailers. That came with all the other film elements. So if we ever have a trailer on an RKO film, it's a rarity. We do have the trailer on this, but the quality leaves a lot to be desired. But it's better than nothing, that's right. So if somebody's got a better trailer out there, let us know. We would love to borrow it.
George Feltenstein:This is a great release. Uh, great noir. Obviously we had it out on dvd before, but once again, a 4k scan off the original nitrate camera, right, and it doesn't just look great, it sounds great. I have no idea whether they had started recording magnetically or not, because magnetic recording was just starting to permeate Hollywood at this time, but when I saw the preliminaries on the New Master, I was not only thrilled with how great it looked but also how great it sounded. And that benefits Jane Russell, because they always had her sing a song or two in a movie. If it's Jane Russell because they always had her sing a song or two in a movie, because Howard Hughes, who owned RKO at the time, he was definitely her most ardent supporter, and I say that only in the most honest way. There's nothing lascivious going on there. He just believed in her and gave her a lot of great opportunities and she was definitely a much loved star in Hollywood. But her in a film noir with Robert Mitchum is magic Sure, and I'm so glad that we're putting this out.
Tim Millard:And the popularity of Mitchum and Russell, you know, jane Russell endures today because they were so handsome and beautiful and talented and everything. And these films are so great, especially when you get them now restored so that they're looking great in HD. So looking forward to that one. Well, we have one more film and that is Splendor in the Grass from 1961. What can you tell us about this one?
George Feltenstein:I would say this is one of the most important films of its time. It's directed by Ilya Kazan, it was written for the screen. It's not based on a play or a book, but written for the screen by William Inge, who, of course, wrote the Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Picnic and Bus Stop Incredibly talented writer and for 1961, this movie was constricted by the production code but it's pretty raw in terms of dealing with the complexities of the main character, dini, played by Natalie Wood. This was really her breakthrough performance. She plays a, I'd say, high school graduating age girl who is tempestuously in love with her boyfriend Bud, played by Warren Beatty, making his big screen debut. Played by Warren Beatty making his big screen debut and under the direction of Kazan, with Inge's writing. It's just an astounding film with great performances and heartbreaking moments and a lot of realism, and I find the film fascinating every time I see it.
George Feltenstein:This should have been on Blu-ray probably 15 years ago, but we had problems in those days, kind of convincing people hey, you need to go back and remaster this. We have an HD master of this film that was done probably I'm going to say 15, 16 years ago and that's been circulating on TV and streaming and it looks absolutely awful. The colors are wrong. Scenes that are supposed to be at night are in the day. It was very magenta tinted, it just didn't look right. Day it was very magenta tinted, it just didn't look right. Now we're back to the camera negative. We had our best colorists and best mastering people working on this and it's so beautiful.
George Feltenstein:And, interestingly, this was not shot here at Warner Brothers, although this is very much a Warner Brothers film. The interiors were all shot at, I believe, the Filmways studio it was called at the time in the upper part of Manhattan in you know, 1960, 61 era, if people wanted to film in New York City and needed a soundstage, that was one of the few places they had, and Kazan was primarily New York City and needed a soundstage. That was one of the few places they had and Kazan was primarily New York-based. So they tell you in the credits that it was shot in New York City. Obviously the exteriors were shot around the greater New York area. There's nothing that conveys New York at all because this takes place in the Midwest, but I just find it fascinating that they were able to. There were very few major studio motion pictures filmed in New York. At that time it was very rare.
George Feltenstein:This is really one of the great films of all time, certainly one of the great romances. You ache for Natalie Wood's character and you see how really the seedlings of the star Warren Beatty was to become. He was very young when he did the film and I just always find it poignant. I've been fighting to get this done for a long time and finally by having a 4k scan of the camera negative and creating a beautiful new master. It's just astounding. Great performances by uh supporting, uh members from the actress theater, people like pat hing they're just remarkable.
George Feltenstein:I would assume a lot of people haven't seen this movie and it deserves to be better seen. But what we have on the movie, aside from the trailer, we also have a wonderful documentary that was done in the mid-90s and it's Ilya Kazan A Director's Journey, and it's a feature-length combination. Ilya Kazan A Director's Journey and it's a feature length combination interview with Kazan as well as scenes of his works. It deals with his work on the stage, but mostly his work on the screen, and he just had such an amazing career and influence on so many performers. We look at his body of work just within our library, east of Eden and Streetcar Named Desire and many others, america, america. He had a good tie to Warner Brothers and to be able to take one of his great works and give it this kind of stellar presentation is an honor, and that's why I'm really delighted we were able to add the documentary onto the disc.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and you didn't mention it, but it's a 4K scan of the original camera negative. So there you go again. You know these are fantastic new scans. So, boy George, you had a 30irties film, you have forties, you have a fifties and you have a sixties. You covered four decades there. This month of June. Uh, all classic films, just uh, amazing films that people are going to really be happy to add to their collection. So what a month. Plus, you've got the uh four film collections and then the Looney Tunes Collectors Vault, yeah. So what a month. And High Society, oh yeah, and High Society now falling into June. So that's going to be quite the month, Boy. We're going to have a lot to talk about in June and July, George.
George Feltenstein:Yeah, we've got great stuff coming in July that I'm working on right now Some big surprises. I promised people that this year was going to hold a lot of things coming to fruition that they had been looking forward to for a long time and being able to put Cheyenne out on Blu-ray and to give it a sturdy package as well as beautiful new masters McGilligurla. You know, it's just very, very gratifying to be able to span the library in different ways, and this is definitely a very classics-focused month, and we will be doing more of the same next month, with maybe some contemporary things mixed in as well.
George Feltenstein:So lots to look forward to Lots to look forward to.
Tim Millard:Lots to look forward to. And, george, sometimes you can feel what you might call like a momentum, and I feel like the momentum has been building this year, actually over the last few years, as you've been able to get more of these titles approved and restored and everything.
George Feltenstein:So what a great start. I had to buy a new pair of boxing gloves because, you know, as I'm fighting for film history, that's right. It starts to wear out the gloves, you know.
Tim Millard:There you go, there you go. But I'm just saying I feel the, I feel the momentum, and I feel it in people's comments as they're like wow, this is coming out and where am I going to? You know, I got to save my pennies to get these because I've been waiting so long for this one and everything, and it's just a great feeling for fans of the Warner Archive and for physical media in general. So thanks for coming on, as always, and it's always a lot of fun to hear what you're bringing to the fans.
George Feltenstein:Thank you, tim, and I look forward to our next opportunity to talk about the Warner Archive collection opportunity to talk about the Warner Archive collection.
Tim Millard:For those who would like more information about the films announced today, be sure to check out our Facebook page and our Warner Archive Facebook group. You can find the links for those and all of our social media sites in the podcast show notes. Facebook is also the best place to get the pre-order links for these titles when they become available. If you aren't yet subscribed or following the show at your favorite podcast provider, you may want to do that so that you don't miss anything coming up. It's a very busy summer as we go into June and July, so you may want to do that right away. Until next time you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed.