The Extras
The Extras
6 Cinema Classics: The Warner Archive June Blu-rays
George Feltenstein joins Tim Millard to discuss the Warner Archive's June Blu-ray releases, spanning from 1938 to 1961 and featuring newly restored classics across multiple genres.
• The Citadel (1938) stars Robert Donat as a doctor whose idealism is tested when he moves from a Welsh mining town to wealthy London practice
• A Date with Judy (1948) showcases Jane Powell and Elizabeth Taylor in a vibrant Technicolor musical with restored color that eliminates previous transfer issues
• The Enchanted Cottage (1945) tells the story of a disfigured war veteran and plain young woman whose love transforms how they see each other
• Executive Suite (1954) features an all-star cast including William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck in a corporate drama that remains relevant today
• His Kind of Woman (1951) pairs Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell in a noir that transforms into comedy when Vincent Price's character appears
• Splendor in the Grass (1961) presents Natalie Wood's powerful performance and Warren Beatty's screen debut in Elia Kazan's emotionally raw drama about young love
• All releases feature 4K scans from original camera negatives, with Warner Archive addressing previous transfer issues
• Many releases include period-appropriate shorts, cartoons, radio adaptations, and other special features that enhance the viewing experience
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Hello and welcome to the Extras. I'm Tim Millard, your host, and joining me is George Feltenstein to review the June Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. Hi, George.
George Feltenstein:Hello Tim. We're now in August and we're just getting to talk about June. That's how busy everybody's been.
Tim Millard:That's how busy. We've got summer vacations and all of those good things. I actually finished watching these quite a while back, but we just weren't able to get this scheduled. But I'm looking forward to our discussion today because these are all terrific films. And I thought, george, we'd go in alphabetical order because we do have six films that we're going to review, and that means the first one is the 1938 drama the Citadel, starring Robert Donat and Rosalind Russell, and this is a really well-done story of the life of an English doctor who starts off very young and idealistic in his first posting in a Welsh mining town and then the cares of the world. He's got a wife and money and these things. They move to London and that leads him to become a doctor to the rich clientele of London. It's really well written and really well acted. This is a really very good movie.
George Feltenstein:I'm assuming that you had not seen it before. I had not, so it's great to have a first time viewing of a film like this where you have the improvements we've been able to make with the new master, seeing it in high definition, clean. It changes people's perception of these films when there is such a huge jump in quality, and we're very proud of the disc. The film itself has always had a prestigious reputation and it was based on a novel written by AJ Cronin, who was himself a doctor. Like before Michael Crichton, there was AJ Cronin, and I'm just thrilled with the reception to the disc.
George Feltenstein:We've gotten so many wonderful comments from people that said I didn't even know about this movie and they just appreciated everything about it, and Donut's screen performances are not plentiful. He did a lot of work on stage and he also had health issues and he died relatively young, and so yet he's always remembered for something like the 39 Steps. Goodbye Mr Chips. This isn't as well known as Goodbye Mr Chips, or certainly the 39 Steps, but this is one of his finest films and I just feel that it's still relevant and very timely, even almost 90 years since the film was released. But it's such a work of quality and Rosalind Russell is wonderful in it, and I'm just so pleased that you enjoyed it as much as I hoped you would.
Tim Millard:Well, you released Goodbye, mr Chips on Blu-ray I think about two years ago. Yes, that's a fabulous film, and he's a professor there, or teacher, and this has a little bit of that feeling, but in the medical field now, where it tells this kind of epic story of a life right, and there's a romance involved as well, and, uh, that is such a well-done movie and I think the citadel like, like you said, it should become more well known because it has that same level of wonderful storytelling and the romance is built in there as well. Um, so it's a it's a very, very well done movie and and I'm sure you got to give Donat a lot of the credit for that because he just inhabits these characters and brings them to life over as they age and mature and go through different phases of life. So it's really good. And Rosalind Russell she doesn't have a huge part to play in it, but she's very strong there as his supportive wife. And then is this one that they actually filmed in the UK, George.
George Feltenstein:Absolutely. It was filmed at the MGM. They had established an MGM British studio and this was, I think, the second film made. It was like a joint venture with another British company where MGM set up shop and the first film was a yank at Oxford, was Robert Taylor and in a small role, a woman who had become very famous worldwide for the rest of eternity, in my opinion, and that's Vivian Leigh. She was really first noticed by a lot of American audiences because of a yank at Oxford and that was a big success. And the idea was MGM would send over one big star from Culver City and one of their big directors. It was a recipe for success.
George Feltenstein:But not too many films were made there because of the outbreak of World War II and that certainly put a very serious dent on things. But the films that were made there while this was still an active joint venture with the UK, part of what spurred that was that there was a quota system of you could only release so many American films if there was an equal amount of British films. And I don't really I'm not an expert on that part of the history, but MGM was not the only studio to start making movies in England. Warner Brothers had the Teddington Studios, but it was really really quite important when they made a film at the British outpost, shall we say the little group of them that were made there before World War II. They're all very, very notable and impressive. They're four-star movies, if you will. So I'm glad that you enjoyed it and I'm also so happy that it looks as good as it does. That does change one's ability to appreciate a great film.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and I think if you're a fan of Donut and if you're a fan of Goodbye Mr Chips, you should buy this one, because you're going to want to have it in your home collection and you have a couple of classic short subjects on there and a classic cartoon, the Daffy Duck.
George Feltenstein:Yeah, we have two MGM shorts from the same year which happened to be directed by the great Jacques Tourneur as he was working his way from short subjects to features. Four years later he'd direct Cat People at RKO for producer Val Luton. It's a picture that we're a little bit familiar with around here. And we also have a Warner Brothers cartoon, the Daffy Duck, because you got Daffy Duck and Porky Pig with the medical story, I just thought it would be a little funny to put that on. It's a very serious movie, but when you went to the movies in those days you'd see two short subjects in a cartoon trailers, and that's why we try to put content shorts, cartoons, trailers of the era on these discs to try to recreate the theatrical viewing experience.
Tim Millard:Yeah, it's really good, really really good one, highly recommended. Well, next we have A Date with Judy, and that's from 1948, the MGM Technicolor Musical, and that stars a young Jane Powell and an even younger Elizabeth Taylor. They're both terrific in this film. I love seeing them together and it's a charming high school story of romance and of course, there's the drama there. And, as with all of your Technicolor restorations, it just looks and sounds terrific and is a lot of fun. Grab your fun evening snacks or whatever, and this is a really, really fun musical.
George Feltenstein:It's light entertainment and I often say it's a film that is not really a musical as much as it's a film that has a lot of music in it. It has a nice balance. But it is remarkable that Elizabeth Taylor was basically 15 years old in this movie and looks like, you know, I think everybody looked older back then, but she looks like a woman in her early 20s. Basically she certainly doesn't look like a 15-year-old, but her beauty is arresting and how Technicolor captured her violet eyes is really remarkable. But the real center of the film is Jane Powell, who was one of the leading ladies at MGM at that time, the time this movie was made, she was probably 18. And I happened to think very highly of her and I thought she was a very, very attractive leading lady in terms of her multiple talents. She was a good actress, she was charming, she was very, very pretty, she had a wonderful singing voice, but she also had a special quality on screen that made you want to love her and I think a lot, of, a lot of people I know uh speak of her uh, like I'll. You know, my dad was a little kid when this movie came out, but he had a crush on Jane Powell, you know, and I don't think he was the only one Uh, you know, people certainly had crushes on Elizabeth Taylor, but but, uh, the relationship between jane powell and elizabeth taylor in the film is also kind of uh, it's kind of unique because elizabeth taylor's character is almost the more advising, has a little more grounded wisdom than teenage judy foster. But we also created the disc in such a way where it was based on a radio show and we have an episode of the radio show on there and, uh, that gives you a taste of these. Characters were so popular on radio that mgm invested in buying the rights to make a movie with the characters. That didn't happen very much. Sometimes they were radio, well, often they were radio adaptations of movies, but it was very rare that they took radio characters and put them into a film. It did happen at RKO earlier in the 40s with Fibber, mcgee and Molly and the Great Gildersleeve. But this was a really it was a one shot attempt and a very, very financially successful movie.
George Feltenstein:And the other thing that takes advantage all these Technicolor restorations that we've been working on, one after another, another after another. People are starting to run out of adjectives to describe how gorgeous they look. I still am amazed by how wonderful they look, especially because how they looked previously on dvd coming from interpositives, some of which were really badly made by bad labs. I'll just say it out loud they were gray and the alignment of the Technicolor records was completely a wacky and people were ghosting. And we're making up for the sins of the past of others by doing these the right way.
George Feltenstein:A Date with Judy is just a Technicolor spectacle, and who better for Technicolor than Carmen Miranda? And Carmen Miranda had been under contract to 20th Century Fox probably for, I'm guessing, seven years, and when her contract was up she eventually ended up at MGM for two films, both of which were with Jane Powell, the other being Nancy Goes to Rio, and I'd love to be able to put that out someday, but right now, a Day with Judy was far more successful and very popular, and Carmen Miranda is delightful in it, and I just recommend it for audiences of all ages.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and along with her there's xavier cougat his orchestra, I mean the music, that's really fun, um.
Tim Millard:And then, uh, wallace berry as the father of judy um, he's good. And then, uh, it was fun to see Robert Stack, a very young, handsome Robert Stack, in there as a love interest for well between the two girls actually, but he's so much older but he plays it pretty well, you know, pretty straight, but pretty well, and just it was fun to see him in there as well. Oh, and of course we have to mention the actor, scotty Beckett, who plays Oogie Pringle, oogie Pringle. Yeah, so it's a lot of fun and there's some good performances in there. And you know, going back to the Technicolor, people are now just, you know, they're going to just assume it's got that Warner Archive stamp Technicolor. It's going to look great and I know you hate to take things for granted, but in a way it's a huge compliment to you, george, and the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers that that's the new standard.
George Feltenstein:Well, we're very proud of that and again, this is very much a group effort. I every year go to the preservation team and say we need to do these films. They look dreadful and that starts the process. We're fortunate where the technical or negatives still exist or exist in, let's say, a partial form. There are certain films, very important films.
George Feltenstein:I've talked about this before. Singing in the Rain burnt in that awful fire in 1978, except for one reel. So we have to work from positive separations that were thankfully made on those films. But in many cases the full film does exist and when that happens the results are fantastic and we never take it for granted. But I do want to again, I constantly harp on this, but it's very much a team effort. Preservation team works very hard on this. Then MPI steps in and the way we use our proprietary technology to create an alignment that is down to the pixel, it's just a knockout and every film deserves to be treated with the most respect we can give it, regardless of what the film is. And when we're working with these very popular of their era Technicolor films, it's an extra special treat, for sure yeah, and you've loaded this disc uh with a fair amount of extras as well.
Tim Millard:You've got, uh, classic tom and jerry, professor tom and the mgm musical short, martin block's musical merry-go-round short. Uh, you've got audio episodes in there. There's just a lot uh plus the trailer, so that's a a lot of fun to go through those as well. So this is a terrific disc overall.
George Feltenstein:One of the things that I'm particularly happy about is I've been working with a lot of these films for quite some time in different formats, and there was a DVD of A Date with Judy and it did have some of those extras on there. But there's an extra on here. Aside from the Date with Judy radio show. There's that interview with Jane Powell, and MGM did these promotional interviews that would be sent to radio stations and they were put out on a two-sided 78 record. Radio stations and they were put out on a two-sided 78 record. One side was MGM contract player, dick Simmons, not a famous person who would interview the star, and then of course the star would answer his questions. The other side of the disc would be open-ended so that it would be like Joe Smith at WXX Radio and I'm speaking today with Jane Powell, star of the Date with Judy, and then so they'd send out the record with a script in case a local host wanted to speak where Dick Simmons was.
George Feltenstein:So many of these discs we don't have and we've gone to private collectors and various other sources to try and add them to our releases. I've been doing so for a long time, but I love sharing a little tidbit that we just found amongst our corporate archives I would say several hundred discs that I didn't know existed Basically nobody knew. They opened up a box and found all of these treasures, most of which not labeled. They have codes on them that we don't have a reference to. So I did find both Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Palo. Unfortunately, the Elizabeth Taylor disc was deteriorated to a degree where we couldn't include it because sentences were not completed.
George Feltenstein:These were acetate discs and the more they were played, the more the sound would go away. So a lot of work went into just putting that little five-minute interview on there. But it's a piece of history, it's a piece of time, and whenever we can add something new and whenever we're discovering, we have something that we didn't know we had. I love that after all this time we're still finding things and to be able to share them with the fans when they buy their discs. They're getting a piece of history and that's something that I'm particularly proud of. Yeah, that's exciting.
Tim Millard:Uh, that's just a great release. I'm sure that people are loving it, who have got it, and if you haven't got it yet, I think, uh, you'll you'll really enjoy it, for the technicolor and the fun of the story and all these extras that are on there. Well, next, george, we have a 1945 romantic war drama called the Enchanted Cottage and that stars Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire, and I did not know anything about this film, but this is a wholesome, delightful film that explores the romance between a disfigured war veteran and a plain, homely young woman who never felt attractive in her life, doesn't think she's going to ever get a husband, and they meet at this cottage, which it's kind of like a metaphor for a safe place where love can grow, and it's definitely set in its time, right after the war.
George Feltenstein:But the story of beauty being in the eye of the beholder is timeless of beauty being in the eye of the beholder is timeless and very, very important actually, because not only is it timeless, but it was representative of when this movie was made in 1945, that Dorothy McGuire, who is a very beautiful woman, was planed down, if that was the proper way of saying it. They tried to minimize her beauty, but the story of and who you are inside your outer shell, that is what made Oliver fall in love with Laura. In this movie there are characters with Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire. It's based on a play by Sir Arthur Wing Pinheiro and it was filmed as a silent movie in 1924 with Richard Barthelmus, 20 forward with Richard Barthelmas, and RKO was keen on remaking the movie, not only with sound, but also in a more contemporary setting, as it were, because Robert Young's character has scars from World War II.
George Feltenstein:This film was released at the end or toward the end of World War II, so the film was so popular that RKO decided to re-release it a few years later, which was not unusual for them.
George Feltenstein:And what was also not unusual for them was they decided to trim the running time and for years the film was truncated in its length.
George Feltenstein:The main titles had been replaced and updated, so we had been distributing the complete version from inferior materials, and that was all the more motivation for us to go back to the camera negative, fix the titles as they were from another nitrate element and put back in the scenes that had been taken out from another nitrate element, and it's really kind of uh, you can't tell where the camera negative ends and the second generation element begins, because they were so beautifully matched by our colorist at Warner brothers motion picture imaging.
George Feltenstein:We're very proud of the release and I think it's a film people really really need to discover and see, because it's it's not that famous, but it has been a very strong seller for us, even when we put out our Warner Archive DVD back in 2009, which, frankly, didn't look very good, but that was the best we had to work with. So having this restoration now, which has also preserved the film in a way it hadn't been preserved before, it means it will look great and sound great for many, many years to come, and that's the important part, the byproduct of our work.
Tim Millard:Yeah, it's a universal story and that's why I think it probably is so popular and that people want to own it, because we all crave love and we all crave companionship. That's human nature for that, and this story really does a terrific job of telling that story in an entertaining way. And you have some nice extras on here as well that round out the disc with the audio broadcast and the trailer on here.
George Feltenstein:Extras on here as well, that round out the disc with the audio broadcasts and the trailer on here. Well, and what I like about the radio shows is the first one is pretty straightforward lux radio theater with robert young and darth mcgriner uh, reprising their roles and the whole visual. Visual aspect of it of beauty versus unattractive. It has to be handled in a different way when there's no visual. But the other radio program we have, which is half the length it's only a half hour with Joan Fontaine from General Electric Theater, broadcast the early 50s, takes a very different tack in telling the same story and it's interesting to compare the two. But it's a terrific disc, we're very proud of it and it's selling really well, which makes us very happy. That leads the way to more restorations.
Tim Millard:Yeah, yeah, it's one of those hidden gems that coming coming out on on blu-ray looking so good is gonna hopefully increase the audience beyond just the the fans of the dvd. Well, next we jump to 1954, to a very different kind of film. This is a corporate drama executive suite. And boy does it have a cast, george. I mean the lineup of talent in this film. Let's go down here William Holden, june Allison, barbara Stanwyck, frederick March, walter Pidgeon, shelley Winters I mean it is a terrific cast and it's directed by the sure-handed Robert Wise. He does a terrific job. I thoroughly enjoyed it because it feels very modern in its storytelling.
George Feltenstein:Well, this was one I just couldn't wait for us to release, because it's got just when the movie opens and they just flash all the stars' names, one after the other after the other. It's so exciting. And what I love about this film is it was based on a book by Cameron Hawley, but the person who adapted the book was none other than one of my favorite screenwriters, was none other than one of my favorite screenwriters, ernest Lehman, who wrote the screenplay for Sweet Smell of Success and, most notably, adapted the King and I and West Side Story and the Sound of Music from stage musical to cinema. And then he also wrote this hitchcock movie. If I can remember the name of it um, carrie grant, isn't what? Of course I'm joking north by northwest, which is my favorite hitchcock movie. Uh, that was ernest layman. So you had had the combination of Robert Wise and Ernest Lehman, who would later collaborate on so many things. I think this was their first collaboration. And then to add that cast of just so many great stars, really at the top of their form, and you have a reunion of Barbara Stanwyck and William Holden. And Barbara Stanwyck was the leading lady in William Holden's first important film, golden Boy, in 1939, 15 years before this, and it's also a look at corporate America of 1954. That isn't that different from what is corporate America in 2025. Some of those issues are still present, I think. You know I don't want to get into a political discussion, but it kind of lays out there a lot of the machinations that go on within a corporate structure, something I would have no possible experience in living through. A little private joke there. But in any event, everybody in the film was excellent. I think Robert Wise was just starting to expand from his period at RKO into being more defining of his excellence as a director and handling that cast, making the decision to have the movie have no music. It was a very unconventional film Deciding to take a cast like that and a big, important project like that and to make the choice to film it in black and white.
George Feltenstein:Everything was starting to go cinemascope at that time and they wisely decided to keep it in a more traditional uh, what is close to a 185. It actually was mgm's widescreen, meaning non-cinemascope, but not Academy Square. Mgm's ratio when they decided to make films in widescreen was 1.75. And if people had seen this movie on our DVD or they had seen it on TV. They would be used to seeing it as a traditional 4x3 open matte film. There was a LaserDisc in the late 90s that was in the 1.75 aspect ratio, but our DVD was not.
George Feltenstein:Thankfully, this is a 4K scan off the camera negative and it's just a stunning disc visually. The audio is monophonic, as it should be from that time, but it comes from magnetic sources so it's really really clear and the storytelling, the performances, everything about it is riveting. You really don't know how things are going to wind up. I don't want to give any spoilers, but there is a big event in the storytelling at the beginning of the film that starts the trajectory of the storytelling and what is going to happen at this corporation after there's been this significant event. And I can't recommend this film more highly. It is a true classic and it holds up so well Despite all the changes in the world 71 years later and especially in corporate America or the world corporately. It holds up very, very well and I think it's a testament to Wise and Lehman and you know the fact that they went on to such success together. In future films it just lets you know the talent that was behind the creation of this, what turned out to be a very successful motion picture.
Tim Millard:Yeah, the talent from the camera you've mentioned. I do want to kind of focus in on Frederick March, who plays the antagonist so well in this to William Holden's character.
Tim Millard:Very, very, very good to see that. And then, of course, the talent behind the camera. You put that all together and you know I was just thinking all of the great films you just mentioned that you know Ernest Lehman has worked on and the two of them worked on together, and Robert Wise. I mean just what filmographies they have. This one I don't know if it's as well known as some of the others that I mean just what filmographies they have. This one I don't know if it's as well known as some of the others that they're known for, but people should become aware of this one Very entertaining, looks terrific, as you mentioned your new HD master there and some interesting extras you have on here.
George Feltenstein:Well, we have a feature commentary from oliver stone. Mr stone didn't direct the movie, but he was such a fan of the movie that he wanted to speak about it. And uh, we're fortunate to have that on the disc. And we have a tom and jerry cartoon and a pete smith short in the trailer and it's a terrific disc and a terrific movie and it really belongs in any serious film lover's library.
Tim Millard:Yep, yep for sure. Well, next we have a noir, and that is the 1951 RKO film His Kind of Woman, starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell and also Vincent Price. Now, it's always fun to watch Mitchum and Russell because of their onscreen chemistry, but this film has a little lighter tone because of Vincent Price's character and what he brings to this film, playing a Hollywood star obsessed with guns at this resort. But overall it just is a lot of fun this film, and I'm sure it's very popular with fans. But it's great to see this new HD Blu-ray.
George Feltenstein:And another 4K scan off the camera negative. When we released this film on DVD 20-some-odd years ago, we recorded a commentary with film historian Vivian Sobchak. It's a great commentary. Unfortunately, the film element that the old master was from was missing frames here and there, so it was very difficult to maintain sync sync. So in order to keep the commentary, we had to present the commentary synchronized to the old SD master.
George Feltenstein:Uh, so that just lets you know how important we felt that commentary was because, uh, her research into the torturous film, uh production phase of this movie she gets into great detail about this was made when Howard Hughes was the owner of and running RKO and every once in a while he would get very involved with the making of a movie and the changing of a movie. And especially because Jane Russell he basically was the overlord of her career and he'd made all the decisions on Jane Russell movies especially, there were many changes made to the film, to the screenplay, there were reshoots. It almost feels like two different movies. The commentary kind of explains the background of how it ended up that way, but I say it's a film noir that ends up turning into a comedy, especially when Vincent Price shows up and Price's character lampoons Hollywood stardom in quite a unique way and I think that's part of the attraction of this film.
George Feltenstein:Uh, but when Russell and Mitchum were together on screen it was electric and uh. They made other films together and we hope to be revisiting those uh in the future. But we've got to start at the beginning and his kind of woman was there first together and uh, it's irresistible fun.
Tim Millard:It's a cult favorite because it's so wacky at times and it really can't decide what it wants to be as a film, but it's entertaining all the way through and that's what's important. Yeah, I mean it. You know it starts off being very, more very traditional noir in terms of the setup and and everything. We won't spoil anything but the setup of the gangsters and and the money and you know, and everything. But then it, like you say, it just expands out from that more traditional, serious noir to have all of this, you know, broader fun that the Vincent Price character brings into it. So, yeah, I mean it's one that you want to own. I mean, and it looks now so terrific, it's one that people are going to want to have and I'm sure that people who have gotten it already are really enjoying it, but highly recommend it to everybody else to get His Kind of Woman.
Tim Millard:Well, the last film we're going to talk about today, not purposefully saved to last, but this is a very important film. Oh, yeah, a wonderful film and that's Splendor in the Grass from 1961. And that stars I mean Natalie Wood, I mean this performance, we'll talk more about that, but she's fantastic. It introduces Warren Beatty, who is. You could just tell the star written all over him when he's on screen. And, of course, the director Elia Kazan, who is one of our most important directors, especially there at Warner Brothers.
George Feltenstein:Without question, and this is a film that you know. I've been begging those, you know, in order for me to get a project greenlit, I have to, you know, make my pitch and get people on board, because it's a big investment. We undertake one of these kinds of projects. We did have an hd master of splendor in the grass. That was done somewhere between 15 and 20 years ago. That was completely, uh, out of whack. Uh there, the nighttime scenes at the beginning was day for night and it looks like that's the middle of the afternoon. It just was. It was wrong in many ways and that's the way the film looked. But what we needed to do was go back to the negative, scan it in 4K and the results are just stunning in terms of the visuals and, of course, the acting in this movie.
George Feltenstein:When you've got Kazan and you have an original screenplay written by the great William Inge, it is as honest and laid bare the pain of youthful romance and especially what Natalie Wood's character goes through. This was one of her greatest performances and it wasn't her first performance in a quote-unquote adult role, and she's playing a high school student in the movie, but the subject matter is very adult and the conflict of. It's obvious that Warren Beatty wants to take their relationship to a new level. And Natalie Wood's character is fearful and there's the whole dynamic of parental dysfunction. And it's written so well by Inge and directed as really very few people could direct like Kazan, and you have all the ingredients to make a classic.
George Feltenstein:This was an instant classic. It's also very successful at the box office and it established Natalie Wood as a great adult actress. And uh, the following year you know, she starred along rosalind russell and gypsy and uh, she also the same year as splendid of the grass came out, west side story came out. She was terrific in all those films. And uh, warren baity, his screen career introducing Warren Beatty with this film, made a huge impression and it was like instant screen, charisma on screen and a really substantial box office success, critical success, audience favorite and it holds up extremely well. I can't believe the movie is nearly 65 years old. Right now, as we record this, it's 64. Very contemporary sensibility in terms of the respect for the written word and how it's performed and how it's acted. You still had the restrictions of the production code hanging loosely. It was being frayed and people like Kazan were chipping away at it trying to make more realistic adult films, but here I don't think they really compromised in the storytelling and that's why the film remains so powerful and it looks so terrific.
Tim Millard:Yeah, yeah. And Pat Hingle as the father, uh, a stamper, he does a terrific job. Just, you know the the force. Anybody who has had a father like that, very successful, very strong, Um, it's so true, the performance very, very good there by the parents and that really, I mean you have to have that as well as the young people.
George Feltenstein:Pat Hingle is not as well known today. He passed away quite some time ago but he was a member of the Actors Studio. He was a New York stage actor. Kazan brought together many people for this movie. The real name attraction was Natalie Wood. Warren Beatty was introducing Warren Beatty. But many of the other roles including Audrey Christie as Natalie Wood's mother, Pat Hingle, as you mentioned, a very young Sandy Dennis in a small role they're all the actors in this movie. They're really superb, Because I feel Kazan's fingerprints all over its excellence.
George Feltenstein:That's why we decided to add the documentary LA Kazan A Director's Journey, and I think it's such a wonderful thing to have that on this disc just to give more people. I don't want people to forget kazan, you know, and the impact he had on the stage and the screen as a director. Uh, it just can't be overstated how important it was. Um, so I've been wanting to put this movie out for a very long time, but we needed to go back to scratch, basically to create a beautiful new master, and I think our talented colorists at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging did a beautiful job. We're very proud of the release and it's selling like hotcakes, which I'm glad to say.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and going back to that documentary, I watched the whole thing. It's well worth watching because it gives you that big picture on Kazan's life and you hear from him directly and how he developed and what his philosophy was about directing and how he approached it. Terrific, really, gives you great insight and let's hope that there continues to be releases like this that can make people aware of Kazan and keep his legacy going, because such an important director, his films of the 50s and 60s, that era changed filmmaking, along with others, changed filmmaking to the more modern style filmmaking that we know. The psychological complexity of his storytelling, the truthfulness it's terrific, it's wonderful. This is one people should own and I'm so glad it's out on Blu-ray.
George Feltenstein:I agree with you, tim. You addressed its excellence eloquently. Thank, you.
Tim Millard:Well, this is a terrific month. All these films. I enjoyed watching all of them, george, this is a terrific month. I'm glad to hear that others feel the same way and that many of them are selling very well, and I hope our discussion can help those who don't know these films to think about looking into them and picking these up, because this is a terrific group of films in June.
George Feltenstein:I think you make a very good point because my takeaway of what you're saying. Every year, there are dozens and dozens of new movies that come into our world, and a film like this is now over 60 years old. It was hugely important when it came out. It's our responsibility to make sure that these great films continue to be not only seen but available in the best quality, and we're working as quickly as we can, but we can't rush anything. But we have so many in production right now and every time I can check one off the list. We finally got that done. What we have yet to do is overwhelming and enormous, but it's also tremendously exciting and I'm looking so forward to hearing how people react when they see what we've got coming.
George Feltenstein:In the future, there may be some valleys where we're not in any particular month, where we don't have like a stellar lineup like this in June or that we had in July and that we're having in August. But if a month seems less, in some ways, that only means the next month is going to have more, and I think we've proven that this year. We're more than halfway through the year and we're halfway through in our discussions here on the extras, but I think 2025 is going to continue to be interesting and exciting to many different audiences and we've got some great stuff in store for the rest of the year as well as next year. So much to look forward to in our discussions here on your show, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to hear what you think, because I'm always excited to hear your reactions after we've spent so many months working on a particular film or project, and to see what you think about it and to share those thoughts here on your podcast. It's always something I look forward to.
George Feltenstein:While we're talking, I do want to address kind of what is now an elephant that's left the room. But in the last few weeks, particularly with our July releases, we were having problems. Our July releases. We were having problems not internally, but some retailers were not making our releases available when they were supposed to be available, which was very frustrating, and we believe that problem has now been rectified. But I want all of our faithful Warner Archive collection consumers to know that we're doing our very best. This was not a replication issue. This was a communication issue that had no fault with us nor our distribution partners. It was on the retail side and happily, I think, those problems are now behind us.
Tim Millard:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good to hear. You know these little bumps happen, but the fact is the delay I think we're talking about. We're only talking about a little delay. Yeah, we're not talking a week, two weeks, maybe three weeks delay, because most of that delay was just in the pre-order process, not in the actual shipping. The shipping part is just a small delay.
George Feltenstein:I will say that we did everything we could to try to get this resolved. Get this resolved, so did our partners at Allied Vaughn Entertainment, who bring our product to market as our distributor, and the partnership has been an excellent one for 16 years and I'm so grateful to their efforts on our behalf to get this remedied so that the consumers out there get the discs they've been looking for and hoping for. And when we hit these little bumps in the road, we do our best to iron them out as quickly as possible.
Tim Millard:Yeah Well, george, another terrific discussion. Thank you so much for coming on and talking to me and letting the fans hear your thoughts, and it's always a lot of fun.
George Feltenstein:Well, thank you, tim. As always, it's a pleasure, and we're going to have a lot more to talk about in the coming weeks.
Tim Millard:Well, as I mentioned in the podcast, I was on vacation and that is the reason for the slight delay since our last podcast airing.
Tim Millard:But I'm back from vacation now and I have a pile of Blu-rays from the Warner Archive to review which I'm looking forward to, and that's for July. As for the June releases, I do have links, if you have not ordered your copy, to purchase each of these great films. And, as George mentioned, there was a slight hiccup for the July pre-orders, so if that deterred you or in any way caused you to have to wait, please get your orders in now so that the Warner Archive doesn't have a big drop off in July of their sales, because each month does fund the continuing and ongoing work of restoration and remastering for Blu-ray. So we need to be sure and continue that support for the Warner Archive so there isn't any drop-off in sales so that George and the team over there can continue to do the great work that they do to bring these classic animation and classic films to all of us so that we can enjoy them Until next time. You've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed.