The Extras
The Extras
Warner Archive October 28th Release Announcement: Four Classic Films starring Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Barbara Stanwyck, and John Garfield
George Feltenstein joins us to discuss four classic films releasing on Blu-ray from Warner Archive on October 28th, following the previously announced October 14th releases. These restorations showcase Warner Archive's commitment to preserving cinema history with pristine 4K scans from original negative elements whenever possible.
• Manhattan Melodrama (1934) - The first on-screen pairing of William Powell and Myrna Loy, with Clark Gable, restored from preservation elements with rare Ted Healy and His Stooges shorts as extras
• Out of the Fog (1941) - John Garfield and Ida Lupino star in this pre-WWII drama about fascism, featuring a 4K scan from original camera negative
• The Mad Miss Manton (1938) - Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda's first pairing in this screwball comedy from RKO, beautifully restored from the camera negative
• The Master of Ballantrae (1953) - Errol Flynn's final Warner Bros. swashbuckler, shot in stunning Technicolor by Jack Cardiff on location in England and Scotland
• All releases include period-appropriate cartoon shorts and theatrical trailers when available
• Warner Archive continues to prioritize physical media, offering film collectors pristine versions of classic cinema
Look for pre-order information on our Facebook page and in the Warner Archive Facebook 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 more of the October Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. Hi, George.
George Feltenstein:Hello Tim. There is more to discuss and it's exciting.
Tim Millard:October is such a huge month, we had to split it up so that people can get all the information that you provide, and we previously recorded a October 14th release, so people should check that out if they haven't yet. And today these are going to be four classic films releasing on October 28th. Right, and let's go in alphabetical order again.
George Feltenstein:Okay.
Tim Millard:So first up we have Manhattan Melodrama from 1934. What can you tell us about this film?
George Feltenstein:Well, this film is representative of a group of films that were made at MGM under the supervision of producer David O Selznick, and David O Selznick was the son-in-law of LB Mayer and he left being the head of production, leave from the studio due to medical conditions. He had a very weak heart following Thalberg's chemistry and design with Grand Hotel, an all-star mega film, and Selznick's was Dinner at Eight in 1933. So Selznick produced 11 films, I believe during his brief tenure at MGM, and then he formed his own company during his brief tenure at MGM and then he formed his own company. But one of his earliest successes during that period, and a very famous movie, is Manhattan Melodrama and it just happens to be the first of many screen pairings before the Thin man of William Powell and Myrna Loy and they are joined with the star of the movie, which happens to be someone who was a little popular at MGM, named Clark Gable. So when you've got Gable, william Powell, myrna Loy and a great, a very, very powerful story about basically two orphan kids, because the picture opens up with the William Powell character and the Clark Gable character as kids and their best friends, and they're best friends and actually Clark Gable's character, blackie, as a child is played by a 13 or 14-year-old, mickey Rooney, which is very interesting, and the film's basic story takes place as those characters are adults who are on different sides of the law, and so Clark Gable's kind of the gangster, but he's Clark Gable, so you got to love him, you know what I mean. And William Powell is the good guy, and they both have their eyes on one beautiful woman played by Myrna Loy, and therein lies the story.
George Feltenstein:It was co -written by Joseph L Mankiewicz, who had an incredible career in cinema, spent many years at MGM, mostly as a producer and a writer, and it was in his later years at Twinsetree Fox that he did things like Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve.
George Feltenstein:So the pedigree of this movie is spectacular and WS Van Dyke is the director and WS Van Dyke is the director, but there were a couple of scenes that were shot by George Cukor when Van Dyke was not available. This is very much a studio concoction. It was a huge hit at the box office, but the thing it's most famous for really has nothing to do with the movie at all, and that is this is the film that John Dillinger saw at the Biograph Theater in Chicago Illinois and the cops and the feds were waiting for him when he came out of the theater and that was the end of Dillinger. So the film is better known for that than its actual movie itself. But it was a big hit and very well received and it was part of Selznick's thinking of creating a movie that would just be automatically popular with the audiences of the day, and it was one of MGM's biggest hits in 1934.
Tim Millard:in 1934. Every time I see these 1930, 31, 32, the early 30s restorations or that they're going to be restored here in HD, I'm so looking forward to them, because we're talking a 91-year-old film and now it gets the treatment, gets the 4K scan. You know it's just going to look fantastic.
George Feltenstein:It does.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and the stars speak for themselves, obviously. And it's just gonna look fantastic and yeah, and, and the stars speak for themselves obviously. Um, and it's really fun that this is, you know, powell and lloyd before the thin man, and I'm just such a big fan of those, as almost everybody is, so, uh, really looking forward to this now. Do you have some extras on here?
George Feltenstein:Yes, we do. We have very special extras actually, because we have two MGM shorts and both of them feature the team known as Ted Healy and His Stooges. Ted Healy served as like the straight man to these three wackos that were Howard, Fine and Howard, and they called him his stooges, and of course it was Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Jerry Howard, better known as Curly, along with Ted Haley, were under contract to MGM, appeared in a few features, but mostly appeared in a series of six shorts that give you a glimpse of what was ahead for them when they broke away from Ted Haley, went to Columbia Pictures and, with Mo, Mo and Larry staying all the way through, Curly retired due to health reasons. The 40s was replaced by Shemp and then eventually by Joe Dorita, but for almost, I'd say, close to 25 years. It wasn't exactly that, but a little less than that. They were making two real shorts for Columbia, which probably provided them more money at Columbia than most of the feature films they made, Because Columbia during the 30s and 40s was, with some very notable exceptions, a B-movie studio.
George Feltenstein:They would occasionally make an A-movie with Frank Capra involved or later, Rita Hayworth Some really great movies but they didn't really become a major studio to be reckoned with until the later part of the 50s and the 60s and so forth. So the Stooges' legacy is important and so we have two shorts the Big Idea, which is in black and white, and then Roast Beef and Movies, which I believe is in early two-color technicolor. It's just a delight for people to be able to see them. They're very much a product of their time. For people to be able to see them. They're very much a product of their time.
George Feltenstein:And we also have a Manhattan melodrama radio, Lux Radio broadcast audio. Only that does bring back William Powell and Myrna Loy to recreate their roles for the radio productions From 1940, Clark Gable is not in the radio version, but just to have powell and loy. That's pretty good. And, uh, I always love when we can put on a classic radio broadcast and, uh, this has got the trailer. So it's a very strong release on multiple levels. And I should note that, like most, unfortunately like most MGM films, black and white that were shot on nitrate, the negative went up in the fire at Eastman House in 1978. So we're working from second generation preservation elements, but it looks so great that I think people would say I can't believe this isn't from the negative, but it's the next best thing and we're lucky to have it.
Tim Millard:Yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to this one. I've been watching some of these you know Stooges pieces that you've been putting on and they're very entertaining, very entertaining. So it's fun to see those on there.
George Feltenstein:We're delighted to be able to present them, and they're in HD, which is nice.
Tim Millard:Yeah, that's pretty good too. Well, next up, we have a film from 1941 called Out of the Fog. What can you tell us about this release?
George Feltenstein:Well, out of the Fog is a very interesting film. Some people consider it to be a film noir. I don't know if I would agree with that, but people's definitions of noir, uh, they are subject to interpretation. Uh, what's important about this film is it stars John Garfield and Ida Lupino. It deals with, as some Warner films of that era did, with prospective fascism and you know not great people along with very good people. And it's set in a small town and it was actually adapted from a play by Irwin Shaw. It's probably best known for having written the book Rich man, poor man, which became a very important miniseries on television in the late 70s. But Irwin Shaw wrote this play called the Gentle People and this is kind of a pre-World War II warning about the allure and danger that fascism could create.
George Feltenstein:And Garfield I find to be remarkable in almost everything he did because he was so you know, he was a byproduct of the group theater in New York in the late 30s and he brought a very different acting style to his work, style to his work and almost every film he did, even if the film isn't top-notch. There were a few he did that were moderate films versus instant classics, but he's always fascinating to watch. This is an important film and it's a film that doesn't get enough credit for the kind of storytelling it provides. The acting is really superb. Garfield and Lupino are wonderful. Thomas Mitchell, who is so well known for so many wonderful supporting roles I mean he was Scarlett O'Hara's father in Gone with the Wind. The same year he was in Stagecoach, which he won the Supporting Actor Oscar for, and he also had a very important role in Capra's Mr Smith Goes to Washington. That was just in 1939. And he worked up until his death in the early 60s. He was a great, great supporting actor and he's got a great role in this.
George Feltenstein:And the screenplay is very tight and written by very impressive screenwriters Robert Rosen and Jerry Wald, both of whom contributed to the screenplay for the Roaring Twenties from 1939, which is another Warner classic, and this was directed by Anatole Litvak, who was one of the top directors at Warner Brothers during this era. So it's very much a film worthy of rediscovery if you haven't seen it and happily this is a 4K scan off the camera, negative and our previous iterations and what you've been seeing on TV is kind of looks like it's been run through a meat grinder. So the leap up to a 4K scan off the camera. Negative is quite impressive here, yeah, and it's a very, very memorable film and very prescient, unfortunately, given the world and its current state.
George Feltenstein:But the disc also does come with a few extras. We've added two superb cartoons from 1941, the heckling Hare, which is a Tex Avery Bugs Bunny cartoon that I happen to be very much a fan of, and Hollywood Steps Out, which is the Warner Brothers cartoon unit basically skewering Hollywood celebrities of the era, and both of those are in HD. And then we have the theatrical trailers. So it's a very, very nifty package and I think people will like it.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and this is two months in a row that we get a Ida Lupino film. Yep.
George Feltenstein:At the.
Tim Millard:Hardway last month, so that's-.
George Feltenstein:And the man I Love seems like it was just something we released a few months ago, but that was over a year ago, right, right, yeah. They drive by night. We've tried to give Ida her due, yeah, and I hope that we can bring more of her films out to the public for certain.
Tim Millard:That's great for fans. Well, next we have the Mad Miss Manton from 1938. What can you tell us about this screwball comedy?
George Feltenstein:Well, you just said the magic words. You said screwball comedy. Barbara Stanwyck was at home doing very serious drama and she was also exceptional at screwball comedies. This is from RKO in 1938. This is another 4K scan off the camera, negative A rarity when it comes to RKO movies.
George Feltenstein:And this is another movie that's been looking awful for years that now looks great. And Stanwyck plays opposite none other than Henry Fonda, which is wonderful. They would later be reunited at Samuel Goldwyn Productions' studio and make one of the funniest films of all time in my opinion, ball of Fire. But this was their first screen appearance together. And Stanwyck plays a madcap New York rich lady who somehow gets involved initially in being a prankster and finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery. And Henry Fonda is a New York City reporter out to find out the truth about the murder and ends up falling in love with Stanwyck. And it's 80 minutes long, so it moves with tremendous pulsation. There's not a wasted frame in the movie. It's very efficient filmmaking and the two of them together on the screen are just terrific. It's a delight it really is.
George Feltenstein:And this disc we've added two Warner Brothers cartoons to the presentation the Penguin Parade and Porky the Gob Porky being Porky Pig, and both those cartoons are in HD. And this is one of those RKO movies where we actually still had the trailer, because probably 95% of our RKO movies we don't have a trailer Right Because they didn't make their trailers themselves. They farmed them out to National Screen Service so when the library was sold there weren't a bunch of negatives for trailers sent along with it. So this one we happened to procure a couple of years ago and it's on the disc. So it's going to be a wonderful presentation and quite a step up from what we had on DVD. I'm very, very proud of it. I think people will love it.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and people are always asking when is there going to be more Stanwyck, when is there going to be more of her films? So here you go, and a comedy at that, so that people can add this to their collection.
George Feltenstein:Well, I've been delighted at the response since we announced that this was coming out. People were like oh my God, I love this movie. I'm so glad it's coming. So that is very gratifying and I hope people will really enjoy it. I'm confident of that. It's a lot of fun.
Tim Millard:Let's see. Here we have one more film, and this one it's special in a lot of ways, of course, but it's a swashbuckler from 1953, the master of Ballantrae. What can you tell us about this release?
George Feltenstein:Well, this was Errol Flynn's final swashbuckler at Warner Brothers as a contract player. Wood returned to the studio one more time, right before his untimely death, to play John Barrymore in the story of John Barrymore's daughter, diana. Too much, too soon. That was his final Warner Brothers appearance, but this was the last appearance of Flynn running out his contract at Warner Brothers. He had been under contract there for about 18 years and this is, of course, based on a Robert Louis Stevenson novel and it is beautifully shot in Technicolor by the master of color cinematography, jack Cardiff, and it was shot in England on location. So you have that wonderful look of what I call British Technicolor, because there's something about how the films that were shot three strip Technicolor looked due to the lighting and the cinematography. The outdoor shots reflected the fact that it was very cloudy in england most often and, uh, it's a luscious looking technicolor film and we have applied our uh proprietary technology and using our technical registration abilities to make this just a dazzling 90 minutes of fun. It also comes with two 1953 Warner Brothers cartoons Plop Goes the Weasel and one of my very favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons, bully for Bugs and one of my very favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons, bully for Bugs, so there's an original trailer on it. It's a wonderful package and this has been very highly requested. The last time this arrived in people's collections was when we released a Snapper DVD somewhere around 2002 or 2003. So this has been a long time coming and the difference between this and what we had previously is staggering. So I tend to maybe seem like I'm too enthusiastic about the improvement of the picture presentation, but that's how much these films are improved by getting a 4K scan from the original, in this case from the original Tick to Color negatives. Uh, it's just a glorious thing to see.
George Feltenstein:And Errol Flynn unfortunately lived life on the edge. It's no secret that he was a heavy smoker. He was a heavy drinker. I think, if I'm doing my math correctly, he was only in his early, early 40s when he made this, but he looked like he was 60. You know, I mean you really could see the wear and tear and the age on his face. But that doesn't take away from the real joy of the fun of this movie. And I should also mention this was not just shot in England, but it was also shot partially in Scotland, which wasn't too far away, and they really wanted to make this a humdinger of a swashbuckler, and they succeeded, and so we're delighted to finally answer the cries from consumers who wanted to see the master of ballantrae. They're always asking for more arrow flynn, and we have a lot more arrow flynn that we're working on right now, which is very exciting. Yeah, because we made a lot of movies for this studio and it's our job to fix them up, make them look great and bring him back out on Blu-ray.
Tim Millard:I'm a huge fan and that's why I love it. Every time you you mentioned you know that you have one of his films coming out. So, and then I'm also a huge fan about these Technicolors, and you have two in the month of October. We already talked about the one coming out on the 14th lovely to look at, and then now this one on the 28th. So Technicolor fans can rejoice that they have a double dose in the month of October.
George Feltenstein:Absolutely.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and you have Two Noir in October as well. It's just a loaded month. Four classic films October 14th.
George Feltenstein:For classic films on October 28th and Curse of Frankenstein, which is a seminal horror classic, on the 14th as well, yeah, and one of our rare ventures into 4K Right. So we're very excited about all of it.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and then you have those film collections also on the 14th. So October is packed.
Tim Millard:It's a loaded month it really is, and it's fantastic to go into October and toward the end of the season with so many films for the classic film fan. Well, as always, george, thank you for coming on and explaining and giving us all the details and the fun stories. I love your stories, george, and I get so many comments for the podcast where people say I love hearing from George, I love his stories and the details, and that's the fun part of listening to the podcast or watching the YouTube channel is getting these directly from you. So thank you again.
George Feltenstein:Oh, it's my pleasure and I love being able to spread the word, because so many of these films do have a very interesting backstory and all of these films have a place on classic film collectors' shelves, and that's why we say physical media rules.
Tim Millard:Nothing better. That's right. Physical media rules. Thanks, george. Thank you, tim. For those who'd like more information about the titles announced today, we will have postings on our Facebook page and in our Warner Archive Facebook group and we'll also put the pre-orders there when they become available. And, as I mentioned, this is part two of the October announcements. There were four titles announced for release on October 14th. You can look for that podcast or video on our YouTube page so that you can catch up on those if you would like. October is a great month with a lot of releases, so there's a lot of information you'll want to check out. You'll be sure that you heard about all of the great Blu-rays and 4Ks coming from the Warner Archive in October. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard, stay Slightly Obsessed.