The Extras
The Extras
Warner Archive July Blu-ray Reviews Part 1: "The Broadway Melody," "Cimarron" & "DuBarry Was a Lady"
George Feltenstein joins the podcast to review three new July Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer made every effort to impress with its first talking motion picture, setting a new standard for big-budget films and establishing an archetype for decades of movie musicals to follow in "The Broadway Melody." The Great White Way truly becomes the Street of Broken Dreams when sisters Queenie and Hank Mahoney (Anita Page and Bessie Love) follow Hank's boyfriend, Eddie Kearns (Charles King), to Manhattan with visions of stardom. In New York, Eddie and Queenie are attracted to each other, but unwilling to betray her sister, Queenie dates a feckless cad. Now, Hank must sort out the tangle of aspirations and emotions that form this tragic love triangle. Filled with a memorable score of unforgettable songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, this was the first sound film to win the Academy Award® for Best Picture (1929-30).
Purchase THE BROADWAY MELODY
"CIMARRON" the (1931) Academy Award®-winning adaptation of Edna Ferber's novel traces the lives of two people who are in love with each other--but in love with life even more--as they struggle to bring civilization to the Western frontier in Cimarron! 1898. The Oklahoma Land Rush. As thousands of would-be settlers race across a barren desert to be the first to stake their claim to a plot of land, Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) is cheated out of his property by Dixie Lee (Estelle Taylor). Without the farm they had hoped to start, Yancey and his wife, Sabra (Irene Dunne), take over the local newspaper after the editor is assassinated. But as the newspaper helps bring order to a lawless land, Yancey feels the wanderlust to find new frontiers and new adventures, and Sabra stays to build a publishing empire. Always in love, frequently apart and destined for greatness, Yancey and Sabra lead lives as tempestuous as the land they have chosen for their home in this epic Western classic.
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DuBARRY WAS A LADY (1943)
Hapless nightclub hatcheck boy Red Skelton loves glamorous chanteuse Lucille Ball. Handsome hoofer Gene Kelly loves her too. And Lucy? Lucy loves money. Then Red mistakenly gulps down a Mickey Finn and dreams he’s in 18th-century France. Before you can powder your wig, a throng of suitors – Red, Gene, King Louis XV, a dashing rebel, a sinister duke and just about everybody – loves Lucy! This glittery, tune-filled bonbon features a supporting cast of wags and wits (including the inimitable Zero Mostel) and three Cole Porter songs from the original Broadway smash: “Friendship,” “Katie Went to Haiti” and “Do I Love You?” Cherchez la Lucy for comedy, music and star power from Hollywood’s golden era.
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Hello and welcome to the extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies and animation and their release on digital DVD, blu-ray and 4K or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Lager host, and joining me today is George Felmstein of Warner Brothers, to review the July Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive.
Speaker 2:Hi George, hey Tim, happy day to you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I'm sweltering here at home, like everybody else around the country and around the world is, but I don't mind, because then I coop myself up and I watch all these great Blu-rays that have come out here for July.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's been a very exciting month and the excitement will continue next month and month after and month after we're on a roll.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I sat down and I know there's seven we're going to talk about here for July because of the one that got bumped from June Land of the Pharaohs but they range from the late 20s all the way through the 50s. So it's quite a range and different genres, and so it was really enjoyable, because when I watch these I often watch them, you know, fairly close together. So it's nice when I kind of can pick the next film up and it's a total different genre to watch and everything. So it's a lot of fun. Well, why don't we start with the oldest one and I just thought it was delightful, and that's the Broadway melody from 1929.
Speaker 2:Now, had you ever seen?
Speaker 1:it before? No, I had not, and you know, we did the Dancing Daughters, right. Right, we released that in January, february, in January, yeah, and I found that terrific. And then, when I put this in, there's of course a connection there with Anita Page, but I just really enjoyed the story of these two sisters coming to New York and everything around that. I just thought it had more story than I expected.
Speaker 2:Well, and it was the second film to win the Best Picture Oscar and the first sound film to win the Best Picture Oscar. And you know, people need to view it through a lens of recognizing the extraordinary achievement from a technical standpoint, because MGM was probably the last of the big studios to give in to sound. They held off the Allberg and Mayer were dubious about it when everybody else was jumping in the pool pretty fast. So when they did make the commitment they created, you know, kind of the granddaddy of the backstage film musical and the film has been difficult to watch in the past because the quality was so awful. And once again, warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging and my incredibly talented colleagues there. They spent months on this and the original negative is only partially extant Now. The last time we brought it in, several reels had already decomposed and we worked from a multitude of different elements and there's about 25 to 30 seconds in the opening shots of Manhattan that were missing from all the 35 millimeter elements and were in 16 millimeter dupe negative. So our preservation team did an amazing job being able to put that back together and the audio actually came from a mint set of unplayed Vitaphone discs and since we now have a brand new Vitaphone transferring. Set up at Warner Brothers Post Production Sound. The archival division really had their work cut out for them and the track is so much better than what we've heard before. So the technical ability to see the film more clearly, hear the audio more clearly, realizing that the movie is 94 years old and it was basically filmed 95 years ago. It was shot in the middle of 1928. I enjoyed it a lot more than I ever have as we were preparing this disc and, for a little historical background, at the time Bessie Lovin and Anita Page played the Mahoney sisters. They're really the centerpiece of the action.
Speaker 2:I don't have any empirical evidence to say this is a hundred percent true, but what I've been led to believe and there may be documentation to support this I just haven't come across yet was that MGM's original intention was to try and cast the Duncan sisters, who were very popular on Broadway, and cast them in this film, and they were not able to come to an agreement. Again, this is the legend. It may be true. It seems like it really could be. The characters are very similar to the real-life Duncan sisters an older sister, a younger sister, you know and the irony of it is a couple of months after the Broadway melody came out, the Duncan sisters started in a musical for MGM called it's a Great Life, something we released on DVD several years ago and has technicolor sequences in it that survived.
Speaker 2:There was a technicolor sequence with the wedding of the painted doll in the Broadway melody, but only a few frames are known to survive, and we did test colorization to see if that could possibly work, because colorization kind of looks like two-color technicolor. Even at its best it never looks real. But two-color technicolor didn't look real either. So the test proved to be not worth. You know, everything we did was just not pleasing to the eye and there's no reference. You know there are frames out there, we've heard, but we don't have them. So we thought it was best to just proceed as it always has been. We're recording this on the day the disc comes out, so probably tomorrow I'll get a call and say, hey, someone found though colors, you know, because that's happened to us so many times, but I'm very, very happy without it turned out. And did you get a chance to look at the copious extras on this disc?
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, yes, I did, and they're pretty delightful because they just fit so well with the film itself. Right, they're of that era and there's so much great singing and everything and dancing in those pieces, and was it one of them that actually has a ballet sequence where the music was scored by D'Amkin?
Speaker 2:That's right. Dmitri D'Amkin was under contract to MGM in his very young, early days, before he was a famous. You know, as we'll talk about later because we'll be talking about films he wrote wonderful scores for. But MGM had a choreographer, albertina Rash, and she did a lot of ballets in that very early time and D'Amkin wrote the music for it and that still comes up in discussion, especially among scholars who study D'Amkin's work.
Speaker 2:But the Metro movie tone shorts we have one short on there from the Metro movie tone series, that's with the Vaudeville team of Ann and Skink.
Speaker 2:But the other Metro movie tone reviews and what they are basically is, you know, a host of sorts kind of introducing the same kind of thing that was shot for or were shot for being released individually is those Metro movie tone acts, just like we have Vaudeville shorts. So it felt very important we replicated all the content that we put on the DVD and of course the difference between the way the feature looks now and the way it looked on DVD is a quantum leap. They did want to mention one of their extra. We have released the complete DVD set of the dogville comedies that spoofed the movies of the era, but the dogway melody is included on this Broadway melody release because it was a direct spoof and a lot of people don't know about the dogville shorts and they're very popular and we've been selling them on DVD now for 13, 14 years. But it's just, it's a wonderful package and a great way to start off a really winning lineup, I think.
Speaker 1:I agree. Speaking of the Dogway melody, I mean it's the total take off of it because even though the girl dog, her name is Queenie and the character names and the storyline, it's really quite fun after you've seen the movie to watch that and I wasn't really that familiar with those Dogway pieces but I'm like, wow, that's pretty amazing. Looking back at that, I didn't see too many strings or different things. You know of how they used to create it, but really, really creative and really well done.
Speaker 2:Well, as a dog lover, I wouldn't want to watch anything where there was any sense of animal abuse and the reason why they stopped making those. Apparently, from what I understand, the dogs were trained and well taken care of and there was nothing inappropriate going on there. They would put peanut butter in their mouths to make their mouths move and little things like that, but they were so expensive to make and they were making use of the early sound gimmick. And one of the people behind them I was a team of Zion Meyers and Jules White. Jules White was the director of most of the great three Stooges shorts and the three Stooges were at MGM with Ted Healy a few years later and then, after not really achieving much success there, they went to Columbia and started to make shorts which went on for another 20 some odd years. So Jules White and Zion Meyers really were the brains behind the doggo shorts. So I'd like to hope that someday we could do a whole Blu-ray of those, but my goodness, we have a lot of other things to get to.
Speaker 1:Well, just before we move on from this one, I know you had said about, there's that 30 seconds you found of the New York City shots are at the beginning and I really did enjoy the beginning. I didn't really think about that, you know, when I was watching I just thought, wow, this is some terrific archival footage of New York City in that era of the 20s and I love, I love that footage there and how it just introduces you to the story. And then, of course, the rest of the transfer I just thought was terrific.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they did a phenomenal job. And again I need to clarify I didn't find anything. That was my good friend and colleague of many years, craig Johnson, who is our director of preservation, having lived with the MGM library since his days at Turner, when Turner owned the MGM library before we bought Turner. When we bought Turner, craig moved from Turner to Warner Brothers. Craig has this amazing ability to look everywhere and look under every stone and find whatever he can, and it was many years ago that he made this discovery of what was hiding in the 16 millimeter, but it wasn't until now that we could put it to use in creating a new master. So there was some establishing photography of New York City at the beginning of the film, always, but there's more of it now, and that is it's a little victory that Craig's very proud of, and we're delighted to have such talented people working here at Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1:Well, this is an amazing, very impressive release because of the fact that you know it has the pedigree with winning of the Oscar and did they get nominated for other things?
Speaker 2:I actually am not. Usually I'm really good at my Oscar trivia, but it gets a little dusty at the beginning because they were changing categories and things weren't really clarified for a couple of years because the Academy was so new. But speaking of Oscars, it's a perfect segue to our next film, which was a best picture Oscar winner for the then nascent company known as RKO Radio Pictures, and this is 1931's Simeron, based on the novel the epic, sweeping, epic novel by Edna Ferber, and this stars Richard Dix and Irene Dunn. And it is pretty remarkable to see how much further technological developments had come between the Broadway melody and then Simeron, because there's outdoor photography and outdoor sound recording. The Landrush sequence at the beginning of this movie is worth the price of admission.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's so impressive and I have to ask you the restoration of the images. They just look so good. I was so impressed. Especially, you've got a lot of I don't know a lot of the shots of the cast were just so so good. The Landrush was really good, considering they had cameras shooting from like ground level as the horses rushed by. I mean, we're talking about techniques that this film probably broke ground on in many ways.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And the thing is that Broadway melody didn't look good until this new restoration that's on Blu-ray. But Simeron looked so terrible that going back to my childhood days at MGM UA home video when we were putting out Oscar winners on videocassette, we said there's no way we can put this out. It was just wines and dirt and scratches and all over the place terrible. And my theory is that RKO probably made a lot of release prints off the original negative, which was MGM bought the RKO film to remake it and had the elements and they did safety preservation before the negative was completely gone on somewhere in the late 60s. The preservation was done in the early 60s but I'm sure all the wear and damage was in those elements and what our folks did on Broadway melody was incredible. What they did with Simeron is astounding considering how horrible everything they had to work with was. So they worked with a fine grain that had been made by MGM's preservation team in the 60s and there were certain shots where they had to go to a Duke negative. But it is really an astounding, impressive job and it's being presented for the first time and it's proper.
Speaker 2:We call the movie tone aspect ratio, which is 1.19, or we easily round it up to 1.2, but it's more square in nature in that left room for the soundtrack on the side. And then, of course, the Academy standardized the aspect ratio at 1.37, around 1932 I believe. So this is the first presentation in the proper aspect ratio for this film and it is really impressive. Epic storytelling and again it has to be taken into consideration of when it was made and what they were achieving. The greater quality gave me the ability to be more impressed with the technical achievements of what they were able to do with outdoor photography and outdoor sound recording really, really amazing. And the film holds up well and, like many films that ended up being remade, this earlier version was out of sight and suppressed for many, many years and it really wasn't until, I think, the early 1970s that MGM finally made the earlier version available for theatrical showings and non theatrical 16 millimeter. But this is the first time it really looks good and we're very proud of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was. It was really delight to watch because of how good it looks, and then you really get absorbed in that epic storytelling. I mean the, the character that Richard Dix plays. I mean that that.
Speaker 2:Nancy Cravat, yeah Cravat.
Speaker 1:And he is a real Presence. I mean, you're like, well, that's a star when he's on the screen he just is quite a presence and he fits that you know, that manly archetype of that era. And yet he's also a person who's educated and Trying to be very progressive. And yes, you know, as you said, it's a, it's a film of its time and based on the book, but that character is trying to be progressive in an era that we now look back and maybe we make judgments. But I thought it was quite fascinating and he's a fascinating character. And then, mrs Cravat, she becomes an amazing, amazing character as the story unfolds as well in her own right, and so it's very deserving, I think, for all of the wins that it had and nominations that had. What one, two, three, four, five, six, seven nominations and Three wins is what I see. That's just an amazing amount well.
Speaker 2:Both of these films really represent not only achievements technologically from when they were made, they also represent huge technological advancement in film restoration and have to give the credit again to it. It sounds like a broken record, but it's true. Folks at MPI are just killing it. Everything they do is just magnificent and it's hard work and we're all in there together and it's so rewarding when the end result is so satisfying and we know that the consumer wants the very best possible presentation and we stand by the product and it is enjoyable. One of the things that I was unable to do with this release is we don't have any rights to any of the shorts that RKO made, so I had to put Warner Brothers material on here. But the very first Merry Melody cartoon is on this disc and it is kind of rewarding to be able to add a little flavor to that and it's in HD, which really is nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they looked terrific and I love the fact that they're from the same year. I understand it well, like you said, that they're Warner Brothers, but, wow, what a treat to have those in HD on there for the extras.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and we also do have the 1960 remake and it's interesting to look at that in perspective for storytelling. But there's a reason why this film won the Oscar against some pretty heady competition, and I hardly endorse it. Going chronologically, the next film is a Complete 180. It is a testament to Technicolor and it is a very frothy, enjoyable musical comedy from MGM in 1943, dupère was a lady. What did you think of that, tim?
Speaker 1:Well, I really enjoyed the sequences with Lucille Ball and then the Jean Kelly, and I liked the storyline and I thought it was really fun the fact that some of it takes place in current times and then probably even more so takes place in the French era. It's fun, it makes it for a lively comic element to it. And then the Technicolor really those scenes, the historical scenes, the Technicolor really works well there.
Speaker 2:Well again, this is one of the films where the Technicolor negatives weren't harmed in the tragic fire and we were able to recombine them with our proprietary technology. And when I saw this I really couldn't believe how gorgeous it looked. It looks and sounds terrific. And you have not only Lucille Ball with her. You know the henna rinse that Sydney Gilleroff gave to her when she came to MGM from being at RKO. But you also have Jean Kelly, still kind of defining his screen presence, having come off for me and my god, with Judy Garland, and he's really terrific in this movie and he gets to give us a little preview of what things will be like when he does the three musketeers years later.
Speaker 2:But this wasn't that adaptation of a Broadway musical. That was done the late 30s with Ethel Merman and a score by Cole Porter, and there was an unfortunate trend in Hollywood at that time where they would buy Broadway musicals and use very little. Sometimes they wouldn't use it at all of the original Broadway score and they would substitute new songs written by studio employee composers. So you've got three Cole Porter survivors from the Broadway production in this film, and A lot of the other Cole Porter songs are pretty much consigned to being background underscoring, which is somewhat upsetting if you love Cole Porter, as a lot of people must and should do. But if you take this for what it is, it is a confection that shows off how wonderful MGM was at making their musicals sound great. The music is fun. You've got Tommy Dorsey in his orchestra in there.
Speaker 2:All the movies during the war put a big, heavy emphasis on the big bands and Tommy Dorsey was certainly at the top of that list and I think he's really quite charming in it because, especially the finale where they all sing friendship, I just look at him and he's like trying to dance and do all the things the other people are doing and I was thinking, gosh, the man was a brilliant musician. You know how did he feel about that? I think he was being a good sport and it just seemed like everybody was having a good time. And it also is reflective of the blooming of Red Skelton's screen career as a top comic. You know his stardom once it was established was kind of meteoric and he became a very important cog in the wheel of MGM, being able to make money, and the film has a lot of really enjoyable sequences.
Speaker 2:But most impressively, it is a testament to three strip Technicolor and what it can look like, and it's the closest you're going to get to what a dye transfer print would have looked like back in 1943. Except we're able to, with our technology, make the image registration sharper than they could ever do in a film laboratory, so you're actually seeing the film look better than it did when it opened Because of the technology. We now have to work with Technicolor, so it is one of the more impressive things about the film and it's just delightful entertainment.
Speaker 1:And you also have a good MGM cartoon on there and the trailer for X-Riss.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and that's a cartoon with Barney Bear, and a lot of people have been asking for Barney Bear in a Barney Bear collection and we're looking into that. There's a lot more work that needs to be done because almost all the MGM cartoons, with the exception of a handful, all the nitrate ones, went up in that tragic fire that I often refer to. So, making sure we have good elements and can do it right, and will there be enough people to support Barney Bear? I think so. So we're thinking about it, but meanwhile you've got Bob Wilderness on this disc and the trailer, and I think it's a very fine package.
Speaker 1:This is part one of our July reviews from the Warner Archive. In our next podcast we'll review four films from the 1950s, including the Last Time I Saw Paris, land of the Pharaohs, hullin of Troy and the Fastest Gun Alive. So look for that podcast coming soon. For those of you interested in ordering the films we discussed today, there are links in the podcast show notes and on our website at wwwtheextrastv. So be sure and check those out.
Speaker 1:And, just as a reminder, you can go back and listen to the June and previous Warner Archive reviews at any time. Just look for those in our podcast archives. If you're on social media, be sure and follow the show to stay up to date on our upcoming guests and to be a part of our community. And you're invited to our Facebook group for fans of Warner Archive films, called the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Cadlock Group. So look for that link on the Facebook page or in the podcast show notes. And for our long-term listeners, don't forget to follow and leave us a review at iTunes, spotify or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time you've been listening to Tim Mellard, stay slightly obsessed.