The Extras
The Extras
Warner Archive July Release Announcement of 8 New Blu-rays
The Warner Archive Collection announces an eclectic lineup of eight Blu-ray releases coming in July, spanning multiple decades and genres with restorations from original camera negatives.
• William Conrad's "Brainstorm" (1965) starring Jeff Hunter in a psychological thriller with a new 4K scan
• Michael Curtiz's "Brightleaf" (1950) with Gary Cooper and Lauren Bacall as tobacco barons in the 1890s
• Vincent Minnelli's "The Cobweb" (1955), a controversial mental institution drama with Richard Widmark and Lauren Bacall
• "Knights of the Round Table" (1953), MGM's first CinemaScope production with Robert Taylor and Ava Gardner
• "Melinda" (1972), an African-American produced urban drama featuring a young Jim Kelly before Enter the Dragon
• "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1952), a Technicolor remake with Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, and James Mason
• "They Died With Their Boots On" (1941), the final Flynn/de Havilland collaboration with newly discovered footage
• "Two Weeks With Love" (1950), featuring Jane Powell, Ricardo Montalban, and Debbie Reynolds' breakout performance
All titles feature stunning 4K scans with various extras including period-appropriate shorts, cartoons, and interviews.
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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 July Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. Hi, george, hello Tim, how are you? I'm very good and I'm very excited to go over these July releases with you and, from the looks of it, we have a little bigger-than-us usual bunch of Blu-rays coming out in July.
George Feltenstein:And an eclectic selection as well.
Tim Millard:This should be fun, then, to go through this with you. And we have eight, so everybody will want to stick around to hear what all of them are, and we're going to go alphabetically, so we'll have some older ones and some more modern classics mixed in there. So let's start with the very first one here Brainstorm, from 1965. What can you tell us about this film, george?
George Feltenstein:Well, the first thing I want to say is we have two brainstorms in our library. First thing I want to say is we have two brainstorms in our library. The more famous one is from 1983, Douglas Trumbull's film. I wanted to clarify that that is not what this is basically entrusted.
George Feltenstein:William Conrad, better known for being radio's Gunsmoke Marshall Dillon, or on TV as Cannon and Jake in the Fat man, he was producing and directing. He had taken over Warner Brothers Television for a while and then he produced and directed a bunch of films for Jack and then Flew the Coop. But the films he made here were very interesting and one of them we released on Blu-ray a couple of years ago, Two on a Guillotine. But this Brainstorm, I think, is my favorite of the pictures that he made and it's just kind of whacked out. And Jeff Hunter, the star of King of Kings and the Searchers, is involved in a kind of illicit situation where he's making believe that he's out of his mind and it's really a wacky movie. You can't really take it too seriously, but it's a lot of fun and it was actually quite a big seller for us on DVD. So to be able to go back to the camera negative, scan it for cake, come up with a beautiful new master. What could be better? So that starts us off with a 1965 release. Yeah, and.
Tim Millard:I'm thinking back. It's been a little while maybe, since we had a film from the 60s, so fans of the 60s will be glad to hear that. And just before we move on, there are some classic cartoons on here that you have for extras as well.
George Feltenstein:Well, I picked one from 1965, which would be typical of, like if you went into the theater, which we're always wanting to recreate that theatrical experience well-worn Daffy, which has never had a home video release. At least that I could track down. The later cartoons that were made after the Warner Animation Studio was shut down and they kind of sub-licensed out the work to the Patty Frilling. Uh, they kind of sub-licensed out the work to, uh, the patty frilling. Um, those cartoons have their followers, um, so it's good to make them available for the people that want them, but they're just basically extras to supplant, uh, the feature and, um, I think it's just going to be a lot of fun Definitely a lot, and it looks amazing. It looks better than it has the right to.
Tim Millard:Next, we have a film from 1950, and it's a great team up here. You've got Gary Cooper, you've got Lauren Bacall, and the film is Brightleaf. What can you tell us about this film?
George Feltenstein:Well, most important thing I can say, it is directed by a somewhat known director by the name of Curtiz. I've heard of him, michael Curtiz. So 1950, michael Curtiz gets together with Gary Cooper, lauren Bacall, Patricia Neal they're all under contract and Cooper plays a tobacco baron, basically in the 1890s, and it's a lush, costumey romantic picture with strong dialogue and strong action. Not an action movie, but I mean in terms of the dialogue and the two women vying for his affection and whatnot. It's really just a classic piece of what the studio was turning out at that time. And again it's getting the upgrade coming from the nitrate gonna look terrific.
Tim Millard:We put some 1950 looney tunes on that one, uh, which is also very nice I see here bunker hill bunny and hillbilly hair in hd both of those but this is a terrific, terrific cast and a terrific director, so that should be a fun one coming in july and it looks really remarkable, it's. It's really quite impressive well, next in our our march through july, here alphabetically, I have the cobweb and that has lauren bacal as well, so you got two coming in july and tell us about this film.
George Feltenstein:Well, this is a film basically about a mental institution and it was very controversial when it came out. It was partially written by William Gibson, the playwright that did the Miracle Worker. Later on it's got a phenomenal cast Richard Widmark, lauren Bacall, charles Boyer, gloria Graham, lillian Gish, susan Strasberg as in Daughter of Lee, oscar Levant and John Kerr, who was the leading man in the play Tea and Sympathy and did the movie with Vincent Minnelli, who directed the Cobweb a year later. This was also produced by John Hausman, who in the 1970s would have a new career as an actor in the Paper Chase and the television series that followed it. It's a really well-written, well-crafted film. I think the subject matter was a little bit difficult for people to digest in the 1950s, but any time you have Minnelli behind the camera, there's going to be amazing things going on visually and this is a very dialogue-heavy film. But the way he works with the CinemaScope frame and works with the actors, it all is incredibly satisfying.
George Feltenstein:This film has a cult following. We've gotten many requests for this movie and we had put it out as a DVD years ago. That didn't look very good but was the best that we could offer, and now we've got coming off the camera. Negative looks incredibly better. Early CinemaScope uh, stereophonic sound, uh, it's, uh, it's just a really solid MGM picture from 1955 that deserves this upgrade. And so here we have it.
George Feltenstein:One of the extras on this disc is a promotional film that MGM made in CinemaScope to kind of call out their 1955 films in production, and the reason why I put it on this disc is the whole cast of the Cobweb speaks to the camera and says you know, I'm Richard Widmark, I'm Lauren Bacall, you know that kind of thing. They actually they took the time to kind of call out what this film was. And anytime you have actors breaking the fourth wall, especially in a promotional this is the trailer. It's really a 20-minute big, long trailer for all sorts of things, but when that happens, hitchcock was great about doing special trailers like that, and there were other special trailers that were done by other people where they addressed the audience directly. But I just thought that would be really cool to put on this disc and add a little extra fun to it, so you get to see a little bit behind the curtain of what they were doing.
George Feltenstein:Uh, houseman and minnelli worked together several times on various productions and most notably, I think, the Bad and the Beautiful, which we restored and released on Blu-ray about five years ago.
George Feltenstein:At this point, maybe four somewhere between the last four to six years I lose count, especially with the pandemic in there, especially with the pandemic in there.
George Feltenstein:But you know we want to get more of not just Minnelli, but all the great filmmakers that are part of the legacy of our library want to get everything out. This is a pretty robust month in terms of eight titles, but there were many that you know I was hoping would be ready, that weren't, but we had a pretty big month with our June releases in terms of quality, and I think this is another month that has a lot of diversity and differences to it. Of course, naturally, the whiners and complainers will complain, that goes with the territory. But mostly what we receive is a lot of support and I'm very grateful for that, and we're trying to bring as much as we can from the different little corners and nooks and crannies of the library out with fine releases when that maturation point arises. So it just so happened we were able to get eight ready for this month and who knows what will happen next month.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and to your point. I mean you've got two Lauren Bacall in the same month and that's just. You know it. Just they happen to be ready to go and so they are when they're ready to go and there's a slot for them. I know sometimes there's going to be a little bit more in one month or another, but going back to the June releases, you actually had a robust month in June as well, because you have to end on the loony tune.
George Feltenstein:Right, I actually did not think that we would have as strong a July as we did in June. It was going to be really a hard act to follow, but I'm happy to say that I think this is a very solid lineup of releases that appeals to different groups in different ways, different ways. There are certainly going to be the people that will be disappointed that there isn't an animation release, and then next month, if we have two, then somebody will complain well, you didn't do this and you didn't do that. We really can't focus on those kind of thoughts. We're just out to do the best job that we can in bringing as much of the library out as we can.
George Feltenstein:And I'm very happy with what we're talking about today because I think it reflects a lot of different periods of film industry history and it's interesting to look at each film as a little story behind it, you know, and how it came to be and what it represented in the history of cinema. Specifically, with the titles we're talking about today are MGM and Warner Brothers. There are no RKO films this month, you know, or independent films, often straddling through these various eras, and it makes for interesting variety, because we're trying to serve a lot of masters, so no pun intended as we remaster and make new masters.
Tim Millard:You know, George, you said no animation this month, but you actually have going back to the cobweb here, this CinemaScope cartoon, the Egg and Jerry, in HD. Now, was that on the CinemaScope release for the Tom and Jerry's?
George Feltenstein:Yes, that's one of the it's on our CinemaScope Tom and Jerry collection.
Tim Millard:Yeah, that was a seller just out not too long ago Very, very popular, but it was great to see that on here, since this is a CinemaScope film.
George Feltenstein:Well, I didn't want to put a non-cinemascope cartoon with a cinemascope feature. I wanted to keep things wide. If people have their home theaters and they have, uh, masking, you know, with curtains and you know, I I don't know anybody who has a setup like that, I certainly don't, but I know there are people who do and I would love to have that someday. Uh, but you know, if you're gonna adjust your screen like a theater would, uh, you don't want to have to be changing aspect ratios and curtains and so forth and so on.
Tim Millard:So we tried to stay scope well, my point of that was going to be that there's pretty much always something for animation fans, because you have so many.
George Feltenstein:That's true?
Tim Millard:Yes, there's no you know, just one release full of them in July, but there's always some animation there.
George Feltenstein:But we're working on a bunch of them, just can't talk about it right now.
Tim Millard:Well, there's a lot of good stuff here in July, so why don't we go on to the next one here? There's a lot of good stuff here in July, so why don't we go on to the next one here? And that is another CinemaScope film, actually from 1953, knights of the Round Table. What can you tell us about this film?
George Feltenstein:Well, this isn't just any CinemaScope movie. This is MGM's very first CinemaScope film and it was shot at the English, the MGM British studios I should properly refer to them as in 1953. And it's beautifully shot. And Cinemascope was so new that, as MGM entered into their licensing agreement with 20th Century Fox that owned the technology, this was the first Cinemascope production they planned and it was only filmed that one way. When they made their next Cinemascope movies, when they made their next CinemaScope movies, they actually shot a bunch of them twice, once in a widescreen, which meant that they were shot for a 1.75 aspect ratio, and then they did a whole separate take of every movie in 2.55 CinemaScope. So that happened on about six films, most famously Seven brides for seven brothers, brigadoon, uh. Eventually Cinemascope's popularity was cemented so that they didn't have to do that anymore. Unlike 3d, which came and went very quickly, uhcope was basically here to stay. That aspect ratio changed a little bit and then the Panavision company came in with better lenses, but that's really what we still see today, even on films that are digitally produced. It's a 2.39 aspect ratio, but the early Scope movies were 2.55 to make room for the magnetic soundtrack.
George Feltenstein:And this is again another film that had a four-track stereophonic sound magnetic track when it opened, and our disc will be stereo. I do want to call out that it is not going to be four-channel stereo. Unfortunately, the four-track Magnetic Masters did not survive over the decades and in the 1980s, I believe, they created a left-right stereo protection and that's what we've been using ever since. We're very fortunate because there's virtually no, at least on the MGM side. There are very few films that were made with a stereophonic soundtrack. Where we don't have a stereophonic soundtrack there are a few, but on the warner brothers side there are many that had a stereophonic soundtrack. Where the stereophonic soundtrack did not survive, uh, you know, the oxide would flake off the film, the magnetic, and so a lot of the magnetic tracks did go bad and there was a very substantial effort to try and save and preserve them in the 90s and it's because of that effort that we have so much that we can go back to and work with Uh, but on nights, the round table. We don't have the four track stereo but we have left right stereo and if you press that button on your receiver it'll spread it out with surrounds that will make it nearly as good as the original. But the most important thing is that it is stereophonic. It is not mono and this was designed to be a spectacle to show off the new technology.
George Feltenstein:It's the King Arthur story and you've got Ava Gardner and a wonderful cast of supporting players and it was a huge hit for MGM. It was big at the box office. Robert Taylor as the lead. He was I believe. I've talked about this before, but his association with MGM basically extended from 1935 until 1967, like right up until his death. I don't think he was under the same long-term contract but his relationship with the company. He died of lung cancer at a relatively young age because he was a very heavy smoker and he spent more of his career at MGM than virtually anybody else, with the exception of Leo the Lion.
George Feltenstein:Mel Farrar is also in this movie and thankfully, when we were preparing this film for DVD release 22 years ago, mr Farrar was still with us. He was in his 80s. Years ago mr farrar was still with us. He was in his 80s and he came by the studio to. I don't know if it was shot here or if it was shot at his home, uh, but uh, your former boss made the arrangements to have a crew film, mr farrar, to the to the introduction for the DVD of this film, and we have that intro on the new Blu-ray, which is very exciting. We also have footage of the Gallup premiere of this movie.
George Feltenstein:This film was directed by Richard Thorpe, who was a journeyman director for MGM that could always be counted on to deliver every genre known to mankind and film responsibly Produced by Pandrew S Berman, who started his career out at RKO, producing the Fred and Ginger movies and a lot of wonderful comedies, and he moved from RKO to MGM where he spent, I would say, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s. Pandro Berman was at MGM and had quite an amazing career and there were very few films that he made as a producer that were not successful. He really had a golden touch as a producer. So to see this when we were designing the cover I wanted we always try to use original key art and we found a poster that really kicked up the CinemaScope angle and it used that phrase. That uses that phrase that I like so much the miracle, you see, that doesn't require glasses, that you see without glasses. I paraphrased incorrectly, but a lot of people wouldn't know what that means.
George Feltenstein:But anybody who's familiar with the history of the time. The thing that really kind of killed old-fashioned 3D was the problem wearing the glasses. It actually is a factor with the resurgence of 3d after avatar and suddenly everything was being made in 3d for the theaters. Uh, I know a lot of people that complained about the glasses. They never bothered me. I, I love, I love the glasses, I love 3d, but, um, that's why it didn't stick around as a format, and cinemascope really was one of the major magnetic forces that gave people something different that they couldn't get on their little 12 inch black and white televisions. So this film has continued to be popular in all media. This was out in video, cassette and laser disc and dvd, and now we have a beautiful blu-ray and we've scanned the camera negative at 4k and, uh, we have our stereophonic sound, albeit not exact to what it was originally. But we're lucky. We have what we have, because a lot of people don't have what they had.
Tim Millard:So I'm grateful for what we do have you have a robust amount of uh of extras.
George Feltenstein:You mentioned that intro and then you've got uh newsreel footage of the gala premiere and then we have a cinemascope cartoon that's from later on in the 50s, one droopy night. Now that is more of a connection with the thematics of the cartoon. This is one of the few droopy cartoons that was not directed by Tex Avery he was already gone, but I thought it was a good thing to put with this. And then I also put on a wonderful musical short called the MGM Jubilee Overture, which is the MGM Symphony Orchestra, as they called them in the film, playing a medley of songs that were associated with the studio.
George Feltenstein:And this film went into release with a different CinemaScope musical short that I tried to have available to put on this disc. And we ran into some technical issues with the film Mary Wives of Windsor Overture. That's what this movie opened with. So we'll just have to put that short on some other film when we're able to get around the technical snafus that we were facing. So at least there's a lot in the presentation that makes people feel that they're going to enjoy the disc.
Tim Millard:Yeah, Well, it's a great cast and I'm looking forward to seeing that one. Well, next we jump a few decades to the 1970s, George, for the urban drama Melinda from 1972. What can you tell us about this one?
George Feltenstein:from 1972. What can you tell us about this one? Well, this is a 1972 MGM film. That was one of many the studio was focusing in on the African-American audiences. The whole industry was, but particularly MGM, having had such success with Shaft in 1971. And this film stars Calvin Lockhart, rosalind Cash, bonetta McKee and this is the first film, the film debut, of Jim Kelly before Enter the Dragon, and you know it's a very action-packed thriller. It's really really well done.
George Feltenstein:We did very well with this on dvd, um, so we thought that it would be a good idea to bring it to blu-ray and we scan the camera negative at 4k and it's got a really great funky score that constantly permeates throughout the movie. It's not a musical by any means, but music plays a huge role in driving this story and people who really are fans of this genre really are passionate about this film. So we're happy to respond to that passion by giving it a really new, fresh presentation, which it needed, and we've done very, very well with some of the other films in that genre that we've released lately, and there will be more to come. So people will be surprised by Melinda. It needs to be better known. It's set in Chicago, not LA or New York. It's a little different and the performances are really excellent.
George Feltenstein:And what's also important about this film is a lot of the quote-unquote blaxploitation. Movies from that period were all made by non-African American filmmakers. This film was produced, directed and created by African American filmmakers and MGM was really getting behind a lot of people that didn't get a chance to get behind the camera and make a movie. And these films were all very successful at the box office because they were not expensive to make and I think people who don't know this movie in particular will be worth taking the risk in buying the disc because they'll end up watching it a lot. And also you have Jim Kelly with his karate. You know like showing what's about to happen with the dragon. And then, of course, we put out three of the hard way just recently, which I'm still thrilled about.
Tim Millard:Yeah, I think I've told you, George, each time you put these out. I just have a great time when I am watching it. I just have a great time when I am watching it. I just got to get my snacks, my popcorn, and I just know I'm in for a good night of fun movie watching.
George Feltenstein:Exactly, it's not serious cinema, it's fun movie going and I think that's really important. You need to be able to have a little bit of everything. Yeah, and whenever you hear that music, I'm looking forward to hearing that music, because that music just takes you back to the 70s. So um the wah-wah guitar.
Tim Millard:you know exactly. Well, we have a couple more here and uh, we're gonna talk about our first technicolor film uh of the day here and and that's the Prisoner of Zenda from 19.
George Feltenstein:Boy, is it Technicolor?
Tim Millard:What can you tell us about this one?
George Feltenstein:Well, this is actually the second remake of the story of the Prisoner of Zenda based on Anthony Hope's original novel. The first film which is on here. We have the silent 1922 version as an extra. And then it was remade 15 years later, most famously by David O Selznick in 1937 with Ronald Coleman and Douglas Fairbanks Jr, as a Selznick International picture, and it was a very big success. And then MGM bought the rights to that movie and the original film to remake it in Technicolor in 1952 with Stuart Granger, who was their new swashbuckling star.
George Feltenstein:This is almost a shot-for-shot remake of the 1937 black-and-white Selznick film and unfortunately the 1937 black and white Selznick film is right now in very poor shape. We have been on a search for better elements and that's why, unlike the DVD and the LaserDisc that preceded it, it's not a double feature of the 37 and the 52. And if people are saying, well, why'd they pick the remake? Well, we can't release the 1937. The 1952 remake stands on its own because it has great performances. Uh, it maintains even the original score by alfred newman was re-orchestrated by I should say, re-orchestrated by mgm's genius genius of orchestration, conrad Salinger, better known for his work in musicals. Salinger took the Alfred Newman score for the Selznick film and gave it the MGM sound for this 1952 remake. And you've got Deborah Carr and, of course, one of my favorites, james Mason. It's just a terrific, terrific cast and it's a great story.
George Feltenstein:And what I did to kind of satiate the people who are hungering for Ronald Coleman, we have two radio broadcasts, one from 1939, I think, and then one from 1949 or 50, maybe even 51, from Screen Directors Playhouse with Ronald Coleman and John Cromwell, the director, with Lewis Stone, who would later be Andy Hardy's father, and Alice Terry, who we talked about just a while ago because of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
George Feltenstein:But that's on here as a bonus. It is standard definition. It is not restored but it's there for you to see if you like it, and we have the radio shows and we have a beautiful trailer. But the technicolor in this is sumptuous. It's one of those rare that we've talked about a few times, one of those rare films with the three-strip Technicolor where the negatives were safety film, didn't have to bring them across the country. They're in our refrigerated vault on the lot and they've been meticulously realigned using our patented process so that we can have the sharpest technicolor known to mankind. So I think people are really going to be knocked out when they see how great this film looks and sounds.
Tim Millard:Right, yeah, and I don't know if you mentioned Jane Greer. She's also in here.
George Feltenstein:I didn't mention Jane Greer, but shame on me for not doing so, because we love Jane Greer.
Tim Millard:Always great to see her as well. So, what a cast. Looking forward to that one, because I love every Technicolor that Warner Archive puts out. Just the best. Every time I see Technicolor, if you're a fan of the film, you're going to know. Oh, I got to get this version.
George Feltenstein:It's really exciting that we're able to do these things. What technology has provided us gives you a chance to see the film even better than when it opened, because a wet lab couldn't align the three Technicolor records the way we can now. Lab couldn't align the three Technicolor records the way we can now, so it's sharper than ever before and the colors are just explosive and you have those rich blacks and beautiful highlights and people are going to love it. It's gorgeous. I've seen the test disc and it's a wow yeah.
Tim Millard:Well, I'm guessing there's going to be a lot of excitement for this next film. We're going to talk about George. They died with their boots on from 1941. What can you tell us about this film of?
George Feltenstein:General Custer and it's the last of the eight pairings of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, and this is directed by Raoul Walsh. It is an action-packed spectacle. It has wonderful performances, it has magnificent music by Max Steiner. It's really a quintessential Warner Brothers film from the 1940s and it's one of Flynn's best performances and it tugs at your heart. It is exciting and what we found in our work on this film, when we are working from the original camera negative, very often we find that there are certain sections that are highly damaged and we'll have to go to a second generation nitrate, lavender, fine grain, and this film was no different that we had to go to other elements for certain shots and what we found were and it's not a lot, but we found a few extra minutes of footage that had been left out of the final release of the film to cut it down for time. So is it going to be revelatory? Is it substantial, like rhapsody in blue? No, um, but if you can get a little more of Errol Flynn and Raoul Walsh and Warner Brothers from 1941, you want that. And we tried working with our existing safety elements on this several years ago and it just was not what it should be um. So we stopped down and said, until we can get the negative and until we can really restore this to make it look spectacular as it deserves to look, we're going to put this on the back burner. We've had to do that with a lot of films, but it's worth it when we finally can do it right and I've been very excited about this. It's just taken a very long time.
George Feltenstein:One of the nice things about this is that I would say going back around 2004,. If my memory is serving me correctly, that was when we started doing more of the Warner Night the movies, with my good friend Leonard Maltin hosting and explaining to people. You're going to be sitting through a newsreel, a short of the era, a cartoon of the era, a trailer of the era, explaining what we were doing with Warner and I at the movies, a concept that actually started not very effectively, but it was started on videocassette at the very early 80s when Warner Home Video was still in New York, but it wasn't followed through and built upon and it wasn't done the way that we could do it when we approached it in come and come back to the lot and host a Warner Knight the movies. Now it's Warner Knight the movies 1942. But you'll see, the movie has a copyright of 1941. It's Casablanca time. This movie opened in New York at the end of 1941 but it didn't have its general release until January of 1942. So it's really a 1941 movie. That's the year of its copyright, but most people saw it in 1942.
George Feltenstein:So most of the extra material the shorts and the newsreels and the cartoon and the trailer for another movie with trailer for All Through the night with bogart, which we hope to bring to blu-ray soon um, it just gives you that whole sense of what it was like to be at the movies 83 years ago. And you have the choice of watching all the individual pieces. Or you can play all, and it starts with leonard's intro, takes you through all the individual pieces, or you can play all and it starts with Leonard's intro, takes you through all the pieces, then brings you right to the feature. So the disc is programmed in such a way that people can really choose the way they want to watch the whole movie. And this movie is two hours and 21 minutes in its current form, just about two minutes longer than it was before we added in the additional footage we found. So it's a nice little, little, tiny bit more.
George Feltenstein:If you get any more of these people doing what they did so well, it's like a gift from above. So I'm very excited that we're able to bring this to the public. This is one of the big ones, and there are more of the big ones on the way. They just take an awful long time to do so. Those of you who are waiting for those A titles underlined. They're coming. Just be patient, yeah, yeah.
Tim Millard:Well, george, we have one more film we're going to talk about and it's also very exciting, and it's a Technicolor release, that is, two Weeks with Love from 1950. What can you tell us about this one?
George Feltenstein:Well, the thing that makes Two Weeks with Love probably most notable is that, in a kind of important supporting role, uh, an 18 year old girl named Debbie Reynolds uh, sang a song that at that point was about 50 years old, cause this is a turn of the 20th century movie. Uh, she sang a song with Carlton Carpenter called the Abba Dabba honeymoon, and it ended up being a million-seller single record. It was a huge, huge hit and it put Debbie on the map at MGM enough that that eventually led to her getting cast as Kathy Seldon in Singing in the Rain. She was adorable as Jane Powell's younger sister, and she and carlton carpenter made a wonderful pair. So that's the magic moment from the movie. But this is really jane powell's movie. This was the first jane powell movie where she was 20. I guess she was 20 when it was filmed and probably 21 when it was released, cause she was born in 1929, I believe April 1st, if I'm not mistaken. I may be wrong about that, but this was kind of like her first more adult.
George Feltenstein:This was kind of her first more adult, a little more adult role, and her leading man is Ricardo Montalban, who we had seen in movies with Esther Williams and we've talked more recently about him being in Mystery Street and Border Incident in dramatic roles. But MGM was building him up to be a leading man and even though he had a really good singing voice, there is a number from the Chocolate Soldier operetta in this movie called my Hero and the sound coming out of Ricardo's mouth is not Ricardo singing but it's actually Fernando Lamas, who also would become an MGM star and would also marry Esther Williams. And you know there's all this Ricardo versus Fernando. It was like a big joke at the studio as well as among the people. They all got along, they were very friendly and whatnot, but it's Fernando's voice coming out of Ricardo's mouth for the my Hero number. There's a lot of really great songs in this movie. It's a little bit like Meet Me in St Louis in that it's a nostalgia movie, you know, going back 50 years earlier than when it was made. When it was made and it has a great cast, great supporting cast, and it was produced by Joe Pasternak. Joe Pasternak's musicals were not as sophisticated as the ones produced by Arthur Freed, but they often did better at the box office and they had just a much more populist appeal and on this disc we're carrying over a lot of the extras that we had on the DVD because one of them is extremely important and that is Jane Powell sitting down for an interview with Robert Osborne.
George Feltenstein:I'm going to say that interview might be 30 years old by now. There eventually was a series on TCM for many years with Bob Osborne interviewing people called Private Screenings, but they hadn't settled on the name yet, and so this was called Real Memories with Jane Powell. But she was. I had the opportunity to meet her a few times. She lived in New York so I didn't get to know her the way I got to know most of the other MGM alumni that lived here, but she was a lovely, down-to-earth, warm-hearted person and she was very friendly with Bob Osborne. They were very close personal friends. So this interview is delightful.
George Feltenstein:We have a Tex Avery cartoon on here, garden Gopher, which is in HD. We have a Pete Smith short Crashing the Movies, and then we have an industry short subject called Screen Actors. So it's a loaded disc with a lot of fun. But most importantly, it's a loaded disc with a lot of fun. But most importantly, how the film looks now scanned in 4K from the Technicolor material is just a delight. So that is July 29th. It's a pretty sterling lineup of eight movies.
Tim Millard:Yes, I love the fact that you have a lot of variety. You've got the 70s urban drama, you've got these highly anticipated or long-waited-for films with Earl Flynn, and you've got some different ones like Reign Star.
George Feltenstein:We've got two swashbucklers in one month, yeah right, and Earl Flynn's in the month, but he's not swashbuckling and that's what he's most famous for. That's true, right.
Tim Millard:Yeah, it's a lot of good stuff for their late July there. So well as always, george, it's so much fun to hear what you have to say about what's coming and all the extras that you load these discs with as well. So looking forward to it when we get a chance to review these and go over them a little bit later this summer.
George Feltenstein:As do I. In about six or eight weeks, we'll be talking about the movies after you've seen them, and I always enjoy hearing what you have to say after you've gotten to see them all. It's one of the most fun things about how we get together and talk about these movies, yeah, yeah.
Tim Millard:Thanks for coming on about these movies. Yeah, yeah, thanks for coming on, george.
George Feltenstein:Thank you, tim, always a pleasure.
Tim Millard:For those who would like more information about the films announced today, be sure to check out our Facebook page. In our Warner Archive Facebook group, you can find links to those and all of our social media sites in the podcast show notes. Facebook is also the best place to get pre-order links for these titles when they become available, and 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 all of the great releases that the Warner Archive has coming up Until next time. You've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed.