Warner Archive June Part 1 Announcement: Including Letty Lynton and a Hanna-Barbera Series PLUS Remembering Ted Turner

In Part 1 of our June Announcement podcast, George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive announces four films releasing in June from the Warner Archive, including the much anticipated Letty Lynton (1932). We also review one Hanna-Barbera TV Series. PLUS George shares his memories of his former boss, Ted Turner, who loved classic films, and was integral to the ongoing restoration and preservation of the MGM Library.

Part 2 will announce the remaining five films releasing in June. Coming soon.

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Transcript

Tim Millard 0:12

Hello and welcome to the Extras. I'm Tim Millard, your host, and joining me is George Feltenstein to announce the June Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. Hi, George. Hello, Tim.

George Feltenstein 0:22

Great to be with you as always.

Remembering Ted Turner

Tim Millard 0:25

Well, George, May was loaded, but June is really loaded because you have 10 releases this month, and many of them very highly anticipated releases. So we agreed that we should probably break this into two different podcasts. So we'll talk about five today and then five in another podcast coming very soon. Wonderful. But before we do that, there is there's something I think we we agreed that we want to talk about, and that is the passing of uh somebody very important to Warner Brothers, to TCM, to the Warner Archive, of course, and I think you know to you, and that's Ted Turner.

George Feltenstein 1:03

Yes, absolutely. I knew Mr. Turner had not been well. Uh, I knew he was failing, and I wasn't shocked when I found out, but I was very, very, very sad. At the same time, I share the thoughts of a lot of people of being grateful to him for what he did. I had the good fortune to meet him a few times. I think the most meaningful time I spent with him was after he had left Time Warner and had kind of severed ties with the company. But there was an event that TCM was having, this is probably around 2009, 2010, and uh we had lunch together, and he was just so pleased to know how things were going with what was his library. But I think the thing that's most important is that when Ted Turner bought MGM, he fully had the dream of owning the movie studio, helping it to be rebuilt, helping it to thrive. And yes, a big motivating factor to him in purchasing the library was to own Gone with the Wind. That is absolutely true. But most importantly, he wanted to bring it to its former glory if he could. And he was depending on the success of certain films in 1986 to be at the box office enough to help keep cash flowing in. One of those films was Poltergeist II, the other side. Another was running scared with Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal, both of which were only modest performers at the box office. So he was forced to have to sell back the name MGM, the production unit, which meant the people that were making new movies. So everything from Poltergeist to Forward was sold back to Kirk Akorian along with the name MGM, and then the lot and the film lab were sold to Lorimar. So Ted had to change the name of his company, which was MGM Entertainment Company, to Turner Entertainment Company. One of the most important things he did when he had to make that second transaction was he needed to have someone run Turner Entertainment Company. And he chose a wonderful gentleman whom I had the pleasure of working for during a brief tenure I had at Turner Entertainment Company, and that was Roger Mayer. He was the president of Turner Entertainment Company. And more importantly, he was the father of the film preservation program begun at MGM in the early 1960s. And Ted supported Roger, or as he called him Raj. He supported Roger and the film preservation program that had started at MGM and continued to fund it all through the years at Turner Entertainment Company. When Time Warner bought Turner Broadcasting, Ted was the co-chairman, and Warner Brothers became the owner of Turner Entertainment Company. But Ted was very active running Turner Broadcasting as he always had, and he was, you know, very vital in the operation of the company. When the unfortunate merger occurred with AOL, those folks cast him aside, which was very painful for him on a personal level and very disappointing to all of the people that honored him. And people who worked for him really were very fond of him. And he was a very unique person. But for film people and people who love classic film, one of the things he did that eventually led to the formation of TNT, followed by the formation of Turner Classic Movies, was that once he owned that library, he had every film that was legally clear transferred onto videotape at a time when most film was shown on television using 16 millimeter syndication prints. So there was this huge uptick in quality. We look at those masters now, almost 40 years later, and shriek in horror. But at the time, it was a big step forward. And using the core library as his base led to the founding of TNT on October 1st, 1988. And that premiered with Gone with the Wind and the Gone with the Wind of documentaries about making a film's making of a legend Gone with the Wind, which Ted funded. And then Ted funded the six-hour documentary MGM When the Lion Roars. So he supported continued film preservation as well as remastering and improving things. And then in 1994, the founding of Turner Classic Movies, which brought a huge swarth of classic films, not just from what he owned, but what was owned by other studios, because TCM primarily programs from what is now the Warner Brothers Library, but they show films from every studio and from every country. And he was very proud of that. I think he was as proud of TCM as he was of founding CNN. He was a maverick, he was a marvelous human being, incredible in his charitable work. And I think he will be missed by the many, many people whose lives he touched. He really was, in a sense, the American dream because his father's little advertising business turned into this mega media operation. And the fact that he kept Roger in charge of the library. And even when funds and money were tight, he never backed down on his commitment to fund the preservation. And I'm happy to say that that only grew as Warner Brothers became the owner of Turner Entertainment Company. So all of us who love film owe a great deal to Ted Turner, and I just feel grateful to have had a little interaction with him in my professional life.

Tim Millard 8:36

Yeah, and just to clarify, I think for for some people who may not know this, but you were working at MGM Home Entertainment. You were running that division, were you not? So you worked for Mr. Turner through Mr. Meyer, uh, but you you did work for him for a number of years before that sale to Warner Brothers.

George Feltenstein 8:58

Yes, I started at MGMUA Home Video in New York as a director of programming. By that time, MGMUA Home Video was part of the Kirk Kerkorian-owned MGMUA communications. This is post the Turner transaction. But we had the home video rights to Turner Entertainment Company's MGM and pre-49 Warner Brothers library. I eventually became the head of the division and was so for about seven years. I was responsible for the distribution globally on video cassettes and laser discs of all those films, television shows, and not forget the cartoons. So it was very much a partnership. I moved with the library. That's really what happened. And uh I've been very grateful to be here and carry on the preservation work that was so important to Turner Entertainment Company and remains important to Warner Brothers. Yeah.

Night and Day

Tim Millard 10:04

And I just wanted to highlight that, George, because I always want people to know when you listen to George on the extras, it's it's a real privilege because you're hearing from somebody who has been knee deep in this library for decades. And I think uh this is a was a moment where we could kind of talk a little bit about that. So well, let's get though to the announcements of the Blu-rays, because that's what people are really, really excited for today that they want to hear from you. And first up, we're gonna talk about Night and Day from 1946. What can you tell us about this Technicolor film?

George Feltenstein 10:42

Well, I'm glad you said Technicolor because it's really one of the stars of the show, along with the incredible music of Cole Porter and Cary Grant and Alexis Smith as the leads. This is, as they said in the credits, based on the career of Cole Porter, and I'll get into that in a moment. But the reason I brought up the Technicolor was that the DVD and prior to that, video cassette releases of this film looked really awful. Uh, they were out of alignment, the color was all over the place. It was painful to have to see the film that way. And thanks to our proprietary technology and working with TechnoColor Negatives, and thankfully the original TechnoColor negatives were all available to us. We scanned them at 4K, realign them, and now have this beautiful high-definition master that just almost looks like 3D, really, because it's so crystal clear and the colors pop and it's beautiful. This is allegedly a biography of Cole Porter, truly one of the greatest songwriters of the Great American Songbook in the 20th century, but it is much more about fashioning a story with skeletal portions of his life on which songs can be hung. Right. There are some aspects of the film's story that are accurate. Cole Porter did come from Indiana. He came from a fairly well-off family. He went to Yale University. This is shown in the film. He wrote a bulldog song cheering on their football team while he was there. Monty Woley, who people love from The Man Who Came to Dinner, was a real life friend of Cole Porter, and he's in the movie. Cole Porter did marry a beautiful socialite named Linda, and Linda is portrayed in the movie by Alexis Smith in the mid to late 1930s after he had established his success on Broadway as a composer and just started also writing for the movies. He had a terrible horseback riding accident in which he lost the use of his legs. I believe his legs were crushed. Later in his life, the injury led to uh him having to be amputated and a decline of his health in general. He passed away in 1964. But there are aspects of Porter's life that they couldn't portray on the screen because he was homosexual. And his wife was there for multiple purposes, including the fact that there was a genuine love and affection between the two of them, but it was what people did in those days in order to dealing with societal pressures. But the film obviously couldn't tell all of that kind of the story. So, as was not uncommon in screen biographies, not just composer biographies, there was a lot of creative license, and that's why the credits read based on the career of Cole Porter. The film is filled with Cole Porter songs. There are wonderful performances of those songs by people like Jane Wyman, who is a wonderful singing voice, even though a lot of people think of her as a dramatic actress. Cary Grant had a pretty nice voice himself, and he sings a great You're the Top with Ginny Sims, who was a big band singer in the 40s. And there are just lovely, completely anachronistic uses of Cole Porter music throughout the film. But you have the benefit of Warner Brothers spending millions of dollars on the movie, wonderful choreography, dance numbers, beautiful technicolor photography, Michael Curtiz at the helm, and the Warner Brothers music department. And the one thing that is quite accurate and preserved on film thanks to this movie is Mary Martin, who later became a Broadway legend. She got her big break doing My Heart Belongs to Daddy in a show called Leave It to Me on Broadway in 1938. And that started off her career. She ended up coming to Hollywood for a while and then settled on Broadway for decades thereafter. But thanks to Night and Day, her performance of that song is preserved for time. It was filmed about eight years after she had originally done it. And a little trivia point when she did My Heart Belongs to Daddy and Leave It to Me on Broadway, one of the chorus boys performing along with her was a guy getting his first Broadway gig named Gene Kelly. So there are photographs of Mary Martin doing the number with chorus boy Gene Kelly visible. So that's a little bit of a notoriety. But the film is very entertaining. It was very successful at the box office. The fact that the plot was highly fictitious creates a little bit of an irony because in 2004 there was a more true to accuracy biography made of Porter called The Lovely, with Kevin Klein playing Cole Porter. And the film was not successful, and the reviews were pretty unanimously poor. But several people in the review said, you know, as bad as Night and Day was in being unfaithful to Cole Porter's story, at least it was a better film. And I'm paraphrasing someone's review, but that was that was more than one reviewer that thought that. This is great entertainment. It's an important film in the history of Warner Brothers, Curtiz for Cary Grant. I think it was his first film in Technicolor. And it's just wonderful to look at with this new restoration, and we're delighted to be releasing it.

Tim Millard 17:03

You know, you you tell me a film has got Cary Grant in it, and I'm gonna sit right up, you know, because he's so wonderful in everything that he does. I uh I'm really looking forward to seeing this. And of course, Curtiz, you know, what can you say? We talk about him all the time. He's such an integral part of Warner Brothers. Now, you also have a nice amount of extras on here, George. We should probably talk about.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

George Feltenstein 17:22

Sure. This is a case where we've done something that our loyal, devoted customer base has been vocal about, is they like the extra features that were on the DVD to be carried over to the Blu-ray so they don't have to hold on to their DVD. So we have a two-reel Technicolor short musical Movie Land. We have a one-reel musical short called Desi Arnaz and his orchestra, which was Desi and his orchestra five years before I Love Lucy brought him national fame. Uh, as a matter of fact, this short was re-released to theaters in the 50s after I Love Lucy hit the homes of millions of Americans. Warner Brothers re-released the short to theaters because of Desi's fame in the 50s. But we've got that there. And then we have one of my favorite uh Warner Brothers cartoons, The Big Snooze, which was one of the last cartoons with Bob Clampett at the helm, and he's not credited on the cartoon because he had left the studio. But it's a great package for a great Warner Night at the movies, and I hope people enjoy the beautiful Blu-ray.

Tim Millard 18:32

That's terrific. Well, next we have 30 Seconds Over Tokyo from 1944. What can you tell us about this war drama?

George Feltenstein 18:59

Well, this is based on a true story. Uh, it's about Jimmy Doolittle and making those first flights over Tokyo during World War II that were incredibly daring, and they had been written about, but MGM put all their might behind this production with Mervyn LeRoy directing, and what's really fascinating about the film are the special effects, because obviously they weren't going to be flying over Tokyo to film this movie. So the action sequences that build to this climax of the big attack on Tokyo are fascinating from a cinematic point of view. And then you have this outstanding cast, Spencer Tracy, Robert Walker, Van Johnson, and just before he became a huge star, Robert Mitchum. He's in this movie. And Phyllis Thaxter is also in the cast. It's just a class A, wonderful World War II movie, and it really takes time to explore the bravery of soldiers, you know, fighting for freedom and fighting for our country. And it is one of the probably ten best World War II movies made during that era. You know, everybody wanted to support the war effort. People needed to see that we were making some progress and hopefully ending this horrible, horrible conflict. And this film was a massive success financially and critically. Uh, and audiences loved it. The popularity was reflected when we announced the release that I was bombarded with uh notifications and messages. Oh, I've been waiting for this on Blu-ray. And there are many other great World War II movies that will be following that have yet to make the leap to blue. We know that there are still many boxes that need to be checked in that department, but this is a tribute to our fighting men during World War II. It's a tribute to MGM's dedication to the war effort, the Hollywood industry at large's dedication to the home front supporting the war effort. And it's not a documentary, it is a you know, it's a narrative film, but it really is a timepiece to bring you back to what that period was like. And Spencer Tracy is Jimmy Doolittle, enormous heralded war hero to the point where his name was known by so many people because of his heroic action. And this film captures it all, and we're delighted to be bringing it to Blu-ray.

Tim Millard 22:07

This is just such a great story. It's a great film. I'm so glad it's making it to Blu ray. Um I'm so looking forward to seeing it in HD. And you also have a nice amount of extras on here as well.

Letty Lynton

George Feltenstein 22:18

Yes, we have uh two MGM shorts, one called Ode to Victory, and another one called The Lady Fights Back. These are the same shorts that were on the DVD release. So uh that leads to Mouse Trouble, the 1944 Tom and Jerry cartoon that's so wonderful, which has been on other releases before. We used it on Bathing Beauty, but I didn't want to disappoint the people who want what was the DVD and what it came with replicated. And when we can do that, we try to make people happy by making it a nice clean break and a new start. And then we're delighted. I I think people will really be impressed by this movie, especially if they haven't seen it. And I'm sure a lot of people, a lot of people haven't seen it, given that it is 82 years old.

Tim Millard 23:16

Well, I had the good fortune of being at the TCM Film Festival, and I have my TCM Cup right here, George. The highlight of the festival for me was seeing you introducing this next film we're going to talk about, and that is Letty Linton from 1932. What can you tell us about the release of this film?

George Feltenstein 23:38

This is a film that basically has been out of circulation for at least 90 years. Legal circulation. Yes. There was illicit behavior by bad people engaging in piracy, but what they were basically making available out there was unwatchable. We finally got all legal issues untangled and were able to release this film. It's based on a true life story that happened in Scotland in the late 1800s. That was the subject of many different works. But this film gave Joan Crawford a chance to really show, for lack of a better word, her growth as an actress. If you compare her performance in this film from 1932 with some of her films from just 1931, you see the growth. And I think she was always good, but her maturity as an actress is really on display in this film in a way that is markedly different and deeper in terms of her performance as an actress than the works that came before. Some of that has to do with the fact that she was so committed to her work and she wanted to improve as an actress. The two people who got the best parts at MGM in the early 30s were Garbo and Norma Shearer. And Joan Crawford felt very often that she was, you know, like the third choice, if you will. There were other people who were stars, you know, there at the time, but her performance here, both the critics as well as the audiences, really responded to her. It is a story about a woman who has an affair with a really despicable individual, and she's heading home to America from being overseas. And while shipboard, she meets a wonderful fellow who is played wonderfully by the underappreciated Robert Montgomery. I hope we will continue to be able to make more of Mr. Montgomery's films available on Blu-ray because he's woefully underrepresented. And he was one of the big male leading men at MGM. He made so many films, they kept him working all the time. And he could handle comedy as well as drama. This film is most definitely a drama, and it has all the emotions that go with that, but there's also a touch of whimsy, I don't know if whimsy is quite the right word, but there is a little bit of an appropriate sense of comedy within certain performances. Not not Crawford, but Robert Montgomery and May Robes in particular, there's just some fun to the way the film is put together. Now, when you saw the film at TCM, was that your experience?

Tim Millard 27:20

Oh, yeah. I mean, they bring a light touch, which to a very serious kind of story. And I think that does really help uh balance it.

George Feltenstein 27:30

Most importantly, this film was made before the implementation of the production code. I don't want to spoil the plot, but if this film was made after the production code, it wouldn't have had a happy ending. We're also fortunate because there were legal complications, this film easily could have been dismissed, destroyed. Oh well, there are legal issues. But no, as MGM was beginning their preservation program to take the nitrate films and convert them to safety stock, and this started in the early 1960s and carried on for more than a decade. Letty Linton was protected onto Safety Film. And even though legal issues prevented us from distributing the film until now, the film was protected. And we had film elements and audio elements to work from so that we could create a beautiful new Blu-ray master. The film is 94 years old. You saw it on the big screen. How did you think it looked?

Tim Millard 28:44

It's amazing. It's amazing. And the just to spend a minute about that premiere, the anticipation in the air was electric, and nobody walked out of that theater disappointed. We'll just leave it at that because we're going to get into it more and more, but we don't want to give too much away. But what people have been waiting for, they're now going to get.

George Feltenstein 29:08

And beautifully done. Yeah. You know, I mean, the work of, again, broken record, Warner Brothers motion picture imaging, the time that was taken with this, this is one of those films where the original negative burnt in the fire. So we're working with second, third generation elements in order to bring everything together. But had it not been for executives, particularly, I say his name all the time, but it can't be underscored enough. What Roger Mayer, as the assistant studio manager and head of the film lab at MGM, and was associated with the library for 25 years, what he did in making sure that these films were all protected onto Safety Film is the reason we can see Letty Linton today. And as you experienced in the theater, it was like watching a brand new print that had been struck off the camera negative. It was beautiful.

Tim Millard 30:11

George, the anticipation of all the still photos you've seen of Adrian's costumes, to then see her wearing them in the film, it's it's such a pleasure.

George Feltenstein 30:21

That's uh we we could talk more about this when we after you review and we get in depth about it, but the MGM look, which people talk about a lot, Adrian's incredible costumes, Cedric Gibbons' incredible art direction, the set direction, the direction of the film itself by Clarence Brown, it's all top-notch. And what made this film famous was the fact that it was, I think, the first time this was ever done where MGM allowed a reproduction to be made of one of Crawford's Letty Linton costumes. And I believe they sold like 50,000 dresses at Macy's in New York. I don't know if those numbers are true and if it was just Macy's, but the fact that women all over the country were buying these dresses so they could be like Crawford, it made an incredible impression on everyone. And the other thing that is notable is within 18 days of this film's opening, in New York opened MGM's groundbreaking all-star achievement, Grand Hotel. So Crawford's ascendancy to serious superstardom was sealed by the one-to-punch of Lady Linton and Grand Hotel. And we're so grateful to finally bring this film out. I mentioned this when I introduced the film at TCM, but the files I have on this film in terms of my trying to get it liberated, go back to at least 1998. There is more to that, but it's a very long paper trail. And uh we're here, people will be able to own it on their shelves with great quality, and it's a testament to everybody at MGM that worked on the film, and especially to Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, and Clarence Brown. Yeah.

unknown 32:33

Yeah.

Tim Millard 32:34

And we'll have more on this film coming on the extras, where we'll go even deeper into some of that work you've done over the last decades, George. Uh, and I think that'll be interesting to people. But one thing that I really did want to point out here is this fantastic new extra that you're putting on this Blu-ray.

Start the Revolution Without Me

George Feltenstein 32:55

I am very, very excited about this because little more than 20 years ago, we started to have a very small creative fund, shall we say, that we used to partner in the production of documentaries as well as to fund the scoring of silent films. And during this period, particularly with the documentaries, we would partner frequently with TCM, which at that time was part of the overall Time Warner umbrella, but we operated really as completely separate companies at that time. We would partner with TCM, the BBC, PBS, and even a few others in creating documentaries that primarily drew from clips in our library. And I had the great good fortune of being one of the executive producers of these kind of productions. And one of the last ones we did was a film uh written, produced, and directed by Robert Trachtenberg, incredibly talented, wonderful filmmaker and photographer. Robert made Irving Thalberg Prince of Hollywood. This was in 2005. And there were some rights issues that precluded us from ever using it as a bonus on a home video release. But happily those constrictions have been eliminated, and this is the first time that it's ever been available on home video, and specifically, it will be the core main big extra on Letty Linton. And the reason is that Irving Thalberg, as head of production at MGM, specifically had oversight over almost every film up until a certain point. And then probably about a year after Letty Linton, he had oversight on specific productions. L. Mare had brought in some other people, including his son-in-law, David O'Selznick, to have their own production units. Fallberg's contribution to cinema is just amazing. His name is not on the film because he refused to have any credit on any of the films that he was involved in. And the only time you saw his name on the screen from MGM was after he passed away. He died at age 37. He had a very weak heart, and it was almost a given that he would not have a long life. But he worked and worked and loved his work so much, which Robert captures so brilliantly in the documentary. He was finally given screen credit with the 1937 release of The Good Earth with Paul Muni and Louise Reiner, another good candidate to get the upgrade to blue. There is a memorial card at the beginning of The Good Earth that was dedicating the film to its producer, Irving Thalberg. So I get very emotional about the Thalberg documentary because his story needed to be told with accuracy. And there have been many books written about Thalberg, Thalberg and Mayer, you know, the history of MGM that aren't necessarily effective or accurate, some more than others. But Robert's documentary knocked them out of the park. And I'll just also make reference to Robert did a documentary with us on George Kugor, which unfortunately can't be distributed because of expired third-party licenses. He did an amazing documentary on Cary Grant that played at Cannes Film Festival called Cary Grant A Class Apart, another victim of expired third-party licenses that we can't afford to renew. So it's really gratifying to me on a personal as well as a professional level to find a good home for this wonderful documentary that thankfully now is legally cleared to distribute. So that's the main extra. But there's more because we've added some vintage 1930s radio appearances, as it were, performances of Miss Crawford on different programs. There are two episodes of MGM's Good News program, which was Good News of 1938, Good News of 1939. It's kind of like the way they did with cars, you know, like the 1982 Volvo, they'd start advertising it in September of 81. Well, in the fall of 1938, it was good news of 1939. So the Good News Radio program was MGM's really sincere attempt to team with Maxwell House Coffee to bring varied entertainment into people's homes. The only reason the radio show stopped being MGM's good news was that the theater owners didn't think that having MGM stars like Joan Crawford and Clark Gable on the radio was good for people going to the movie theaters. So the theater owners kind of kiboshed MGM's continued support. There was one more season of the show without MGM involved, and then it went away. There are great shows. We have two episodes with Joan Crawford on the broadcast. Then we have her in a Lux Radio Theater version of A Doll's House by Ibsen. During her marriage to Franchone, he was trying to make her more aware of and learned of like the classics. And so she was challenging herself as an actress by doing that. And then there's an episode of a show called The Silver Theater. The specific episode is the train ride, and then uh Screen Guild Players, we've used a lot of Screen Guild broadcasts as adaptations of films, but when that Screen Guild Players radio show first started out, they were doing original works and variety shows, and there's a radio play called None Shall Part Us. So I think there are five radio shows on this disc, in addition to the Thalberg documentary, not to take anything away from the film itself. Our trailer holdings of MGM films really start to solidify toward the end of 32 and into 1933. There are sporadic ones. This is really reflective of the preservation program. If the nitrate existed and it was on the shelf at MGM, it was transferred to Safety Film and protected. It's very likely that the Letty Linton nitrate trailer decomposed and turned to brown powder before they had a chance to protect it. So we don't have it. I don't think anybody's got it. But the most important thing is the film is there and looking wonderful. And the supplements will certainly be attractive, especially the documentary of Thalberg.

Tim Millard 41:18

Yeah. Yeah, it's a real home run of a release with all of those extras. Well, that leads us now to a 1970 comedy start, The Revolution Without Me. What can you tell us about this film?

George Feltenstein 41:33

This is a cult favorite film. This is Gene Wilder after his breakthrough performance in the producers, you know, and he had had a small part in Bonnie and Clyde, but then it registered. His career was really on the upswing, as was the career of his co-star in this film, Donald Sutherland. And this is Donald Sutherland right on the heels of MASH. So you had two really big stars. It's a French Revolution Arce. And it was produced and directed by Bud Jorkin. Bud Yorkin is probably best known as the creative partner of the film's executive producer, Norman Lear. Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin formed Tandem Productions, and they were responsible for a television series that made a little bit of an impact on popular culture called All in the Family a year later. Start the Revolution Without Me is one of those movies that people who know it quoted and they really love it. So this is long overdue for the upgrade to Blu-ray. It's a 4K scan off the camera negative. It looks wonderful. And it was one of those rare films where I think a year or two after it opened, Warner Brothers, the studio re-released the film theatrically wide, based on the continuing growing popularity and success of Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland because their star just continued to rise. So there may have been people that didn't see Start the Revolution without me that would want to be aware of it. So before they sold it to television, they gave it another theatrical run. It's been now 56 years since the movie opened. And it's really very clever. It's very funny. And it's a brisk, tight 90 minutes. And it's the kind of parody that actually started to become more popular, I'd say with like Mel Brooks' films and movies like Airplane and the spoofs that started to become more popular. This takes on the French Revolution in a very funny way, and it's just very clever and very enjoyable. I've always loved this film. I'm so glad we're getting to bring it out.

Tim Millard 44:15

Yeah, so many people who love that era, and these actors are just over the moon about this.

Dastardly & Muttley In Their Flying Machines: The Complete Series

George Feltenstein 44:21

I put some French themed uh Looney Tunes on here.

Tim Millard 44:26

So that's the Scarlet Pumpernickel and the Napoleon Bunny part uh for the cartoons and then the trailer.

George Feltenstein 44:33

So And uh there's one other piece that we're hoping to be able to include that I can't speak about it now because it's not definite, but there may be an extra added extra on this if uh we're able to work it out.

unknown 44:50

Yeah.

Tim Millard 44:51

Well, George, that leads us to a uh animation release for June. And I know a lot of people are very, very excited about this, but what can you tell us about the Hanna Barbera series, Dastardly and Muttly in their Flying Machines, the complete series from 1969 to 1970?

George Feltenstein 45:11

Well, this is one of two spin-offs. You know, for an animated series to actually have a spin-off, that was rare. Yeah. But Hanna Barbera had two spin-off series from Wacky Races. Wacky Races was so popular that they did a spin-off series with Dick Dastardly and Muttley, and Paul Winchell, who was a favorite of mine growing up, especially because of his voice work in animated cartoons, as well as he being the ventriloquist of Jerry Mahoney and Nakolayad Smith. Just such a talented guy. He's the voice of Dick Dastardly. The other spin-off series, which I hope we can release someday, is the Perils of Penelope Pit Stop. Of all the different characters on Wacky Races, they were the ones that emerged as the real uh heroes. So uh there were 17 half hours done for Saturday morning broadcast, and they have been seen since then many times, and I believe there's two segments in each half hour program, meaning twenty-two minutes or so when the commercials are cut out. These are 4K scans off the camera negative, so they look as they should. Are people really always try to use you know, animation cells and reference materials so that they make sure that they look proper because some of the earlier video iterations played fastball with color correction and they were too bright and they just didn't look right. So these look terrific, and I think people are really gonna enjoy adding this to their ever-growing Hanna Barbaric collection.

Tim Millard 47:07

Oh, yeah, so much excitement uh for this. Uh so I think people are gonna be really happy. Now you put some extras also on this release. Did you want to go through those?

George Feltenstein 47:16

These are DVD legacy extras. Okay. These were put together for the DVD release 20-some odd years ago, and there are also two commentaries on two specific episodes. There are animation historian commentaries. So all of that is being carried over, and some excerpts from various episodes were put together to kind of collect all the jokes. So it's it just adds to the fun. And it's a very nice package, and even though it's on two discs, because we want that great bitrate, the price is the same as a single disc.

Tim Millard 47:59

Well, as I mentioned, we'll have another podcast going over the rest of the five releases in June. We just went over the first five, and there are ten total for the month, so we've split that out so you can look for that coming soon. If you haven't yet, you may want to subscribe. That way you get all of these 10 key right away and you're alerted when a new one is ready. I want to thank everyone who has been loyally subscribing to us and who leads reviews. We always appreciate those as well. And as of right now, there are no pre-orders, but we always post those as soon as they become available, so you can look for those in the podcast show notes. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly upset about plastic stuff.