4 Classics Now on Blu-ray: An Act of Violence, Hitchcock’s Screwball Comedy "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," "The Man I Love" with six more minutes restored, and "The Shining Hour"

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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.
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They're released on digital DVD, blu-ray and 4K or your favorite streaming site.
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I'm Tim Millard, your host, and joining me is George Feltenstein to review four June Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive.
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Hi George, Hi Tim, Welcome back from your well-earned vacation.
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Thank you very much.
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It felt like a little extra long vacation for me this time, but well-needed.
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I feel well-rested and I was excited to come back and finish watching up the June Blu-rays we're going to talk about today.
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I'd already seen a few of them, but I couldn't get them all in before my vacation started there for the 4th of July holiday.
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But it was fun to come back knowing I had a few of these still to watch and I really enjoyed.
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I mean, we're going to only talk about four today because I previously talked about the Flash with John Wesley Shipp and the co-creator there, danny Bilson.
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So just as a reminder for fans that they can listen to that one.
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But these four are obviously from the 30s.
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Three are from the 40s and one's from the 30s.
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I should say so they're a classic film lover's dream, I think, in terms of the variety that you released here in June.
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So I'm looking forward to talking with you about these.
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Absolutely so am I, because I'm always anxious to hear what you think after you've seen them.
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I assume you had never seen any of these four before.
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Well, I had seen Act of Violence, but the others were newer to me.
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And why don't we start?
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off with Act of Violence.
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I think that's a great idea.
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It's the one noir, and of course we have an Alfred Hitchcock, but it's not a noir this month, but it's the one noir we'll talk about here not a noir this month, but it's the one noir we'll talk about here and it's a terrific film.
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It's been a while since I've seen it, so watching it and seeing it with the restoration was a pure joy.
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And this thing moves right from the beginning.
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When you see Robert Ryan's Ryan's crippled character coming in a very menacing way on camera, it just moves.
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And it's a terrific story with a lot of substance, so well directed by, of course, fred Zinnemann, and the cast is fantastic.
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What else are you going to say?
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It's a classic.
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And I think that it's such efficient filmmaking.
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Right, uh, because it tells the story in under 90 minutes and you're taken in right away, and very uncharacteristic for the time and especially for mgm.
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The credits are at the end, which is radical for 1948.
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Right, and I do want to clarify something about this film that some people are not clear about, and that is 1948, late in the year is when Dory Sherry became the head of production.
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Lb Mayer was still head of the studio, but the powers that be at MGM's parent company, Lowe's Incorporated, wanted to have someone kind of taking on the role that was once held by Irving Thalberg more than a decade earlier, because they wanted to have another voice at the table, which eventually stabbed LB Mayer in the back.
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But in the meantime, what Sherry did was start to infuse into MGM a new kind of filmmaking.
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Well, Act of Violence was completed right about the time Sherry made the move over to MGM.
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So this had nothing to do with Dory Sherry, and that's one of the things that I wanted to clarify.
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In terms of the timeline, this is very much under the aegis of LB Mayer, without Sherry making a very contemporary, very modern, very gripping film that is atypical of the MGM style of years prior.
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And Van Heflin gives a superb performance.
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I don't think he ever didn't, but to have him and Robert Ryan, it just kind of blows the film apart.
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And everybody is so terrific in it.
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Janet Leigh is magnificent and you're just transfixed by the storytelling magnificent, and you're just transfixed by the storytelling.
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And it is a thriller with a beautiful noir touch to it and I can't recommend it more highly.
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And we had released it previously on DVD about 20 years ago, maybe a little less than that, but it was part of one of our film noir collections.
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But it needs to have its own uh mantle as a standalone and being able to remaster it with a 4k scan off our preservation elements.
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Given when I say the preservation elements, that's usually a sign there no longer is a camera negative.
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This is one of the hundreds of MGM films where the original negative burnt in the tragic fire at George Eastman Museum, at the time known as George Eastman House.
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Our second generation fine grain gave us such a beautiful image that in many cases you think you're looking right off the negative.
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It's that good and it handles the shadows of a noir the way that you would want it to be.
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There's tremendous fine detail in the image and the images are so striking which helps to build the tension of the storytelling.
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And it's a remarkable film and we were able to carry over some of the special features we had done for the DVD release.
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For the commentary, we have the wonderful Dr Drew Casper who until about five years ago was a very well-respected film professor at USC and he's responsible for many of our commentaries and also was featured in many of our many documentaries and featurettes.
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So his contributions are always valuable many documentaries and featurettes, so his contributions are always valuable and I think that his perspective one of those commentaries that really warrants after you've watched the film.
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It's such a short film you should watch the film and then watch it again just listening to his commentary.
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It's that good.
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And we have a little featurette that has some film noir experts as well as Oliver Stone and the late Richard Schickel.
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It's called Dealing with the Devil and that's what this film deals with.
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So it's a wonderful package and of course we did throw in some cartoons in high definition to round out what would be the theater-going experience of the era.
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And we're very proud of the disc and I do hope people will purchase it and add it to their collection, because they certainly won't be sorry.
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Yeah, and I think that fans of noir and fans of this film, I thought there is something noteworthy there to talk about and that is the fact that this film, unlike the noir that came out during the war, this is this is dealing with the soldiers coming back from the war.
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And PTSD, which was not in the reviews then.
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Which gives it a real to me.
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That psychological element, the dealing, the kind of the medical element and the psychology of that gives it a real modern feel in a way, because we're talking about not just kind of some paperback novel type psychology but real issues that the service people, service men and women were dealing with.
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But it's all wrapped up in this fantastic drama and a chase and it's just got a really great storyline there, inhabited by these fantastic actors who really bring it to life.
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And I love the way it unfolds.
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You know, you, you start off with Van Heflin seeming like the idyllic husband and the situation at home with his wife and it just unravels because there's a reason for that and it's quite, quite, quite good and it's quite, quite, quite good.
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And then the robert ryan character is this kind of avenging angel in a way of retribution for the choices he made, and we don't have to break it down.
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But that is a fantastic story and just the way it's put together and the structuring of it, the writing of it, everything and then you get this kind of casting shock.
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I thought with Mary Astor.
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Yeah, we have to talk about that.
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Well, and this was kind of Mary Astor in her.
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I guess she was probably in her early 40s by this time, I'm guessing.
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I don't know exactly.
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But she had kind of segued into mostly, uh, like playing the mother in, uh, meet me in st louis in 1944, and it was a long stretch from when she was playing like the femme fatale and, uh, maltese Falcon earlier in the decade.
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You know, yeah and uh, but I, I think the real superstar of this film, uh, if there's one, is behind the camera in Zinnaman.
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Yeah, this is really, um, he had done some very fine work before.
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He had been at MGM throughout the 40s, moving from shorts into features, and had made some wonderful films like the Seventh Cross and the Search.
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But Act of Violence was, I think, almost a breakthrough film for him, and within a few years he would make films that are, you know, tentpoles of greatness, like High Noon from Henry, eternity and the Nun's Story, which we've talked about recently.
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What a phenomenal filmmaker.
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And this is really where you see his talent on full display and just delighted that every time we're able to rescue one of these films and bring it out of standard definition muck into beautiful Blu-ray.
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It is a tremendously rewarding experience and we're very, very happy with the way this turned out, and I'm glad that you enjoyed it.
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Yep, it's a terrific film, highly recommended for every area, which is the classic noir, a Zinnaman film.
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The transfer looks terrific.
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A terrific package of extras on here.
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I really enjoyed those little featurettes as well.
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They gave nice insights into the film and, as you said, because of the audio commentary on here, it being a short film, you get a robust package.
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So this is a highly recommended release and just a lot of fun to watch, and one you can watch over and over again too.
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Absolutely Well, speaking of fun, and one maybe not expected.
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People don't expect an Alfred Hitchcock comedy, but he did what?
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Just one, I think, and this is Mr and Mrs Smith.
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I love this movie.
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I thought it was fantastic.
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I know there's some people who maybe, you know, wonder why he did a comedy, but the film is just so much fun to watch and the pairing of lombard and montgomery really, uh, sparkles.
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They're terrific together.
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The whole way makes this film so special and so enjoyable.
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I mean it really is.
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They have a great chemistry on screen, in my opinion.
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Yes, I totally agree.
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I mean there's a sparkle in both their eye.
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You know a twinkle, and as you're watching you just get, at least for me.
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I just had a perpetual smile on my face because I'm just chuckling and enjoying it.
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I mean it has the fast-paced banter but it also has the plot.
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That kind of gives you the Well and just to talk about the plot.
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Of course they're married, but then they find out there was some little quirk of court documentation that says well, maybe they weren't married.
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And that starts all the fun there.
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And it's a great little premise that kicks off all of the charm that ensues after that.
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And the casting, the banter, the script, the direction by Hitchcock, it all makes for just a great entertainment.
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There are comedic moments in Hitchcock films that are primarily dramas and thrillers that he is known for.
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But here you really don't see any of his sensibility that you would see in the films that he's best known for.
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But at the same time he does a wonderful job bringing out the relationship between the two characters, characters.
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It's very clear that they have a very good marriage and they're not cookie-cutter characters that one would see in many films of that era.
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They feel like real people and I think the film is wonderful in establishing that.
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And I don't think enough can be said about the gift that Kara Lombard had with the camera, that the camera loved her.
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She was wonderful in the films that she was in and of course her career was tragically cut short when she was killed in a plane crash not long after this film was made and she was at a very happy point in her life, just having married Clark Gable, and everything just kind of came together here and Hitchcock was delighted to work on this film.
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It wasn't like a contractual obligation or anything like that.
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Everything worked.
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And the fact that this was the only one of Hitchcock's American-made produced films that wasn't on Blu-ray it was obviously a hole in his filmography that we needed to fill.
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And when you're dealing with an RKO movie, that usually means you're dealing with problematic film elements, because most of the RKO films are in wretched shape.
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And when we can rescue them and make them look great, that is all the more the reward, and I hope we've done so here.
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Uh, it's a quantum leap ahead again, uh, from what we had on DVD and, uh, I I'm delighted how it turned out.
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Yeah, the word I was looking for earlier of course I don't know why I was eluding me was screwball comedy yeah by all means.
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Yeah, and Carol Lombard is known for that, of course, so associated with that.
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But, as you said, I mean, she's just magic, right, she's just magic on screen.
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The camera loves her.
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You can't help it but fall in love with her as well At least I couldn't, as you're watching this film.
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But I just love all of the little digs they have and all the little banter that they have.
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And another movie you can watch over and over again, really enjoy.
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It's just great fun.
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And I'm a big fan of the screwball comedies of that era.
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You know, you think certain films could they ever be redone and those screwball comedies with those actors and those writers can never be replicated.
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I mean, we can come close maybe with other funny types of films, but they are of an era and it's just a joy to see them.
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With these restorations restorations and we didn't really talk about the audio, but these are dialogue driven, so that's an important part of it as well.
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But to see them and to bring them to an audience fresh with this great visuals, so that people of all ages can enjoy them and see them the way they were meant to be appreciated, is fantastic.
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And we didn't even talk about the extras here.
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This is also a loaded disc.
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Yes, absolutely.
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I mean, you have to have that kind of context and background when you're dealing with a film like this that has such a notable pedigree and what people would think how to put it in the context of Hitchcock's career and Carol Lombard's career and so forth and so on.
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So a good friend of our company, laurent Boussereau, directed the featurette that's on here.
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That's on here.
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We had released a whole box of Hitchcock titles in the golden days of our weekly box sets of DVDs, when the industry would support such things, and I think we had nine Hitchcock films in a box or something that substantial, and that's why Laurent was brought on to do, I think, most of the featurettes for those releases and he did a terrific one.
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And, thankfully, a lot of people who are no longer with us but who were with us at the time that this was being produced the featurette Peter Bogdanovich is in the featurette, and Hitchcock's daughter, pat, and Robert Osborne and Richard Schickel there's so many wonderful people speak out about the unique qualities of this film and what sets it apart.
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I personally find the most attractive part of the film is the relationship between Montgomery and Lombard.
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Their chemistry together is really terrific and both Montgomery and Lombard were terrific with other people in many other films.
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So the fact that they came together for this and Hitchcock was borrowed from David O Selznick.
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Montgomery, as I mentioned before, is borrowed from MGM.
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They put it all together and the results are a film that really stands the test of time of being quite entertaining and enjoyable.
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Yeah, and just to go back to the script for a minute, that was from the Academy Award winner, norman Krasna.
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You know, there you go.
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You put that combination of a fantastic script writer, fantastic director and fantastic cast and you just get a fantastic film that endures like this one does.
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Yeah.
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And he really was a terrific writer and his filmography speaks for itself and we're very lucky to have many of his films in our library.
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But I think he wrote many different kind of genres.
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He wasn't just specific to writing good comedies, but his list of comedies, and screwball comedies in particular, is very, very impressive and I think people would be doing themselves a favor to explore his filmography a bit.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So the next film is the man I Love from 1947.
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And I mean the three for three here, I mean out of the ballpark, this film.
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I so enjoyed watching this film and I was not familiar with this film, and let me start off with the music.
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Just wonderful, wonderful music.
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And then Ida Lupino she is fantastic.
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I don't know what I expected, of course, other than to expect that Ida Lupino is great in everything that she is in, but I was just swept away, carried away by this film and enjoyed it from the minute it began all the way through to the end.
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I love this movie.
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It is not just a film noir, it's really a melodrama, romance, and you can't call it a musical, but music plays a great part in it.
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But music plays a great part in it and I happen to be a little bit fond of the way music was handled in Warner Brothers movies and you can just feel the incredible talent of the Warner Brothers Music Department as this is all put together, because you had Leo Forbes.
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Dean was the musical director for the studio, but Max Steiner did a lot of adaptation, of which the studio had ownership of, the publishing and others that they licensed out.
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And that led to an interesting situation.
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As we were getting ready to release this, release this, it turns out that the film was released at a 96-minute running time and everything we had ran 90 minutes.
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And the question was well, what happened to the six minutes?
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And my assumption was oh, this must have been one of the films that Jack Warner had cut for reissue to get more shows in, and there's probably a longer version out there with the footage that's missing.
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That was cut for time.
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Well, we did find the missing footage but we uh, we didn't know exactly what was cut and why until I started doing a little detective work and I figured out that the song Bill, which is famous for being interpolated in the score of the great musical Showboat by Jerome Kern, oscar Hammerstein II and PG Wodehouse, that song, which is in the credits of the main title and always has been that song, was removed from the film in 1956.
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I found music cue sheets that showed that song Bill crossed out and it says deleted 1956.
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So basically, almost 10 years after the movie was released, somehow that song was taken out.
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And through some research I figured out that this was the time that the pre-1949 Warner Brothers Library was being sold off and they didn't have the needed television music license for that song.
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So they just lopped it out of the movie and it still is in the main title credits.
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But everything that people have seen since 1956, you know, hundreds of television broadcasts and syndication for decades our old DVDs, vhs, all cut to 90 minutes, missing that song that's in the credits.
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Well, we found it in a nitrate second generation element and we were able to fuse it together with our skin of the original nitrate camera negative and put the film back together the way it was.
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Back together the way it was.
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And what's interesting about Lupino's musical performances are that they're really quite arresting visually as well as musically, and she's not really singing for herself.
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She's dubbed by an actress or a singer and, I believe, possibly a vocal coach, if I'm correct, named Peg LaCentra, and when it came time for Ida Lupino to have to do singing in a film and there are other films made at other studios where she did this as well, where Peg LaCentro provided the voice for Ida Lupino to sing but she does such a convincing job in her mouthing and lip reading and emoting that it feels totally organic and to your good point.
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I really think that Ida Lupino is still not given the recognition she deserves for being such a phenomenal actress, and Warner Brothers did their part in giving her good, meaty roles that showed off her talent and just a couple of months ago we talked about they Drive by Night and what a great performance she gave in that and that really led to the building of her career throughout the 1940s at Warner Brothers.
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And then eventually she broke off on her own to start directing as well as acting in films, and I think she still is not given the respect that she deserves outside of certain people who have been exposed to her talent, and this film is a wonderful gathering of talents to show off just how wonderful she was.
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And behind the camera, you have Raoul Walsh, which really makes all the difference in the world, and that was one of the key factors in our selection of this as well.
00:29:33.885 --> 00:29:34.911
What do we do next?
00:29:34.911 --> 00:29:37.894
Well, we needed to do the man I Love.
00:29:37.894 --> 00:29:46.145
I didn't know that when we started working on the picture that it would turn into a search for missing footage.
00:29:46.866 --> 00:29:53.419
Yeah, yeah, I think I think this ends up being a found footage film.
00:29:53.419 --> 00:29:56.009
I mean, like, how big of a deal is that?
00:29:56.009 --> 00:30:03.570
I think it's a huge deal, and I'm trying to envision watching the film without Bill in there.
00:30:03.570 --> 00:30:14.186
It would be a real loss, but if that's the only way people have been seeing it, as you said for yeah, they just locked it out and it wasn't like it was just in there once.
00:30:14.467 --> 00:30:16.348
She sang it once.
00:30:16.348 --> 00:30:19.913
But um, there is an instrumental.
00:30:19.913 --> 00:30:22.777
I don't really know quite.
00:30:22.777 --> 00:30:33.154
I have to go back and look at the old cut version to see how they managed to get it out of the film without it being so blatant.
00:30:35.397 --> 00:30:42.713
But that was incredibly rewarding to know that we were putting the film back together the way it was supposed to be.
00:30:42.713 --> 00:30:53.196
It did mean that we had to take out a new music license and that is never a cheap thing to do when you're dealing with a famous song.
00:30:53.196 --> 00:31:07.809
But we were not going to cut corners or make compromises and we certainly wouldn't release the film in a cut version when we knew that the footage was there.
00:31:07.809 --> 00:31:17.132
When you have a film that's been butchered and the missing sequences don't exist anymore, you're kind of up a tree.
00:31:17.132 --> 00:31:18.394
You don't have a chance.
00:31:18.394 --> 00:31:25.608
But we were able to find the footage, put it back together and it is pretty.
00:31:25.608 --> 00:31:52.874
I would say it's almost invisible when we're cutting in and out of the cut footage because we were working from nitrate second generation and the original nitrate negative second generation and the original nitrate negative, so you don't really see a jarring drop of quality when that footage comes in.
00:31:52.874 --> 00:32:00.433
Once again, warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging did a tremendous job in making it all flow together beautifully.
00:32:01.315 --> 00:32:17.726
And also I should definitely call out the fact that the film has some terrific performances, not just by Lupino but Robert Alda, who again was kind of not given his due.
00:32:17.726 --> 00:32:19.606
Warner Brothers gave him a big buildup to make him into a big star.
00:32:19.606 --> 00:32:28.231
Warner Brothers gave him a big build up to make him into a big star, casting him as the lead of George Gershwin in Rhapsody in Blue.
00:32:28.231 --> 00:32:39.077
But he didn't really connect with the audiences or the critics and he ended up finding more of a career on the stage.
00:32:39.077 --> 00:32:41.679
But he's terrific in the movie.
00:32:41.679 --> 00:32:57.699
Andrea King is great Martha Vickers and one of my favorites, bruce Bennett, who spent the 30s, known as Herman Bricks in the secondary Tarzan movies of that era.
00:32:57.699 --> 00:33:10.040
It's just a great cast and a terrific film and such a perfect time capsule of you know mid 40s noir.
00:33:10.040 --> 00:33:11.892
It's just a gem.
00:33:12.744 --> 00:33:14.893
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up Bruce Bennett.
00:33:14.893 --> 00:33:28.349
He is terrific as that kind of silent, wounded person wounded, you know, person and the story makes so much more sense once he becomes a bigger part of it.
00:33:28.349 --> 00:33:39.949
I think, because now you have this kind of deep well, they're both performers, they're both musicians in the storyline and it makes so much sense that she would eventually be attracted to that character.
00:33:39.949 --> 00:33:42.232
And I love the music.
00:33:42.232 --> 00:33:55.288
He's playing the piano, fantastic use of the music, as you mentioned earlier from the musical department there, and it just makes it poignant, the use of the music.
00:33:55.430 --> 00:34:00.867
And that's why I said going back to thinking about this film without Bill in it.
00:34:00.867 --> 00:34:15.855
It just all works together and it's great now that it is all back together and anybody coming to the film new is going to see it the way it was originally intended, going to see it with this fantastic restoration and the sound restoration.
00:34:15.855 --> 00:34:20.373
So it's wonderful that it's coming in this great package.
00:34:20.373 --> 00:34:23.008
I guess we should talk a little bit about the extras as well.
00:34:23.008 --> 00:34:25.175
What do we have on here?
00:34:25.175 --> 00:34:31.193
We've got some cartoons and the original theatrical trailer, so it's another fantastic package for the fans.
00:34:32.316 --> 00:35:17.650
Absolutely, and we're very I would say very little known except among diehard film buffs, but is really a tremendously underrated classic coming from this studio and that is the Hard Way from 1942, directed by Vincent Sherman, and it is my hope that someday I'll be able to convince the powers that be that we need to get that film up and running with a full restoration.
00:35:17.650 --> 00:35:21.818
So just know that I'm fighting for that film.
00:35:22.724 --> 00:35:29.356
Yeah, I know a lot of people have requested it over the years, so they'll be hoping for the best for you.
00:35:29.806 --> 00:35:44.244
Well, I'd love to imagine that maybe in a year from now we'll be doing an extras podcast and talking about the new releases and can talk about a gorgeous restoration of the hard way with a 4k scan off the nitrate negative.
00:35:44.244 --> 00:35:47.434
That would be awesome, that would be terrific.
00:35:48.577 --> 00:36:05.320
Well, we have one more film we're going to talk about today and this is the the oldest of the films that we're talking about, from 1938, and that's the shining hour, and this is a melodrama starring joan craw, and there's a lot going on in this film.
00:36:05.320 --> 00:36:37.465
It took me a little bit to follow it because there's so much going on back and forth, but I love the way it begins on the airplane with Robert Young overhearing these people talking about some of the social socialites I should say marriages and romances going on socialites, I should say marriages and romances going on and I got really sucked into the whole storyline, starting there in New York and then going back to Wisconsin, and the performances are quite good and it's a very entertaining film.
00:36:38.186 --> 00:36:59.876
Well, this is based on a play and the play was quite a success on Broadway and, always looking for good new material, joan Crawford really begged MGM to buy the rights to the play so that she could star in the film.
00:36:59.876 --> 00:37:01.338
Star in the film.
00:37:01.338 --> 00:37:25.438
There were rumors that MGM was going to make it with Norma Shearer, but Miss Crawford prevailed, and not only did she star in the film, no-transcript, and he is more respected now than he was at that time.
00:37:25.438 --> 00:37:43.896
There are a lot of cinephiles that are really kind of obsessed with Borzeghi's work, and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to get this film a proper restoration.
00:37:43.896 --> 00:37:51.432
It had not been remastered since the late 1980s, so it was certainly due.
00:37:52.434 --> 00:38:23.474
And in a supporting role you have Margaret Sullivan, who is just beaming and wonderful, and Melvin Douglas is exceptionally fine in the film as well, and I just think that this is one of the many films that Crawford did in the late 30s that was not as successful at the box office as people hoped it would be.
00:38:23.474 --> 00:38:59.875
And it's certainly a very short film it's barely over an hour, which is unusual for MGM, would be unusual for Warner Brothers, but you know, it tells its story efficiently and effectively and it's beautifully shot by George Fulzi and of course you have the MGM art department in full federal, so that every scene is remarkably beautiful to look at and the acting is terrific and it's a wonderful film.
00:39:01.085 --> 00:39:04.556
Yeah, I kind of wish it had been a little longer, George I agree.
00:39:04.945 --> 00:39:22.000
I think that I felt the few of the scenes could have been fleshed out a little bit more for my sake, because I did not know the play and so I had to play a little catch up sometimes and go with the story, because I love the dance scene.
00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:35.630
Ok, that scene, that scene where she's dancing the choreography so good, right, um, and we see that very early on and we see her crowd, her New York crowd, and I was.
00:39:35.630 --> 00:39:36.853
I was enjoying that.
00:39:36.853 --> 00:39:43.833
And then we're introduced to the the love triangle, right, um, robert Young, yeah, and.
00:39:43.833 --> 00:39:53.172
But I kind of wanted to, I needed Robert Young's character to be fleshed out a little bit more, like why is he coming in to this triangle quite so much?
00:39:53.172 --> 00:39:56.974
Is there some past resentment or is there, you know, with his brother or whatever?
00:39:56.974 --> 00:40:02.072
Because his brother, played by Melvin Douglas, seems like such a terrific, wonderful guy.
00:40:02.072 --> 00:40:05.244
And yet there starts this love triangle.
00:40:05.244 --> 00:40:09.215
So I wish they had taken a little bit more time to flesh out a little bit of that.
00:40:09.215 --> 00:40:17.927
While the pacing was quick and kept it moving, I could have used a little bit more in there Now, once we get to Wisconsin.
00:40:18.690 --> 00:40:22.117
I thought that Margaret Sullivan was fantastic.
00:40:22.117 --> 00:40:35.110
I think she was a real gem and a real terrific part of the story and you really feel for her character in how she emotes what she's going through and her positivity.
00:40:35.110 --> 00:40:38.119
Oh for certain, yeah, she's fantastic.
00:40:38.119 --> 00:40:43.552
And then, once they're in Wisconsin, we meet the sister and she's terrific.
00:40:43.552 --> 00:41:05.717
Faye Bainter, who plays the sister Hannah, and she is the one who kind of is supposedly the negative one, you know, expecting it all to fall apart and everything, but she has a terrific presence in the story and I really enjoyed when she was inserted into it because it really added a whole nother element.
00:41:05.717 --> 00:41:13.405
So the three female characters in there the female leads, I thought were really really fun and terrifically portrayed.
00:41:13.766 --> 00:41:23.635
It's a very strong cast and that same year Faye Bainter would win the Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Jezebel with Bette Davis.
00:41:23.635 --> 00:41:31.706
I mean, she was terrific in everything she did and she made so many films and performed so many different kinds of roles.
00:41:31.706 --> 00:41:36.414
This isn't the first film that people come that comes to people's mind.
00:41:36.414 --> 00:41:42.637
That are film buffs where they think of you know, what films do you remember Faye Bainter in?
00:41:42.637 --> 00:42:04.034
They won't necessarily say the Shining Hour, but our hope is that by bringing these films out in beautiful new 4K scans and a high-definition master, that they will discover them for the first time and really see.
00:42:04.034 --> 00:42:17.478
You know, how terrific the films were and how terrific that the people were in them, and that's one of the reasons why we were very excited about this release.
00:42:18.385 --> 00:42:23.237
Yeah, and it's another terrific package of extras on here as well, George.
00:42:24.199 --> 00:42:26.724
It's another terrific package of extras on here as well, george.
00:42:26.724 --> 00:42:30.326
Well, we've got a little something special in the audio-only department.
00:42:30.326 --> 00:42:36.228
It isn't that there was a like Lux Radio Theater version of the Shining Hour.
00:42:36.228 --> 00:42:42.532
I edited a.
00:42:42.532 --> 00:42:45.313
What was?
00:42:45.853 --> 00:42:54.478
Mgm had a weekly sponsored radio program that began the fall of 1937.
00:42:54.478 --> 00:43:04.382
It was called Good News of 1938, the first season, and then Good News in 1939, you know the next year.
00:43:04.382 --> 00:43:10.146
It'd be like the new car coming out with the year of the previous fall.
00:43:10.146 --> 00:43:26.907
It was sponsored by Maxwell House and it was MGM's attempt to try to bring their talents into a weekly radio show that would also promote their new movies, show that would also promote their new movies.
00:43:26.907 --> 00:43:43.436
And that's exactly what you have here, because you have cast members including Crawford from the Shining Hour appearing on the Good News radio program doing scenes from the Shining Hour, which the studio hoped would make people want to go to the theater to see it.
00:43:43.436 --> 00:43:47.460
So MGM had this show on the air.
00:43:47.784 --> 00:44:17.586
For, doing the math in my head, they sponsored it for two seasons and the last season of the Good News Radio program was not sponsored by MGM, it was still Maxwell House Coffee, but it had no affiliation to any given studio and without the support of the MGM talents behind it, the show went off the air.
00:44:17.586 --> 00:44:25.900
But most of the broadcasts survive and they're really quite fascinating.
00:44:25.900 --> 00:44:46.684
So I removed a lot of the extraneous portions of the program that weren't related to the Shining Hour so we could give you a sense of what a broadcast was like, because normally they ran about an hour but this is 23 minutes so it's not entirely just focused on the Shining Hour.
00:44:46.684 --> 00:44:54.438
It gives you a little bit of a sense of what a good news radio program is or was like at the time.
00:44:54.438 --> 00:45:05.681
But it does keep the primary focus on Shining Hour and how they were adapting scenes for the audio only radio audience.
00:45:05.681 --> 00:45:06.990
So that's a little curio.
00:45:07.764 --> 00:45:29.164
And then we've added in three Warner Brothers cartoons, all in high definition Love and Curses, the Sneezing Weasel, which is directed by Tex Avery, I must add, and then Black and White, porky's, five and Dime, and they're all very entertaining.
00:45:29.164 --> 00:45:32.815
And then we finish up the disc with the trailer.
00:45:32.815 --> 00:45:37.597
So it's a really nice package and a very entertaining film.
00:45:37.597 --> 00:45:43.387
And we know there's a bevy of Joan Crawford fans out there that want us to release everything of hers.
00:45:43.387 --> 00:45:46.349
There's a bevy of Joan Crawford fans out there that want us to release everything of hers.
00:45:46.371 --> 00:46:09.844
So we're certainly planning on more in the coming months, but right now we're very pleased to be putting a little spotlight on the Shining Hour and hope that people enjoy the disc as much as we enjoyed producing it.
00:46:09.844 --> 00:46:20.951
Well, this is a terrific month of June for classic film fans, and I don't think anybody should complain if you are a classic film fan, because one of these, if not all four of these, would look great in your classic film collection at home.
00:46:20.951 --> 00:46:27.635
And part of it is just as we always say, or as I always say, george, is they look so good now.
00:46:27.635 --> 00:46:34.657
They just haven't looked as good or sounded this good in so long, if ever, since the original time that they came out.
00:46:34.657 --> 00:46:41.253
So I hope people enjoy the reviews, because I know that you and I both enjoyed watching these films.
00:46:42.016 --> 00:47:10.753
Absolutely, and it's really incredibly gratifying to hear from people whether it's personally or reading online reviews or what have you when people appreciate all the work that has gone into making these releases into what they are highly collectible and really building a home library of meaningful films.
00:47:10.753 --> 00:47:30.550
And I think it's also important to say that sometimes I read about other films from this era that are coming out on Blu-ray and they say, well, there are occasional scratches and speckles, but, uh, I guess that's the best they could do.
00:47:30.550 --> 00:47:35.875
Well, um, we're not, uh, settling that way.
00:47:35.875 --> 00:47:48.432
We put a little bit of extra effort in to try to make them look and sound as as best as possible, and I hope we're doing a good job of that and we want to continue along that pace.
00:47:49.275 --> 00:47:52.032
Yeah, and I think people need to remember Shining Hour 1938.
00:47:52.032 --> 00:47:54.815
This is not, you know, this is not just yesterday.
00:47:54.815 --> 00:47:58.244
This, that film goes back a ways, but I thought it looked terrific.
00:47:58.244 --> 00:48:01.492
And the others are all from the 40s and they all look terrific.
00:48:01.492 --> 00:48:06.326
So perfection is.
00:48:06.326 --> 00:48:23.456
It's hard to say what that is when you're working with preservation elements, the best elements available to you, but I know that the work you guys are doing is with the best equipment today, the best software today, and putting it out on the best possible way for the fans, and I've got no complaints.
00:48:23.456 --> 00:48:39.255
And I think that anybody who collects and sees the work that's done by other studios or by other organizations and they compare it to the work being done by the Warner Archive has no complaints.
00:48:39.967 --> 00:48:41.992
To build on that and I thank you for that.
00:48:41.992 --> 00:49:12.076
But the credit really goes to Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging, the colorists there, the scanning staff there, the people who are involved in every step of the way, our preservation team there are so many people involved in getting to that final result Our audio restoration team, our sound archive department.
00:49:12.076 --> 00:49:34.670
All of these people are intricately tied into all the things that I want to bring out to the public, that I want to bring out to the public, and they're actually in the trenches and we all collaborate together as a team to try to bring the best possible product to the consumer, and that's what's important.
00:49:34.951 --> 00:49:35.733
Yep, yep.
00:49:35.733 --> 00:49:39.351
Well, as always, george, it's fun to review these with you.
00:49:39.351 --> 00:49:41.713
This is a fantastic lineup in June.
00:49:41.713 --> 00:49:48.784
I know you have some more great ones coming in July and August that we've already announced, so I'm looking forward to those as well.
00:49:48.784 --> 00:49:48.965
Yep.
00:49:49.427 --> 00:49:51.653
Lots, lots more fun on the way.
00:49:51.653 --> 00:50:10.170
And you know, I get to see some of these things months before they come out, because it is a probably after we see a first pass, probably two, three after we see a first pass, probably two, three, four months before the release is even announced or released.
00:50:10.170 --> 00:50:21.351
So you know, usually every day there's a new file waiting for me to look at, a new master that's in process.
00:50:21.351 --> 00:50:30.472
That is the most exciting part is to see, well, how does this turn out and what do we need to do to make it even better.
00:50:30.472 --> 00:50:35.597
And once again, warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging.
00:50:35.597 --> 00:50:42.465
They're the, as I say, it's so boring, but it is actually quite a tribute to them.
00:50:42.465 --> 00:50:48.798
They're the wizards of ours and they get the credit for why everything looks magnificent.
00:50:54.865 --> 00:51:01.594
As always, there are purchase links in the podcast show notes and on our website for those interested in purchasing the films that we reviewed today.
00:51:01.594 --> 00:51:14.692
For those wanting to hear a review of the Flash TV series from 1990, look for our podcast with co-creator Danny Bilson and the Flash actor John Wesley Shipp, which was released in late June.
00:51:14.692 --> 00:51:25.175
And, just as a reminder, the TV series the Alaskans has moved out from June to August, so you can expect a review once it has released.
00:51:25.175 --> 00:51:28.293
Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard.
00:51:28.293 --> 00:51:31.054
Stay slightly obsessed.