New Warner videos:
Here’s looking at you
Do you love old Hollywood films? If you’re like me and can’t get enough of Garbo and Gable, or dramas that illustrate the social upheaval of the Great Depression or suspenseful film noirs of the ’40s, the availability of movies on DVD has revolutionized the study and enjoyment of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Yet for every “Stagecoach,” “Wizard of Oz” and other legendary films that have appeared in a variety of formats, special editions and Blu-ray upgrades, there are thousands of movies that have remained unavailable.
The Warner Archive Collection has started to change all that. In March 2009, the Warner Archive Collection began offering to the public films from MGM, RKO Radio Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures that had remained locked in the Warner vaults for decades. There are now nearly 800 titles available for purchase, with the largest group of selections being from the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, though the entire collection ranges from the silent films of the 1920s through the beginning of the 21st century.
Here’s how the Warner Archive Collection works: Go to www.WarnerArchive.com, browse through the collection and select and buy the film you want. The individual movie is manufactured on demand and placed in a hard plastic case with vintage or original artwork and then shipped to the purchaser. The discs are standard-quality DVDs, though they lack bonus features or chapter settings.
According to Warner Bros., the DVDs are manufactured using the best available video masters; selected titles have been newly remastered. Most films cost $19.95 (plus tax), though some have been discounted to $14.95. Multi-DVD sets cost more. Many of the films are also available as digital downloads, for $14.95 apiece.
Here’s a sampling of what’s available:
n Greta Garbo and Clark Gable: The span of the Swedish actress’ career in Hollywood is represented here with “Torrent” (1926), her American film debut in a silent melodrama with Ricardo Cortez, and “Two-Faced Woman (1941), her final movie, a romantic comedy that reunited her with “Ninotchka” co-star Melvyn Douglas. Also notable are “Romance” (1930), for which Garbo received her first Oscar nomination playing an opera diva involved in a romantic triangle, and “Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise)” (1931), a Depression-era rags-to-riches story and the only film in which Garbo co-starred with Gable. As for Gable, he’s represented here opposite some of Hollywood’s greatest women stars, including Joan Crawford (“Possessed,” “Chained,” “Forsaking All Others,” “Love on the Run”), Lana Turner (“Betrayed,” “Homecoming,” “Honky Tonk” and “Somewhere I’ll Find You”), Myrna Loy (“Too Hot to Handle,” “Men In White”), Rosalind Russell (“They Met in Bombay”) and Norma Shearer (“Strange Interlude,” “Idiot’s Delight”).
n Hollywood History Lessons: Hollywood’s versions of major events and personalities in American history aren’t always accurate, but they are often enjoyable. “Plymouth Adventure” (1952) stars Spencer Tracy as the captain of the Mayflower on its perilous voyage from England to the New World. “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” (1940) features Raymond Massey in an Oscar-nominated performance reprising his stage role in Robert Sherwood’s play about the 16th president’s early days. The life and work of inventor Thomas Edison is celebrated in two films from 1940, “Edison The Man,” starring Spencer Tracy, and “Young Tom Edison,” starring Mickey Rooney. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s battle with polio is dramatized in 1960’s “Sunrise at Campobello,” featuring Ralph Bellamy and Greer Garson as the future president and his wife Eleanor.
n Politics and Labor during the Great Depression: Among the more intriguing titles are “Gabriel Over the White House,” a wild fantasy from 1933 in which Walter Huston plays a corrupt U.S. president who undergoes a major transformation after surviving a car crash and meeting an angel; “Black Fury” (1935), a look inside coal mines and company towns starring Paul Muni as a miner dealing with racketeers trying to undermine his union; and “They Won’t Forget” (1937), a courtroom drama based on an actual case in which a teacher from the North is framed for murdering a student in a Southern town.
n Film Noir: Among the Archive’s low-budget American crime movies of the late 1940s/early ’50s, consider: “The Gangster” (1947), with Barry Sullivan as a hardened criminal who finds himself confronting fear for the first time; “High Wall” (1947), starring Robert Taylor as a World War II veteran suffering from brain damage who is accused of murdering his wife; “Bodyguard” (1948), featuring frequent movie tough guy Lawrence Tierney playing a disgraced cop who’s framed for murder; and “The Window” (1949), a terrifying story about a young boy who witnesses a murder in his apartment building, but can’t get any adults to believe his story.
The Warner Archive Collection regularly adds new films for sale; the most recent ones feature titles with a February tie-in:
n Ronald Reagan centenary: The 100th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s birth, on Feb. 6, was celebrated with the release of “Brass Bancroft of the Secret Service Mysteries Collection,” a package of four B-movies from 1939 and 1940 starring Reagan as a Secret Service agent; plus “Stallion Road” (1947), in which Reagan portrays a veterinarian; and “Night Unto Night” (1949), starring Reagan as a biochemist trying to deal with his epilepsy.
– Black History Month: “Intruder in the Dust” (1949), a daring (for its time) courtroom drama based on a novel by William Faulkner, stars Juano Hernandez as a proud African-American man accused of murdering a white man in Mississippi; and “The Learning Tree” (1969), a coming-of-age drama written, directed and produced by Gordon Parks about an African-American teenager growing up in Kansas during the 1920s.
– Romantic movies: “Sunday in New York,” a 1963 comedy of relationship entanglements starring Jane Fonda, Rod Taylor and Robert Culp; and “Design for Scandal,” a 1940 romantic comedy about a reporter (Walter Pidgeon) and a divorce-court judge (Rosalind Russell), plus five other films.
(Contact Bruce Dancis at brucedancis(at)comcast.net.)