It’s hard to believe the Warner Archive Collection launched five years ago this month. The one-time torrent of classic-era films being released on DVD by the major Hollywood studios, which begun slowing even before the 2007 stock market crash and the subsequent disappearance of retail outlets (like Tower Records) devoting large amount of shelf space to pressed (replicated) discs of deep catalogue titles, had become more like a trickle by March 2009.
Without any advance fanfare, Warners rebooted the digital classic-film landscape by introducing a new DVD business model: burned discs manufactured on demand (MOD) when customers placed orders, eliminating the substantial costs of shipping and storing substantial runs of pressed discs that might or might not do enough business to justify the investment.
To show they meant business, Warner Archive offered 150 titles on its opening day,many of them older movies that might not have justified a regular commercial release even during the mid-2000’s heyday of deep catalogue titles on pressed DVDs.
Along with praise for Warners’ vow to deeply mine its huge catalogue, there were concerns at first over the quality of the transfers, some of which had been prepared years earlier for TV broadcast. And worries by some potential customers that burned discs might not be as durable as their pressed counterparts — which, when bought as part of WHV’s fabled box sets, were substantially less expensive than WAC’s initial twenty dollars a pop for bare-bones releases, with many containing substantial new and archival special features.
Within a year, the WAC was successful enough that an ambitious remastering programming was launched, along with frequent sales and promotions. WAC’s customer service promptly addressed the relatively few complaints about defective discs. And the torrent of releases exceeded all expectations, including dozens of uber-obscure films released between 1914 straight through the early 1990s.
And it wasn’t just the feature films, which came to includes sets feature entire runs of detective film series, beginning with Torchy Blane, as well as series collections of the Andy Hardy, Maisie and Dr. Kildare films There were also themed collections of film shorts, animation, TV movies and entire seasons of long-sought TV shows. Some of the more popular offerings were properly pressed, or replicated, including a handful of Blu-ray releases that actually have SDH titles, an expensive perk generally MIA from WAC releases.
WAC’s success invariably drew imitators. Sony, which had a MOD program in the works for years, finally launched what’s now known as the Sony Choice Collection a few months after WAC, with generally excellent transfers and more than 500 titles to date. The MGM Choice Collection released more than 300 titles before apparently suspending operations in July 2012, and the sporadic and little-publicized Universal Vault Series (not to be confused with the mostly non-MOD TCM Vault Series, which includes titles licensed from Universal and Sony) has put out a similar number. The newcomer in the field, the Fox Cinema Archives, has put out more than 250 titles (in transfers of highly variable quality) in only nine months of operation.
With few exceptions, the major studios have stuck to Blu-ray upgrades for deep catalogue titles that have already proven successful on DVD — and licensing other titles to lucky boutique distributors like The Criterion Collection, Olive Films, Shout! Factory and Twilight Time.
The Warner Archive Collection has set the standard for the MOD field, with discs of consistently high technical quality, as well as its superb curatorial and promotional efforts led by Warner Home Video’s irrepressible vice-president for marketing, George Feltenstein.
Here’s a quick roundup of some notable recent releases from WAC:
“Showboat” (1936)
One of the finest musicals of the 1930s, directed by the great James Whale (“Bride of Frankenstein”) makes its belated DVD debut in a gorgeous new remastering. The last triumph of Carl Laemmle pere et fils before they lost control of Universal Pictures is a model adaptation of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s landmark Broadway show (from a heart-tugging generational saga by Edna Ferber) with a perfect cast headed by Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Helen Morgan, Charles Winninger, Paul Robeson and Hattie McDaniel. Hammerstein, who wrote the screenplay, collaborated on three new songs with Kern. An unbilled Eddie Anderson gets a closeup in the opening scene, but I couldn’t find him again.
“Here Comes the Navy” (1934)
An Oscar nominee for Best Picture finally arriving on DVD in a sharp new transfer, this teams James Cagney and Pat O’Brien for the first time as a cocky riveter who joins the Navy and O’Brien as his disapproving commanding officer — particularly after Jimmy begins dating his sister Gloria Stuart. Snappily directed by frequent Cagney collaborator Lloyd Bacon and featuring fellow “Irish Mafia” member Frank McHugh, the film has an unusual amount of location shooting for a Warner film of the era, including many scenes shot on the Batteship Arizona. Another recent Cagney release definitely worth checking out is the obscure “Winner Take All” (1932), as a boxer who gets plastic surgery to impress a fickle society dame (Virginia Bruce).
“What Price Hollywood?” (1932)
Long awaited on DVD, George Cukor’s drama starring an excellent Constance Bennett as a rising star hooked up with an alcoholic actor on the skids (Lowell Sherman) has long been considered producer David O. Selznick’s rough draft for the first “A Star is Born” five years later, but it has plenty of entertainment value of its own. Sherman was a director as well as actor in real life; so was Gregory Ratoff, who plays the studio chief in a film that offers some intriguing backstage looks at the RKO Pathe lot, as well as Neil Hamilton of TV’s “Batman” as Bennett’s love interest.
“Smilin’ Through” (1932)
After a maternity leave, Norma Shearer pretty much abandoned her sophisticated pre-code roles and switched over to the kind of self-sacrificing women she mostly played for the remaining decade of her screen career. The underrated Sidney Franklin, who directed Norma in the racy “Private Lives,” turned this romantic warhorse (which he had already directed as a silent with Norma Talmadage in 1922) into a box-office smash. Starring Shearer and Fredric March (they were reteamed for the equally popular “The Barretts of Wimpole Street,” another recent WAC release) in dual roles, and Leslie Howard mostly as an old man who forbids his ward (Shearer) from marrying the son (March) of the man (also March) who killed his fiancee (also Shearer), the ward’s aunt, it’s a lot easier to take than Frank Borzage’s soggy 1941 musical remake with real-life couple Jeanette MacDonald and Gene Raymond. Which, of course, is also available from WAC.
“Montana Moon” (1930)
One of WAC’s many obsessions is Johnny Mack Brown, the onetime football star who fronted countless B westerns for Monogram and other studios. Known simply as John Mack Brown early in his career as a leading man at MGM, he was frequently teamed with Joan Crawford, who gets solo above-the-title billing for this semi-musical followup to “Our Blushing Brides” (another recent WAC release) playing a New York socialite (the actress was actually born in Montana) who hooks up with Montana cowboy Brown. Between WHV and WAC, all of Crawford’s MGM titles are now available on DVD — except for “Letty Lynton,” still tied up because of an 80-year-old settlement in a plagiarism suit.
“The Big House” (1930)
Included in WAC’s first wave of releases in 2009, George Hill’s seminal prison melodrama with Chester Morris, Wallace Beery and Robert Montgomery looks much better in a new remastering. It’s now part of a three-film set that includes French and Spanish-language versions that were filmed simulataneously on the same sets. The French edition stars a smouldering young Charles Boyer in the Morris role and director Pa(u)l Fejos (“Lonesome”) gives the material a very different feel than Hill. WAC has also released a dual-language set of Buster Keaton’s talkie debut, “Free and Easy” (1930) with Keaton reading lines phonetically in the Spanish version with an entirely different supporting cast (though Robert Montgomery, Anita Page and Trixie Friganza have cameos, as do Lionel Barrymore, Cecil B. DeMille and Fred Niblo).
“Vitaphone Comedy Collection, Vol. 2” (1933-1937)
Sometimes Stooge Shemp Howard, who supported Fatty Arbuckle in some of the Brooklyn-filmed shorts in Volume 1, graduates to leads in this second set. Most notably, he’s very funny as haberdasher-turned-manager Knobby Walsh in nine 1936-1937 shorts devoted to the adventures of Ham Fisher’s comic-strip fighter Joe Palooka (played by Robert Norton). Palooka, who had been introduced in the 1934 feature “Palooka!” in the person of Stuart Erwin, resurfaced in a series of Monogram B’s from 1946 to 1951, with Leon Errol and Joe Kirkwood, that will no doubt be turning up some day at WAC.
“Bill Elliott Mysteries Collection” (1955-1957)
Who knew Hollywood made any detective films series after Charlie Chan and Philo Vance’s final gasps in the late 1940s? Elliott, another one of WAC’s obsessions because of Monogram western series, also fronted this forgotten five-film series for sister studio Allied Artists — in widescreen, no less. The series kickoff, Daniel Ullman’s noirish “Dial Red O,” is a particularly good, with nice location shooting in Hollywood; Sam Peckinpah is credited as dialogue coach.
“The Americanization of Emily” (1964)
One of WAC’s growing library of Blu-ray releases is a gorgeous black-and-white upgrade of an old WHV release. James Garner (who got the part when William Holden dropped out) gives his finest screen performance in this remarkable black comedy about a cowardly aide to a World War II admiral (Melvyn Douglas) who orders him to film the first fallen sailor in the D-Day invasion as a PR gesture during a bout of dementia. Julie Andrews and James Coburn are also at the top of their game in director Arthur Hiller’s filming of a scathingly funny Paddy Chayefsky script. It’s an irreverent film that looks better with every passing year.
“The Horn Blows at Midnight” (1945)
At one time ubiqituous on TV, Raoul Walsh’s oddball comedy-fantasy gets a handsome remastering that lets you appreciate just how amazing the special effects are. Jack Benny, in his final big-screen starring role, plays a radio trumpet player who dreams he’s an angel sent to destroy earth. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but who’s complaining when you have Guy Kibbee, Franklin Pangborn, Reginald Gardiner, Allyn Joslyn, John Alexander and Mike Mazurki in top comic form, plus Alexis Smith, Dolores Moran and a young Robert Blake (in a simulation of Palisades Amusement Park). Benny and his gag writers liked to pretend this fast-moving comedy was a terrible flop.
And then there’s the nearly year-old Warner Archive Instant, which for $9.99 a month (the first two weeks are free) allows you to stream a rotating selection of dozens of titles, including many films available in high-definition for the first time — WAC titles like “Tea and Sympathy” and WHV titles such as “Thank Your Lucky Stars.” WAI also offers a selection of films that have not yet appeared on DVD, including several pre-codes at present. I was particularly taken with a couple of Warren William vehicles I’d never seen: “Bedside,” with WW at his sleaziest as a gambler thrown out of medical school who sets up a thriving Park Avenue practice with a licensed borrowed from a drug-addicted doctor. And “Goodbye Again,” a racy pre-screwball farce about an egotistical novelist who encounters a romantically obsessed old girlfriend (Veree Teasdale), much to the chagrin of his secretary (Joan Blondell). And most have SDH subtitles, which Is useful if you’re trying to decipher the lyrics in, say, “Diplomaniacs’’ (1933).
This week, Warner Archive Collection DVD-debuts five films starring RKO stalwart Richard Dix: “Public Defender” (1931) with Boris Karloff; “His Greatest Gamble” (1933); “Ace of Aces” (1933) co-starring Ralph Bellamy; John Farrow’s “Reno” (1939) with Gail Patrick and “Men Against the Sky” (1940). Coincidentally, much-in-the-news Mick Jagger’s most famous screen performance is now being offered on Blu-ray for the first time by WAC in Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s “Performance” (1970) with James Fox.
WHV meanwhile, will give a regular retail release to a Blu-ray upgrade for George Pal’s “The Time Machine” (1960) on July 8. And the following week, it will continue reissuing long-out-print Samuel Goldwyn titles on DVD: William Wyler’s “Dead End” (1937) with Humphrey Bogart and “The Little Foxes” (1941) starring Bette Davis, as well as Howard Hawks’ “Ball of Fire” (1941) with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck.
Five years after it debuted on Blu-ray in Canada via a national distributor, Richard Lester’s classic “A Hard’s Day’s Night” finally gets the high-def treatment stateside (with lots of extras) for its 50th anniversary from the Criterion Collection in a dual-format edition on June 24. Criterion will also offer a dual-format upgrade for Douglas Sirk’s “All That Heaven Allows” on June 10.
Over at the Fox Cinema Archives, last week’s releases of “Dante’s Inferno” (1935) with Spencer Tracy, “Esther and the Queen” (1960) and “Sodom and Gomorrah” (1962) are followed this week by “Cardinal Richelieu” (1935) starring George Arliss and “I’d Climb the Highest Mountain” (1951) with Susan Hayward.
FCA has also announced its slate for next month, beginning with “The Gay Deception” (1935) with Frances Lederer, Frank Tashlin’s “Bachelor Flat” (1961) starring Terry-Thomas and “The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker” (1971) on April 1; “Footlight Parade” (1942) with Betty Grable and “The Pleasure Seekers” on April 8; “Marry the Boss’ Daughter” (1942), “The Other Woman” (1942) and “Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hey” (1948) with June Haver on April 15; “Star Dust” (1940) with Linda Darnell, “Good Morning Miss Dove” (1955) starring Jennifer Jones and “Decline and Fall of a Bird Watcher” (1968) on April 22; and Henry King’s “Kentucky” (1938) with Loretta Young and Otto Preminger’s long-awaited “Forever Amber’ (1947) with Darnell on April 29.