Cinema Retro has received the following press release:
Revisit 1939, Hollywood’s
Greatest Year, with 4 New Blu-rayâ„¢ Debuts
THE GOLDEN YEAR COLLECTION JUNE 9
Features Newly Restored Blu-ray Debut of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Starring
Charles Laughton, and Blu-ray Debuts of – Bette Davis’ Dark Victory, Errol Flynn’s Dodge City and Greta Garbo’s Ninotchka. Collection
also includes Gone With the Wind.
Burbank, Calif. March 10, 2015 – On June 9,
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will
celebrate one of the most prolific twelve months in Hollywood’s history with
the 6-disc The Golden Year Collection. Leading the
five-film set will be the Blu-ray debut of
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in a new
restoration which will have its world premiere
at TCM’s Classic Film Festival beginning March 26 in Los Angeles. Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara star in
Victor Hugo’s tragic tale which William Dieterle directed.
The other films featured in
the WBHE collection ($69.96 SRP) are new-to-Blu-ray releases of Dark Victory,
starring Bette Davis, George Brent and Humphrey Bogart; Dodge City, starring Errol Flynn,
Olivia de Havilland and Ann Sheridan; and Ninotchka starring Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas and Ina
Claire, and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. 1939’s Oscar®1 winner Gone with the Wind will
also be included. (Further details on the films below)
The Collection also contains a sixth disc with the rerelease of the fascinating documentary, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
Presents1939: Hollywood’s Greatest
Year, narrated by Kenneth Branagh and containing film clips and insights about this unprecedented and
unequalled year in films.
1939 was noteworthy in America and Europe
for many reasons. World War II had begun
with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. The Great Depression dwindled as President Roosevelt and the United States prepared
to fight. NBC demonstrated the new medium of
television at the World’s Fair. Batman, a new superhero, was born. Frank
Sinatra made his recording debut.
And nylon stockings went on sale for the first time.
Most
significant for American culture that year was the sheer number of remarkable film releases. 365 films were released in
1939, many of which are considered the most
enduring classics in film history and three of the 10 Best Picture Oscar®
nominees2 for the year, Gone with the Wind, Dark Victory and Ninotchka
are included in this collection.
The Films in The Golden Year Collection
The
Hunchback of Notre Dame
In
15th century
France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bell ringer
of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her.
With huge sets,
rousing action scenes and a versatile throng portraying a medieval Paris of cutthroats, clergy, beggars and
nobles, The
Hunchback of Notre Dame remains one of Hollywood’s all-time grandest spectacles.
Charles Laughton endured a daily
five-and-a-half hour makeup session to become
Quasimodo, Victor Hugo’s mocked and vilified anti-hero. The result was one of
his best performances -- outsized
yet nuanced, heartrending yet inspiring. Maureen O’Hara is the gypsy Esmeralda, whose simple act of
pity frees the emotions within Quasimodo. When
she is wrongly condemned, he rescues her from hanging, sweeping all of Paris
into a fight for justice.
Special Features:
· NEW!
The Lone Stranger and Porky – Vintage 1939 WB Cartoon
· Drunk Driving – Oscar® nominated3Vintage 1939 MGM Short
· Interview with
Maureen O’Hara
· Theatrical Trailer
Dark Victory
A young socialite is diagnosed with an
inoperable brain tumor and must decide whether
she’ll meet her final days with dignity.
Bette
Davis’ bravura, moving but never morbid performance as Judith Traherne, a dying heiress determined to find
happiness in her few remaining months, turns the film into a three-hankie classic. But that success
would never have happened if Davis hadn’t
pestered studio brass to buy Dark Victory’s story
rights. Jack Warner finally did so skeptically.
“Who wants to see a dame go blind?†he asked. Almost everyone was the answer: Dark Victory
was
Davis’ biggest box-office hit yet and garnered three Academy Award® nominations for 1939’s Best Picture, Best
Actress (Davis) and Best Music, Original
Score (Max Steiner).
Special Features:
· Commentary
by film historian James Ursini and CNN film critic Paul Clinton
· “Warner Night at the Moviesâ€
o NEW! Old Hickory - Vintage 1939 WB Short
o Robin Hood Makes
Good -
Vintage 1939 WB Cartoon
o Vintage Newsreel
o The Roaring
Twenties Trailer
· 1939: Tough
Competition for Dark Victory - Featurette
· 1/8/40
Lux Radio Theater Broadcast (Audio Only)
· Theatrical Trailer
Dodge City
Wade Hatton (Errol Flynn), a Texas cattle
agent, witnesses firsthand the brutal
lawlessness of Dodge City and takes the job of sheriff to clean the town up.
In his first of eight Westerns, Flynn is as
able with a six-shooter as he was with a
swashbuckler’s sword. He confronts lynch mobs, slams outlaws into jail and escapes (along with co-star Olivia de
Havilland) from a fiery, locked railroad car. Cheered for Flynn’s sagebrush debut, its vivid Technicolor look and
spectacular saloon brawl that may
have employed every available Hollywood stunt person, Dodge City later gained another distinction when it
inspired Mel Brooks’ cowboy parody Blazing Saddles.
Special Features (Previously Released):
· “Warner Night at the
Moviesâ€
o Introduction by
Leonard Maltin –Featurette
o Vintage Newsreel
o Sons of Liberty – Vintage WB
1939 Academy Award®-Winning4 Short
o Dangerous Dan McFoo
-
Vintage1939 WB Cartoon
o Dodge City: Go
West, Errol Flynn - Featurette
o The Oklahoma Kid Trailer
· Theatrical Trailer
Ninotchka
A stern Russian woman (Greta Garbo) sent to
Paris on official business finds herself
attracted to a man (Melvyn Douglas) who represents everything she is supposed to detest.
‘Garbo Talks!’ proclaimed ads when silent
star Greta Garbo debuted in talkies. Nine
years and 12 classic screen dramas later, the gifted movie legend was ready for another change. Garbo Laughs! cheered the
publicity for her first comedy, a frothy tale of a dour Russian envoy sublimating her womanhood for Soviet
brotherhood until she falls for a suave
Parisian man-about-town (Melvyn Douglas).
Working from a cleverly barbed script
written in part by Billy Wilder, director Ernst
Lubitsch knew better than anyone how to marry refinement with sublime wit. “At least twice a day the most dignified
human being is ridiculous,†he explained about his acclaimed Lubitsch Touch, That’s how we see Garbo’s love struck
Ninotchka: serenely dignified yet
endearingly ridiculous. Garbo laughs. So will you.
Ninotchka received four 1939 Academy Award®
nominations – Best Picture, Best Actress
in a Leading Role (Garbo), Best Writing- Original Story (Melchior Lengyel), and Best Writing-Screenplay (Charles
Brackett Walter Reisch, Billy Wilder).
Special Features:
· NEW! Prophet Without Honor
– Vintage 1939 Academy
Award® nominated5 MGM Short
· NEW!
The Blue Danube – Vintage
1939 MGM Cartoon
· Theatrical Trailer
Gone with the Wind
Lauded
as one of the American cinema’s grandest, most ambitious and spectacular pieces of filmmaking, Gone with
the Wind, was helmed by Victor Fleming in 1939, the same year as the director’s The Wizard
of Oz.
Producer David O. Selznick’s mammoth
achievement and still history’s all-time domestic box-office champion ($1.6 billion6) captured ten 1939 Academy Awards® including:
Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best
Supporting Actress for Hattie McDaniel, the first Oscar® awarded to an African- American actor. Margaret
Mitchell’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel, on which the film is based, has been translated into 16
languages, has sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide, and even now continues to sell 50,000 copies a year.
Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de
Havilland, Leslie Howard and Hattie McDaniel star in this classic epic of the
American South. On the eve of the Civil War, rich, beautiful and self-centered Scarlett O'Hara (Leigh)
has everything she could want -- except Ashley
Wilkes (Leslie Howard). As the war devastates the South, Scarlett discovers the strength within herself to protect her
family and rebuild her life. Through everything, she longs for Ashley, unaware that she is already
married to the man she really loves (Gable) -- and who truly loves her -- until she finally drives him away. Only then
does Scarlett realize what she has
lost ... and tries to win him back.
Warner
Bros. Home Entertainment Presents1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year Narrated by Kenneth Branagh this informative
documentary contains film clips and
insights about this unprecedented and unequalled year in films.
Special Features
included on this disc (Previously Released):
· Breakdowns of 1939 – Vintage 1939 WB Short
· Sons of Liberty – Also on the Dodge City disc
· Drunk Driving – Also on the The Hunchback of Notre Dame disc
· Prophet Without Honor – Also on the Ninotchka disc
· Sword Fishing – Vintage 1939 WB Short
· Detouring America – Vintage 1939 WB Cartoon
· Peace on Earth - Vintage 1939 MGM Cartoon
· Trailers
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