Warner 'The Golden Year' Collection (Ninotchka, Dodge City, Dark Victory, more) - 6/9

[Akijama]

The Golden Year Collection Blu-ray




Individual releases:

The Hunchback of Notre Dame Blu-ray

Dark Victory Blu-ray

Dodge City Blu-ray

Ninotchka Blu-ray




Full press release:

Revisit 1939, Hollywood’s Greatest Year,

with 4 New Blu-ray™ 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 Ninotchkastarring 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® nominees[2] 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® nominated[3]Vintage 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 Movies”

o NEW! Old Hickory - Vintage 1939 WB Short

o Robin Hood Makes Good - Vintage 1939 WB Cartoon

o Vintage Newsreel

o The Roaring TwentiesTrailer

· 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 Movies”

o Introduction by Leonard Maltin –Featurette

o Vintage Newsreel

o Sons of Liberty– Vintage WB 1939 Academy Award®-Winning[4] 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® nominated[5] 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 billion[6]) 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.


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 -Vintage1939 MGM Cartoon

· Trailers

[Show spoiler]Coming from Warner

It's listed as "catalog" and "Cinema's Golden Year" so I assume it will include some (hopefully) new classic stuff.

Stay tuned for more info....