The Extras - Classic Hollywood with George Feltenstein: The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Singin’ in the Rain, North By Northwest, and Gone With the Wind

Episode Date: August 1, 2021

This episode is part 2 of a three-part series with legendary home entertainment executive George Feltenstein.  In this episode George details the home entertainment release history of Hollywood classics The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Singin’ in the Rain, North By Northwest, and Gone With the Wind.  Along the way, we hear the behind-the-scenes stories of the decisions made on what extras to include with each release, which extras are no longer available due to expired licenses, and George’s thoughts on which films he hopes will soon be released in 4K.The Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. This episode is part two of a three-part series with legendary home entertainment executive George

Feltenstein. In part one, we discussed George's early career working with MGM UA during the era of VHS before getting into the development of extras on Laserdisc in the mid-1980s. George also provided background on the swift consumer adoption of DVD in the late 1990s and how that rapidly transformed the home entertainment business. We also briefly discussed the importance of film preservation and how that works hand-in-hand with the release of classic Hollywood films both for broadcast and in the home entertainment market. George has forgotten more than I will ever know about classic Hollywood films and their extras. And in today's episode, we get to hear his wonderful stories

of working on the home entertainment releases of some of the most popular classic Hollywood films, including The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, North by Northwest, and Gone with the Wind. Most of these stories start with the film's original release on VHS and then the development of extras for their DVD and Blu-ray releases. George also teases which of these releases he hopes will receive a 4K release in the not-too-distant future.

Many of you may own one or even all of these titles in your private collection, so hearing the story behind their releases and the extras is a real treat. So once again, here is part two of my discussion with George Feltenstein. So I'd like to talk then a little bit now about some specific titles that you've worked on that you think are worthy of talking about, not only the film, but the extras that were created for that film. Absolutely. Yeah. Let's start off with probably one that you've mentioned already that's been released. And it's just a favorite of the fans and just a classic of cinema. And that's The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland.

One of the things we did as we prepared for the 50th anniversary was to try to find as much rare material as possible. What was still around that we could share with the consumer? Like we went after the Harold Arlen home movies, which we already knew about. knew about. Concurrently, Jack Kelly Jr., who was the son of the Tin Man and who was a documentarian extraordinaire on his own right, he's the gentleman that made the first That's Entertainment film in 1974, which was the sixth biggest grossing movie of the year in 1974 and introduced a whole new generation to the wonders of the MGM musical. Jack produced a one-hour special for the 50th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz for CBS called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Making of a classic, and it's hosted by Angela Lansbury. That has long been available on home video, but was not produced yet when the 50th anniversary video cassette and

later disc were released. It didn't get a home video release until years later as part of a very expensive box set called The Ultimate Oz, which was available on VHS as well as Laserdisc. But I'll talk about that in a moment. For 1989, we assembled these little trailers that we found, reissued trailers that we found, anything that we could add to the presentation that might be of interest. It's pretty well known now that Jack Haley was not the original person cast as the Tin Man. Tin Man was originally supposed to be Buddy Ebsen, later of Beverly Hillbillies, Barnaby Jones, Davy Crockett fame.

But at the time, he was an MGM young contract player. He prerecorded all his songs for the movie like everybody else did. And they started shooting with him. And the aluminum paste makeup actually poisoned him. And he was rushed to the hospital and was unable to make the movie. And he almost died. L.B. Mayer allegedly held it against him, which is kind of ridiculous. But he was kind of blackballed in the industry for a while because of that,

allegedly. Because all these stories about L.B. Mayer are allegedly. You don't quite know. But the truth was he was supposed to be the Tin Man, and he couldn't do the role, so they borrowed Jack Haley from 20th Century Fox, and he played the Tin man in the film. But Buddy Ebsen's recording of If I Only Had a Heart

remained, as well as some stills of him in the film. So we put on the videocassette and the laser disc of the 50th anniversary his version of If I Only Had a Heart with images of him. we put on the videocassette and the laser disc at the 50th anniversary, his version of If I Only Had a Heart with images of him. So it was things like that at the very beginning. We started to find more and more things as the years went on and then created new documentaries and commentaries and so forth and so on. So it was really an evolutionary process that literally goes from the first, you know, just plain movie only video cassette release in 1980 to the fact that in 2019, there was a 4K off the original negative release that blew everybody's socks off and proved that 4K HDR can bring splendor and benefits to an 80-year-old movie.

You won an Emmy for the 2004 American Masters documentary Judy Garland by myself. Was this developed as an extra for The Wizard of Oz? It wasn't developed as an extra for The Wizard of Oz, but it was our intention to use it on another very beloved Judy Garland film, Meet Me in St. Louis. It wasn't that we wanted the documentary made as a special feature. We wanted the documentary made and thought it would be a great thing to use as a special feature. And it's a two-hour documentary.

It could have been released on its own, but releasing documentaries on their own, especially, you know, even years ago, that's a tough thing to do, you know, to get them to sell and be profitable. So they best are served when they're used as enhanced content. The backstory of that is my work life basically began at MGM. The classic MGM library owned by Ted Turner was still under license to the quote unquote new MGM, and they paid royalty to Turner. quote unquote, new MGM, and they paid royalty to Turner. So it was natural to me that I should plan my career to move with the library, the classic MGM library, because that was my passion. And that also included the pre-49 Warner library that Jack Warner had sold off years earlier.

So I started working at Turner Entertainment Company and I made arrangements to do so before Time Warner bought Turner. But by the time I was actually ready to start on January 1st, 1997, Time Warner was the owner of Turner Broadcasting and Turner Entertainment Company became part of Warner Brothers. So what I really, really, really, really wanted to do was get to Warner Home Video as soon as possible and continue my life as a home video executive at Warner Home Video. But there wasn't an appetite for that as they were prepping the launch of DVD. Warren Lieberfarb wisely understood that when you launch a new product like that, classic films are not going to be the first thing people want. They're going to want new films or films that are more heavily

reliant on special effects and action and CGI, that will appeal to the demographic male, 40 plus, that has more disposable income, et cetera, et cetera. So there were a few classics released at the early dawn of DVD, and they didn't do well. Oh, wow. So during that time, I came to Warner Home Video as sort would be involved with the release and write the liner notes and supply any materials that I could. And that was when I was also very involved with our soundtrack CD joint venture with Rhino Records. And we put out over 100 CD soundtracks from the original master recordings, which was something I had never been a CD

record producer before, but I knew all those master recordings were there in the vault and had never been issued properly. And one of the things that makes me able to do my job hopefully well is that I know what the consumers want because I'm one of them. I, as a consumer, knew that, for example, I'd say, why is it that the record of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers soundtrack album is mono or fake stereo when the film was released and recorded in stereo? The answer is because nobody was smart enough, knowledgeable enough, or had the energy to actually go back to the original recordings and make a new album that was sonically wonderful. So when I got that opportunity,

I tested it with two titles while I was still at MGM, where we created stereo tracks and CDs to go along with the DHS releases and Laserdisc releases. Those films were Mimi and St. Louis and Ziegfeld Follies. And I proved that you could make soundtrack albums that never existed before. Also under that scenario, you could make better versions of soundtrack albums

that had been released previously that had songs missing or didn't have the best sound quality. So after I left MGM and joined Turner, I was put in charge as the Turner person in the joint venture along with Rhino. And I worked with Rhino on all those albums and coordinated that activity with the people at Warner Home Video. I stayed very close to all the folks at Warner Home Video. And eventually, the call finally came that you can go over and you can start working at Warner Home Video and releasing classics. And I was euphoric. However, when I was at Turner, I worked for an extraordinary

gentleman, God rest his soul. His name was Roger Mayer, no relation to L.B. Mayer. Roger started working as the assistant general studio manager at MGM in 1961 and eventually became the studio manager later in the 60s and also ran the lab. And when Ted Turner bought MGM and sold back everything except the library, MGM Entertainment Company had to change its name because they didn't own the MGM name or the Lion logo anymore. So it became Turner Entertainment Company. And Roger was the president. So I was the senior vice president of marketing working for Roger. Turner Entertainment Company was part of Warner Brothers at that time. And what we did was we started to develop a documentary department. I turned Roger into, who had never done this before really,

where we had a little budget that we could partner with to create documentaries built around the library, whether we partnered with TCM or BBC or PBS and various different iterations within PBS, such as American Masters or Great Performances. as American Masters or Great Performances. And we would work out deals that relied heavily on our library. And we'd get the home video rights, we'd get the copyright, and eventually all rights would revert to us. Our contribution was the clips, and we'd get home video rights in exchange. And we'd get home video rights in exchange. So when I went to Warner Home Video, I continued to work with Roger on producing documentaries. Some of those documentaries are still in circulation and available, such as Joan Crawford, The Ultimate Movie Star, which is on the Criterion Collection's Blu-ray and DVD of our film, Mildred Pierce. That's a terrific documentary narrated by Angelica Houston. We did a North

by Northwest documentary hosted by Eva Marie Saint called Destination Hitchcock. We did a History of Technicolor hosted by Angela Lansbury. We did a Cary Grant documentary with, unfortunately, the non-Warner Turner assets. The license for them expired. So unfortunately, it's no longer in distribution. But it was called Cary Grant, a Class Act. And it went to the Cannes Film Festival and was very well received, made by a very talented filmmaker, Robert Trachtenberg. And then I had always wanted a Judy Garland documentary to be made that celebrated her artistry and her talent and would be realistic in dealing with the traumas and troubles of her life,

but not focus on the salacious and the darkness, but rather focus on the talent and the greatness. Right. We hired a group of, we got together with the people at American Masters who were wonderful, We got together with the people at American Masters who were wonderful, and we prepared this documentary, which would be shown on PBS on February 14, 2004. We hired some really wonderful filmmakers that we had worked with before to work on this project, and it wasn't coming together the way we had hoped. And we had hoped to make the film where we could clear it in perpetuity and where we could make it in high definition so it would be usable for the future. Right. And with a February 14th, 2004 air date, we had to let the filmmakers go right before Christmas because we just, we did not have a film. And I love the people who we had engaged and we've worked with them since then. It just wasn't

working for whatever reason. So Susan Lacey, who is the creator and series producer of American Masters at the time, she's since left American Masters at PBS. But Susan Lacey and my good friend John Fricke, who's the world's foremost Judy Garland Wizard of Oz expert and a wonderful human being and incredibly knowledgeable. Susan and John had editing rooms going nonstop for six weeks. The master tape was hand carried to PBS headquarters in Washington, D.C. on the morning that it was to be broadcast. And it went on the air that night. It was incredibly well received. And I ended up being one of several people

earning an Emmy as one of the executive producers. The show won several Emmys and was unanimously beloved, but it wasn't going to be on Meet Me in St. Louis because we missed the date. So it got released on Easter Parade, which came out the following year. However, and this is the heartbreak story of documentary, all of the material that didn't belong to us because we couldn't tell her story without licensing other material. There were music licenses for home video that had to be for 10 years only and for U.S. only. So the program was never shown outside the U.S. And music and third-party clip licenses expired in 2014. And the show is now in the graveyard of unviewable documentaries, which is a massive graveyard because people have been making

documentaries for years and years that no one can see because of expired clip licenses. And I believe that a very famous documentary about Dr. Martin Luther King was made and was suffering that same fate of expired clip licenses. And I believe some people got together because of how important the film was and came up with the money to be able to free that film up. But it is something that documentary filmmakers constantly have to deal with the pain of. I believe, and I'm not sure in saying this, I'm just, it is my belief, just based on what has been going on, at least at Warner Brothers, it is my belief that people are now licensing all media in perpetuity, which will in our Bette Davis Collection Volume 3 as a standalone documentary, two hours, done in cooperation with her estate. And we got access to all of her ephemeral childhood drawings and letters and everything.

They were so helpful, so wonderful. And Peter Jones, he earned an Emmy for writing that and subsequently won Emmys for doing other things. He made a terrific American Masters documentary about Johnny Carson, King of Late Night. Very talented filmmaker. That film about Bette Davis, the rights for the third-party material,

expired in 2016. And the cost for that was not manageable. Right. And it's in that graveyard. I'm hoping that we will find ways to free them up. I don't give up easily on these things, especially since I'm so passionate about them. Right. Let's talk about another classic of cinema that I think is worthy of our exploration. And that's the 1942 film Casablanca starring

Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Tell us a little bit about that release and the extras you put on that. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes.

That's had a very interesting home video history because at the time that it first came out on video, that it first came out on video. It was released through, in the United States and Canada, it was released through CBS Fox under license from United Artists. United Artists was the owner of the pre-49 Warner library until Turner bought MGM UA. So domestically, there was this video deal made before the sale that put all those films out of the reach of MGMUA home video until 1988. So the first Casablanca home video cassette and disc releases came through CBS Fox. And it was just the movie, and it was done off of print, and it still looked better than people had seen it before. Because you have to understand, before home video and pay television, everybody was watching 16mm syndication prints that had scratches and splices

and were cut with, you know, sometimes miserably. I grew up in New York where they showed Singing in the Rain, which is a 103-minute film, in a 90-minute time slot. So they only showed 70 minutes of the movie. And I had never seen Make Him Laugh. I had never seen Good Morning. I had never seen most of Laugh. I had never seen Good Morning. I had never seen most of the Broadway and Melody Ballet. Most of the numbers were cut out. Wow.

And that was a problem all over the country. Right. So similarly with Casablanca, they used 35 millimeter materials and they were pretty good. Nobody was cleaning up dirt and scratches and so forth then. Technology didn't exist to clean things up the way we can now, but it was a quantum leap from what existed, and it was very popular. By the time the rights came to us at MGMUA, we released what had been available previously. But then in 1992, we had, drumroll, a 50th anniversary. And Casablanca is one of those films where you can celebrate the the anniversary either based on 1942 or 1943, because the film was copyrighted and premiered

in New York in November of 1942, but it didn't open in Los Angeles or the film won the Oscar as Best Picture of 1943 because it didn't qualify for 1942. So we have celebrated its anniversaries based on the 1942 or 1943 date. That year, 1992, we were celebrating the 50th anniversary. And we at MGM, we went all out. We had a theatrical reissue that was very successful. We had a new theatrical trailer cut. theatrical trailer cut. And we were lucky enough to engage the services of Lauren Bacall to narrate a new documentary, which was produced as a joint production between Turner's Home Entertainment Division in Atlanta. A wonderful guy by the name of Scott Benson directed it. MGM, UA Home Video, also participated in this.

And it was released on the videocassette and the Laserdisc. And we had in the documentary some soundless outtakes that had been found in the stock footage library. But we also had Mrs. Bogart, you know, the woman who knew him best and loved him very much, and was the mother of his two children, to have her speak about the film. We also had one or two still alive cast members in the documentary. And it was thrilling to be able to make it with Ms. Bacall. Now, fast forward to many years later, when the film was going to be on DVD, we decided that the documentary needed to be updated and that we could add more to it because we found more outtake footage. And Ms. Bacall came back and did some new intros and outros. And we freshened it up a little bit. It was very, very successful. And that was, I believe if my memory is correct,

we did that in 2003 using the 1943 date for its 60th anniversary. Right. And we also had commentary and it was a two-disc special edition. Then, of course, as technology improves, it was the first black-and-white movie to be released in high definition on HD, DVD, and Blu-ray. It proved that the technology of high definition did make a difference on black and white films, just as we're learning that 4K HDR can make a difference on black and white films. So as technology improves, it all depends on the motion picture. But Casablanca is one of those films that I'd say it's my number one hands down choice of if you're going to show somebody somewhat a movie that says, I don't like black and white movies and,

you know, I have no interest in them and they're old and, you know, put them in front of Casablanca. They will not feel like they're watching an old movie. They will immediately be drawn into its genius. And it is part of the zeitgeist of our culture. culture. And it is also something that we as forever Warner Brothers people can be very proud of because it was made all at the studio. It was the quintessential Warner Brothers movie, you know, directed by Michael Curtiz of wonderful music by Max Steiner and the whole supporting cast. I never get tired of watching it. And I don't know anybody that does. Right. Well, it looks like in 2022 or 23, you'll have another

chance to release that movie, hopefully in 4k. I would, I would hope so. It's not my decision to make, but I'm hoping that people that are in the position to make that decision would see the wisdom in that. And I think it's very likely that it will happen. If not as a 4K disc, it might be a 4K presentation digitally or on HBO Max or, you know, we don't know exactly how, but right now the best possible quality is on a 4K disc that holds the largest amount of information in terms of the size of the file and the quality can't be bested with any other format. So it's exciting to think that we could still do that. And as technology improves, you can also continue to make the sound leaner. It's just, it's endless.

And we have indeed found more footage that hadn't been used in recent years that hasn't been seen. All of it without sound, but still fascinating, especially with the little miniature airplanes. Right, right. All of it without sound, but still fascinating, especially with the little miniature airplanes. Right, right. I wanted to kind of transition now into some discussion about musicals. They're obviously an extremely important part of American cinema. What do you recall about first releasing the 1952 classic Singing in the Rain on DVD? Well, Singing in the Rain, there's a very interesting history there. Singing in the Rain came out on videocassette in the mid-80s, long before I worked at MGMUA.

I was delighted that it did because it was looking better than, you know, you could own it. You know, I mean, this is something that I should have really talked about before, but the most amazing thing that the home video industry did was it made it possible for people to legally own movies. And for years and years and years, studios were against such a thing, with the exception of Columbia Pictures, who had a little eight millimeter home movie division who would sell eight minute and three minute eight millimeter and super eight millimeter abridgments at camera stores. And Universal had a company called Castle Films that they bought, where they did a similar thing. You couldn't actually buy your own copy of a Hollywood movie. There were tons of film buffs out there who were buying 16 millimeter dupes on the black market and would end up going to jail. It was a really serious thing.

So what home video did was it made it possible for you to be able to own a movie legally at an affordable price. So Singing in the Rain came out in the early 80s. It was just the movie. When the 40th anniversary came around in 1992, I was at MGM and I wanted to do a 40th anniversary edition with a documentary about the making of the film. I even had the screenwriters, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, in my office and became very, very close with them. We didn't do the documentary. The reason we didn't do the documentary. The reason we didn't do the

documentary was at the request of Mr. Gene Kelly, with whom I had become friendly. And Gene said, please don't do this. And I said, why? And he said, because it'll be Rashomon, said, because it'll be Rashomon, where the same story is told by three different people in three different ways, what are you going to get as the real story? Because Debbie Reynolds will tell it to you one way, Betty and Adolph will tell it to you another way, his co-director, Stanley Donnell will tell it to you another way. You're not going to get parody of the truth. Please don't make it. So we didn't. I honored his wishes. I would never do anything against his wishes, especially since we had become friendly. I had this great, unbelievable benefit of getting to know a lot of the people I idolized as a child.

And through my work, I got to know them as people and become friendly with them, having nothing to do with their movies or their work, but as people. I spent many, many a day with Gene Kelly and his wife, you know, on a Sunday afternoon, and his wife, you know, on a Sunday afternoon, you know, just chatting and having coffee. And what a gift that was. So there was a nice 40th anniversary edition released in 92. But the only thing we put special on it was a deleted musical number that we had found that had been cut out. And it was literally

cut out of a print. It was a lift, as they would call it. And it was Debbie Reynolds singing, You Are My Lucky Star. And I believe we put that on that cassette and video Laserdisc release. But come 2002, Gene passed away in 1996. And I felt it was not disintegrous to have a 50th anniversary documentary made about the making of the film, especially since we still had a lot of the people who were involved in the film still alive. Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Stanley Donnan, who co-directed the movie, Betty Common and Adolph Green, who wrote the screenplay, Sid Charisse, Rita Moreno, they were all able to participate in this. They were all able to participate in this.

And we used some archival footage as well. But Debbie hosted the documentary. We shot it over on what was the MGM lot and now is at Sony. It was terrific. And that was now almost 20 years ago. And when Singing in the Rain was re-released 10 years later on Blu-ray, that documentary was carried over, but the powers that be decided they wanted to make a new documentary

that would appeal to younger generations. And I will reserve comment on that. But what we also did on that release was I put all of the recording session material on the DVD. So you could hear the stops and starts and coughs of people as they're singing their songs or laughing in between takes. And there was simultaneously a reissue of the soundtrack, which was, you know, it had outtake audio numbers on it. We just made it as exciting of an event as we could. And not unlike Casablanca, Singing in the Rain is another, like it's a musical you can put on for people who don't like musicals.

The musical numbers are all wonderful, but the script is so strong and it holds up so well as a period piece that it just doesn't date and it will last forever. When I was a kid, they were going to show a film at Radio City Music Hall that MGM had made in the 70s called The Wind and the Lion with Sean Connery and Candice Bergen, and it wasn't going to be ready in time. MGM had it booked at Radio City Music Hall, and this is right before Radio City Music Hall stopped showing movies. And they had four weeks

to fill. So it was like, oh my God, what do we do? So they ran a week of Gone with the Wind, and a week of 2001 A Space Odyssey, and a week of I'm trying to remember, Dr. Zhivago was the third movie.

And then because That's Entertainment had come out the year before with such a success, they ran a week of singing in the rain. And the house was packed. It was a 6,000 seat theater. The house was packed every day for every performance. I went twice. I cut school and also went on the weekend. And I was in my early teens. I was watching this film in the same theater where it had premiered, I guess, at that point, 20, 23 years earlier.

And there were audiences of all ages, you know, five, six years old, and people who were in their 70s and 80s. And the whole theater went crazy. And to watch it on that huge screen, to watch it on that huge screen, the mind blowing thing. And, you know, this set me on my trajectory of knowing what I wanted to do with my life, you know, and I got to tell Gene Kelly about that story, which he didn't even know about. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. That's a terrific story. Wow. story. Wow. Let's switch genres here and talk about another classic. Let's talk about the 1959 spy thriller North by Northwest starring Cary Grant and Ava Marie Saint and directed, of course, by Alfred Hitchcock. Give us a little background on that release. Well, what's really great is you're talking about all my favorite movies. I think some of these

are everybody's favorite movies. I agree. North by Northwest, I always say, what's my favorite Hitchcock movie? And I can never decide whether it's Psycho or North by Northwest.

And they're so different, but I love them so much. I really can't decide which I love more. It's probably North by Northwest by a hair, but North by Northwest is such an amazing piece of genius. And I became obsessed with it in college. You know, it was another one of these films

that got a plane release. There was so much more that could be done with it. And what we did for the DVD was we got the leading lady of the film, who thankfully is still with us as we speak in 2021. She's in her early 90s, but I hear she's in wonderful health, which is great. Eva Marie Saint hosted Destination Hitchcock, the making of North by Northwest. There were several people available, including the production designer Bob Boyle and a couple of other people that had been Ernest Lehman, who wrote the screenplay. He was still alive, and he's part of that documentary. So that was on the disc. We got to go to USC and find a lot of the designs that Hitchcock's storyboards were there. And we really got to make it into something special and it had a commentary. Then it was further upgraded for Blu-ray

and now drum roll. I would pray that it will become a 4K because our competitors at another studio where most of Mr. Hitchcock's work rests released a four-film Hitchcock collection last Christmas in 4K that sold very well and looked great. So I'm hoping that we will be able to do the same for North by Northwest. It's a very expensive proposition for two reasons. The first reason is because the film was shot in a process called vis division and vis division went through the camera horizontally as opposed to vertically. So it gave you a widescreen image with great depth of field, but it used so much more of the frame. So as a result,

it's when you're using these wide format films, they're crystal clear and breathtaking. That also means they're more expensive to master. Problem number two is that in 1959, when it was shot, the Eastman color stock was particularly bad and subject to fading. The yellow layer, there are yellow, cyan, and magenta layers within the single strand Eastman color negative. And the yellow layer of the Eastman stock of that time basically would collapse over time, which would mean that the film would fade and become grainier. So we were able to solve that for the Blu-ray by using the yellow separation because protection separations are always made or were always made on these films as a backup if something happened to the negative. Our North by Northwest Blu-ray remaster was a seven figure cost release and it was profitable.

But now he's got to go back and do it again in 4K. So I'm hoping that that will happen. I think it can't not happen simply because the film continues as all, if something's really great, it will retain its greatness and transcend generations. North by Northwest is one of those films. Yes. I'm hoping that that will happen.

But again, there were lots of really, really cool extras on that. And when the Blu-ray came along, there were some new pieces created that were not just about North by Northwest, but had other people talking about it from a historian point of view. I think the other thing as time kind of goes by, and obviously there's the technology upgrades, but the other thing that sometimes can be interesting for the modern day fan is to hear their favorite current directors or actors talk about how they were inspired, you know, either to go into the business or in a sense, maybe it might impact that director's style of directing.

And so there's always, even as time goes by, that ability to kind of also make it a little bit more current along with the other assets that you might unearth over the years. I mean, I think every film we've talked about so far are in that afi top 10 you know i mean it's these are the creme de la creme and when working with the warner library it's like an embarrassment of riches because most of the great classic films of the 20th century lay within the Warner library. Well, we have a few more. Let's dive into the 1939 MGM classic, Gone with the Wind. Well, I've got a lot to say about that. And that happens to be my,

it was my favorite movie when I was eight and I first saw it. And it still is. As my friend Leonard Maltin says, if it isn't the greatest movie ever made, it's the greatest example of storytelling ever put on film. But the drama behind the making of that film and how that film was able to be made in 1939 and, when adjusted for inflation, still be the highest grossing movie of all time, seen by more people than any other film. It was theatrically re-released every seven years for new generations. Right. for new generations. When it was finally sold to television in 1976, it was the highest rated broadcast up until that time on network television. When cinema was changing dramatically and the

walls were tumbling down, among the top grossing films like In the Heat of the Night and The Graduate was the 1967 reissue of Gone with the Wind. And I have to clarify that the film was produced by David O. Selznick and was a Selznick International picture. And it was distributed by MGM. MGM owned 25% of it, and David O. Selznick had a gambling problem that always had him needing money, and he eventually sold all of his interest interest in the film. So Warner Brothers now owns virtually the whole film. There are a few participants that have a little piece of it, but for all intents and purposes, we own it. But Selznick, he almost sued MGM in 1954 because MGM was doing a 30th anniversary

special on the Ed Sullivan show. The new studio head, Dory Sherry, was talking about all their great films and he talked about Gone with the Wind and Selznick went ballistic. It's not an MGM film. It's a

Selznick international picture and indeed it does not open with a line. It opens with the Selznick logo. And it said distributed by Lowe's Incorporated, which was MGM's parent company at the time. They changed the titles for the 1967 reissue because Lowe's Incorporated became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Incorporated. And we now, and have since the late 80s, when it had its first of many restorations, the original titles that went from side to side, which had been changed and so forth and so on, were reinstated. And it says distributed by Lowe's Incorporated and so forth and so on. This film was of enormous power and the making of it was such an outrageous undertaking,

especially for an independent like Selznick, who was L.B. Mayer's son-in-law, by the way. The public would not accept anybody but Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in the movie. That meant that L.B. Mayer had to deal with his son-in-law in lending Clark Gable, and that's how MGM got involved in the movie. And the success of Gone with the Wind and MGM's distribution of it ended up saving the company through many lean years. But in 1988, as the film was nearing its 50th anniversary, David O. Selznick's two sons, Jeffrey Selznick, who passed away about 20 years ago, and his younger brother, Danny, who's still with us, they embarked on producing what I call the Gone with the Wind of Making of. They made a two-hour-plus documentary on the making of the film called Gone with the Wind, the Making of a Legend. And it is frequently shown on TCM and has been frequently distributed with the movie

when it is sold, either physically or digitally, and has been for many years. But when it was initially produced, the Selznick brothers insisted that it be its own entity and it be sold on its own. And it was so well made that it sold very well and got rapturous reviews. It was narrated by Christopher Plummer and David O. Selznick saved everything in terms of screen tests because the whole thing was who is going to play Scarlett O'Hara it was a two-year highly publicized the search for Scarlett I mean they were really you know working the publicity machine and it wasn't fake. Selznick was such a perfectionist and he was compulsive, obsessive. He could not rest until he had exactly the right person. All the Selznick screen tests are saved and they're all nitrate film.

So they're deposited at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester. But all the Selznick archives and papers are at the University of Texas in Austin. Because of that, these wonderful gentlemen, because I got to know both Jeffrey and Danny, and still know Danny, and Jeffrey, as I said, passed away. and still no Danny and Jeffrey, as I said, passed away. They were as committed to making the date of October 1st, 1988, which was the day TNT went on the air. And TNT went on the air with Gone With the Wind and The Making Of. They had to make that air date.

They had the same kind of pressures, time pressures, and getting it absolutely perfect that their father did in terms of making the movie. There's a parallel there that's kind of fascinating. But I urge anyone who hasn't seen this documentary to watch it. And fortunately, there were several people who worked on the film who were still alive back in 1988. Some cast members, such as Butterfly McQueen, some of the people that played Scarlet Sisters, they were still alive. A lot of crew people were still alive. Some people have brought their home movies of the burning of Atlanta. It's very, very comprehensive and very, very well made. So you can't top that as an extra. But what we have been able to do is continue to make the film look better and better and better and better. And most recently, it was the Blu-ray that was done in 2009

off the original negative that is just luscious to look at. And that leads to the inevitable question of, will it become a 4K? And I don't know the answer to that. In the last 10 years or so, something that never really happened to Gone with the Wind before has happened, and that is it has become the target of people accusing it of being racially insensitive. issue and had people consult on the film. But just having a film that glorifies the South in any way or doesn't decry slavery, it pushes buttons that have in the last few years caused a lot of controversy. And when it was put on HBO Max in 2019 for the launch, it was almost immediately pulled down and then put back up with several contextualized documentary pieces of contemporary African-American film historians and others talking about the problematic aspects of the film, acknowledging its greatness, acknowledging that Hattie McDaniel earned the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and was the first Black performer to earn an Oscar, but also having to deal with the gut wrenching truth that she wasn't invited to the premiere in Atlanta.

And the race, the racial prejudices of the time are a product of that time. And even though this film was never considered a hot push button issue like other films have been in the past, you know, like I said, it was reissued in 1967 at the height of the civil rights movement of the 60s, and no one was complaining about it. But if it causes one person to feel hurt or shame or insult, then it needs to be preceded by something that would give it context. We never ran across any problems with this film in that regard with this issue up through the 2009 release for what was the 70th anniversary. But soon thereafter, there were various things that took place, which caused people to start questioning the film and accusing it of being problematic. And now it is in that unfortunate state where I don't know. It's not being held withheld from distribution. It's just whenever it's being shown, the company has a contextualized group of pieces

that can be shown with it or available for people who, let's say you buy it on iTunes, you get these three different pieces to understand it from the perspective of the racial insensitivity that people find in the film. So, I mean, that's important to address. And the company is not repressing it, but to make, it's the same thing we ran into with the animation years earlier. Right. To make believe that those kind of prejudices didn't exist at all is as bad as perpetuating them.

Right. at all is as bad as perpetuating them. So we have to acknowledge our history and the mistakes of the past and not let it get in the way of putting a dark cloud over the greatness of its filmmaking. I urge people to look for these pieces online. I believe that they are on YouTube from TCM. Jacqueline Stewart was going to be heading up the Academy Museum and it was hosted on TCM. She's one of the people that participated in creating one of these pieces. And also the gentleman that I consider one of the premier African-American film historians, Donald Bogle, he led a panel at the TCM Film Festival that was recorded in 2019. And that's available for people to see as well. Or maybe it was 2018. I'm not sure.

I lose all track of time because of the pandemic. But you really can't top what is available in terms of extras because of all the stuff that we did gather together. The one heartbreaking thing is that it did have a, out of town three months before it opened. And it was a half hour longer. And none of the deleted footage survives. We had a guy that was calling us up for years saying that he had the cut footage and it was given to him by the assistant cameraman, which sounded kind of bogus. But we went through all sorts of hoops to make arrangements

to get to let him show it to us, and he disappeared. Wow. So it's sad. It would be great to see some of that material that was filmed but not used. But the screen test of all the different actresses that tried out to be Scarlett O'Hara, including Paulette Goddard, who is the closest to getting the part, and Lana Turner and Gene Arthur and Joan Bennett. And it's amazing to see these pieces and Vivian Lee's screen test. Wow. Vivian Lee was in the United States.

She was unknown here. unknown here. She came to the United States to be with Laurence Olivier, who was her boyfriend at the time. And he was here filming Wuthering Heights for Samuel Goldwyn. And her agent was David O. Selznick's brother, Myron. And Myron Selznick brought Vivian Leigh to the burning of Atlanta filming. The first thing they shot was the burning of Atlanta. And it was such a spectacular event that hundreds of people gathered to watch the filming of it. And of course, they had all these people there to make sure that the fire didn't spread and so forth and so on. And Myron Selznick brought Vivian Lee with him to the set and introduced her to David O. Selznick and said, David, meet your new Scarlett O'Hara. And she tested for the role and she got

the role. Wow. You've been listening to part two of a three-part series with home entertainment executive George Feltenstein. In our next episode, we will continue our discussion of his work on classic Hollywood film releases Ben-Hur, Yankee Doodle Dandy, A Star is Born, and Looney Tunes. For those of you interested in learning more about the Hollywood classics discussed in the show today, there will be detailed information on the website at www.theextras.tv. And if you are enjoying the guests we have on the show, please subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time, you've been listening to The Extras with Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media, producers of podcasts, behind the scenes extras, and media that connects creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals at www.otakumedia.tv

or look for the link in the show notes.