The Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald Collection - New Release!

Ah, sweet mystery of release dates! This is what we MacDonald-Eddy fans have been pondering all these years, wondering when Warner Brothers was going to break down and give us our beloved singing duo's films in one DVD collection. And this month they have! 

Well, it's actually two collections but, huzzah! Now the "longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning" is over and we can sit down and enjoy these canaries when they were in their prime and looking grander than ever in glorious black and white. 

Included in Volume One of Warner Archive's Jeanette MacDonald - Nelson Eddy Collection are their first four films : Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, Maytime and The Girl of the Golden West. And in Volume Two you will find Sweethearts, New Moon, Bitter Sweet and I Married an Angel. 

The sets list for $40.99 USD each but if you head on over to the WB Shop you can find them selling for $32.49 USD. Now that's something to sing about. 

The Paramount Vault on Youtube

Ever since Warner Brothers released rarities from their vaults in their popular print-on-demand Warner Archive DVD-R series, other film studios have followed suit. Currently there is the Sony Pictures' Columbia Classics, MGM Classic Collection, the 20th Century Fox Cinema Archives, Paramount Vault and the Universal Vault Series. So far none have come close to the amount of films that Warner Archives have been releasing, nor the quality, but the Paramount Vault is penetrating a new method of making their archives accessible to the public. 

Currently they offer a number of great Paramount classics, available in their entirety, on Youtube.....and get this, they are absolutely free to watch! How long each of these films remain on Youtube we are unsure of, but at the moment most of the titles have been online for several months already. 

Many of the films date from the 1970s-1990s, but there is quite a nice selection of classics among them too, including these films ( * represents our viewing recommendations ) : 

• *The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
• *King Solomon's Mines
• Paris When it Sizzles
• The Devil and Miss Jones
• No Man of Her Own
• Casanova's Big Night
• *Here Comes the Groom
• A Touch of Larceny
• The Strange Love of Martha Ivers 
  
• *Omar Khayyam
• *Elephant Walk
• The Mountain
• *On the Double
• Dear Brat
• Artists and Models
• The Stooge
• Crack in the World
• Dark City 
• The Colossus of New York
• My Six Loves
• The Fighting Kentuckian
• A Girl Named Tamiko
• Escape from Zahrain
• Quebec
• King Creole
• *The World of Suzie Wong

Click here to check out the official Paramount Vault channel on Youtube and start watching!

George Washington Finally Arrived!!

Heads Up! The great day has arrived....George Washington Slept Here, Moss Hart's hilarious comedy, has crossed the bumpy bridge and finally made its made to a digital home. Oomph-oomph-oomph, that's right folks, yesterday Warner Archives released the Jack Benny/Ann Sheridan comedy to print-on-demand DVD. 

This means you can watch and re-watch it to your heart's content! ( or until the disc wears out ).

George Washington Slept Here was the first - and in our humble opinion the best - of the let's-build-a-house comedy films. Six years after its release Cary Grant and Myrna Loy became became blissful home builders in the MGM adaption, Mr. Blandings Builds a Dream House and a few decades later Tom Hanks and Shelley Long decided to ignore the lessons of these fine folks and undertook a house building project in The Money Pit, but it was in George Washington Slept Here that we first learned what a catastroph can come of fixing up a historical home. Charles Coburn and Percy Kilbride are stellar supports to wise-cracking Benny, and Hattie McDaniel, William Tracy, Lee Patrick round out the cast.

Whether or not this DVD will be available through Warner Archives website we are not sure, but for the moment it is an exclusive release through Movies Unlimited. 

George Washington Slept Here ( 1942 ) DVD - $19.99 

The Hildegarde Withers Mystery Collection Now Available!

Three days ago a most exciting event happened....The Hildegarde Withers Mystery Collection was released as a Warner Archives DVD set. This fabulous mystery series was not available to the public since it was originally released in theatres back in the 1930s ( unless you managed to tape it off of a cable channel of course ). But now all six features can be seen on one beautiful looking set! Hooray for Hildegarde!!

For those of you not familiar with the great Hildegarde Withers, she was a wise-cracking schoolmarm who aided the local New York police chief, Inspector Piper, in baffling mysteries. Withers was the creation of mystery writer Stuart Palmer, and she first graced the pages of a novel in the exciting "Penguin Pool Murder" written in 1931. Palmer followed it with 13 other Withers novels including numerous short stories of "riddles" she solved.

In 1932, the wonderful Edna May Oliver starred in the film adaption of The Penguin Pool Murder with James Gleason as Inspector Piper and co-starring Robert Armstrong and Mae Clarke. The film was so successful it spawned two sequels with Edna May Oliver, and then Helen Broderick took over the role as Miss Withers in Murder on a Bridal Path but only stayed for one outing. Zasu Pitts became the spinster sleuth in the final two films.

The Penguin Pool Murder ( 1932 )
Murder on a Blackboard ( 1934 )
Murder on a Honeymoon ( 1935 )
Murder on a Bridal Path ( 1936 )
The Plot Thickens ( 1936 )
Forty Naughty Girls ( 1937 )

We'll write a more in-depth look at Hildegarde Withers and this DVD set in autumn...a great season for watching mystery movies ( and for buying discount DVDs ).