Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Will Release Four Rare Bette Davis Films On DVD On June 2

Bette! Bette! Bette!  

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will have fans of Bette Davis jumping for joy — or belting out a chorus or two of Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes” — on June 2 with the debut of not one or two, but four classic Bette Davis films on DVD.

In chronological order we begin with the 1932 release of director Alfred E. Green’s comedy The Dark Horse, teaming a 24-year old Bette Davis with established leading man Warren William and Guy Kibbee.        

Next up is director William Keighley’s 1935 crime drama, Special Agent, which has Bette Davis as the bookkeeper for a con man named Carston (Ricardo Cortez), who agrees to help investigator Bradford (George Brent) bring him down.   

 

Her next film in 1935 was released at Christmas and that was director Alfred E. Green’s Dangerous, which won Bette Davis her first Best Actress Oscar.   It was quickly followed by The Petrified Forest, which gave Humphrey Bogart his first big break in Hollywood.   

There is a certain irony in that … her summer film for 1936 was director William Dieterle’s Satan Met a Lady, which was a loose adaptation (and remake) of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon.”   The DVD release was out previously as part of a Bogart promotion (showcasing all three of The Maltese Falcon films) and is now once again available, but this time as a stand-alone Bette Davis release (of note, she plays the same character as Mary Astor played in the Bogart classic).

Lastly, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment closes out this four-film Bette Davis promotion with the 1948 post-war comedy from director Bretaigne Windust, June Bride.   This light-weigh comedy entry — wedged between Deception and All About Eve — teams the multi-talented Davis with Robert Montgomery.

Also added to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment’s June 2 DVD release calendar is the double-disc, four-film collection titled The Eddie Cantor Goldwyn Collection.

This unique selection of films from the iconic comedian includes Palmy Days (1931, with George Raft, Charles Middleton and Charlotte Greenwood), The Kid from Spain (1932, Robert Young, J. Carrol Nash and Ruth Hall), Roman Scandals (1933, with Gloria Stuart and The Goldwyn Girls) and Strike Me Pink (1936, Ethel Merman, Brian Donlevy and William Frawley).