Warner Bros. Home Entertainment To Release Four Eddie Cantor Comedies On DVD On Aug. 4

Not exactly a “seismic shift” — no damage reported in either Los Angeles or San Francisco — but Warner Bros. Home Entertainment announced this past week that director Brad Peyton’s summer blockbuster, San Andreas, has been jolted from Oct. 20 to Oct. 13.

For the record, the ARR for the new Oct. 13 release date is now 137 days and the latest box office take is $151.9 million.

In other release news this week from Warner Bros., they’ve gone to the film vaults and dusted off not one, but four Eddie Cantor films for delivery to DVD on Aug. 4.

We kick off the fun with Cantor’s second sound film, the 1931 release of director Edward Sutherland’s Palmy Days.   Cantor sings and Cantor is funny (especially in a certain “little” outfit) as the assistant to Charles Middleton, the future Flash Gordon iconic villain, Ming the Merciless.   

Always the bad guy, Middleton is a conman named Yolando, who turns on his little buddy and orders him rubbed out (yes, that’s a young George Raft).   Other future stars on view here include Betty Grable and Paulette Goddard (as Goldwyn Girls).

Next in line (chronologically speaking) is the 1932 release of director Leo McCarey’s The Kid From Spain.   Here, Eddie hams it up with Robert Young as college students — expelled for hanky panky in the girl’s dorm — who get mixed up in a bank robbery and take it on the lam to Mexico.   Eddie, to hide from the pursuing police, takes on the perfect disguise … a bull fighter!!!

The following year, Eddie Cantor returned with the hit comedy Roman Scandals.   Directed film noir gems, This Gun for Hire in 1942) and choreographed by the legendary Busby Berkeley, Eddie is “magically” transported to ancient Rome where he lives out his fantasies with the Princess Sylvia (Gloria Stuart — yes, that Gloria Stuart who played the older Rose in Titanic) and the intrigues of Emperor Valerius (Edward Arnold).

by Frank Tuttle (who would go on to deliver one of the early

The fourth Eddie Cantor film being released on DVD on Aug. 4 is director Norman Taurog’s 1936 musical comedy, Strike Me Pink.   Eddie is hired to run an amusement park (filmed at the Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey) that is a front for illegal activities.    Ethel Merman is his co-star, a tough-edged honky-tonk singer that Eddie is madly in love with!

On the Blu-ray front, four previously released films on DVD will be getting a Blu-ray push on Oct. 6 … these are: Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Mighty Joe Young, Son of Kong and Them!