Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Prepares An April Shower On New Film Vault Releases For DVD

It’s April showers — figuratively speaking — on DVD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment as they go to the vaults for a deluge of 16 new film releases and a vintage theatrical cartoon collection that will have collector’s barking for joy! 

There are new releases for all four street-date Tuesdays during the month of April, which kickoff with five new vault treasures on Apr. 3.   Among these are the Kay Francis 1938 tearjerker, Comet Over Broadway (directed by Busby Berkeley and John Farrow), Carole Lombard and Chester Morris star in The Gay Bride (1934, direction by Jack Conway) and Ona Munson and “skyscraper riveter” Tom Dugan co-star in director Clarence G. Badger’s 1931 romantic comedy, The Hot Heiress.

Rounding-out the Apr. 3 selections are the 1932 baseball comedy starring Joe E. Brown, Fireman, Save My Child (directed by Lloyd Bacon, with Evalyn Knapp) and director Robert Youngson’s 1964 documentary The Big Parade of Comedy.

Apr. 10 brings us the double-disc DVD assembly of Droopy: The Complete Theatrical Collection, which will have collector’s lining up for their copy.  All 24 theatrical cartoons in the series — beginning with the 1943 release of Dumb-Hounded, the Oscar-nominated One Droopy Knight (1957) and the final entry, Droopy Leprechaun — are included here.

On the theatrical front on Apr. 10, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has director Thorold Dickinson’s historical drama, The Prime Minister, starring Sir John Gielgud as Benjamin Disraeli.  It was filmed in England just after Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and the pivotal Battle of Dunkirk had taken place.   Prints of the film did not arrive in the United States until after Pearl Harbor (released domestically in February of 1942).   Which begs the question, how did they get here?   

Also being released on Apr. 10 on DVD are Alexander Hamilton (1931, with George Arliss as Hamilton), director Alfred E. Green’s 1934 film adaptation of Willa Carter’s novel, A Lost Lady, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Morgan, and director Irving Rapper’s 1941 drama, Shining Victory, teaming James Stephenson with Geraldine Fitzgerald.

The following week, Apr. 17, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is back with director Bryan Foy’s “first all talking picture,” Lights of New York (released during the summer of 1928 and filmed on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank — The Jazz Singer, released on Oct. 6, 1927 was roughly 75 percent silent, but it did mark the beginning of the sound era — and director Lloyd Bacon’s 1931 musical comedy, Manhattan Parade (also filmed in Burbank).

Also on Apr. 17 are director Lloyd Bacon’s 1930 romantic drama, A Notorious Affair, starring Billie Dove, Kay Francis and future Sherlock Holmes icon, Basil Rathbone and the pre-code MGM film, The Ship From Shanghai (filmed in Culver City on the MGM lot), starring Conrad Nagel and Kay Johnson.

Finishing off the month on Apr. 24 are the 1929 “talkie,” Condemned (with Ronald Colman and Ann Harding), The Devil to Pay (1930, again with Ronald Colman and co-starring Loretta Young and Myrna Loy) and the 1937 romantic comedy, Woman Chases Man, teaming Miriam Hopkins with Joel McCrea.