Arrow Video Restores Director Billy Wilder's The Major And The Minor For Blu-ray Release On Sept. 24

21 Oscar nominations!!  That’s a bunch … indeed, only one filmmaker has more individual Oscar nominations and that would be Woody Allen, who has 23.

Billy Wilder is the writer, director and producer who garnered, during his filmmaking career, 21 nominations, which included six wins (writing and direction for The Lost Weekend, writing for Sunset Blvd. and writing, producing and directing for The Apartment).   He had to start somewhere!

He had fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and made his way to Hollywood as a screenwriter and scored three Oscar nominations for his skills in that area with Ninotchka (1939), Hold Back the Dawn and Ball of Fire (both 1941), but didn’t want to get “pigeon holed” as just a writer.   He wanted to make films; direct.

That opportunity came just after the start of World War II with his film adaptation of a play by Edward Childs Carpenter (“Connie Goes Home”), The Major and the Minor … he wrote it with longtime collaborator Charles Brackett (who amassed nine Oscar nominations during his career, including three wins … the 1953 screenplay for Titanic and two he shared with Wilder, Sunset Blvd. and The Lost Weekend).  

Wilder’s agent, as luck would have it, was also Ginger Rogers’ agent, and she had just scored the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Kitty Foyle and could pretty much do anything she pleased at this point in her career.   She chose Wilder’s comedy (just after wrapping Roxie Hart) and, as they say, the rest is history … Wilder was on his way as a director!

Word arrived this past week that Arrow Video, with domestic sales and distribution expertise provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has a new hi-def transfer of The Major and the Minor ready for distribution as a Blu-ray product offering on Sept. 24.   

This is a light-hearted comedy in which Gary Grant was to be teamed with Ginger Rogers — who was required to dress and look like a 12 year-old in an elaborate deception — but that didn’t work out and so Ray Milland got the part.   Of note, he would win the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in Wilder’s 1945 film release of The Lost Weekend. 

As to bonus nuggets for this comedy gem, there is a newly-prepared commentary option from film scholar Adrian Martin (“The Mad Max Movies,” “Once upon a Time in America,” “Mysteries of Cinema”), a new featurette titled “Half Fare Please!,” the 1943 Lux Radio Theatre featuring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland and an archival interview with Milland.