Warner Bros. Home Entertainment announced its film restoration calendar for the month of May this past week and it turns out to be a nine-strong slate that will be filtered out to the Blu-ray marketplace over the course of the month.
Included in the mix is the new 4K film restoration (from the original nitrate negative) of director H. C. Potter’s 1948 film adaptation of the Eric Hodgins’ novel, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse, starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas. It will be available on May 18.
What makes the film so funny is that Hodgins based the story on his own experiences … two years of frustration and he was finally forced to file for personal bankruptcy, but he turned that sow’s ear into a silk purse with his book.
RKO built a series of sets depicting the construction of Jim Blandings’ dreamhouse, and it is reported that the final “house” still exists today as part of the Malibu Creek State Park.
As to the film itself, Jim Blandings (Cary Grant) is a mid-level advertising executive living in Manhattan in very cramped quarters with his wife Muriel (Myrna Loy) and their two young daughters, Joan (Sharyn Moffett — The Falcon in San Francisco, The Judge Steps Out) and Betsy (Connie Marshall — Dragonwyck, Home, Sweet Homicide, The Green Promise). The solution, purchase a nice little house in Connecticut and commute to work.
They do, and soon discover, that the structure is unsound … and needs to be torn down and rebuilt. Things rapidly go downhill from there. It is one disaster after another, which makes for some great fun at the expense of Mr. and Mrs. Blandings!!
Bonus goodies include the 1949 Tex Avery theatrical cartoon, House of Tomorrow, the 1949 Lux Radio Theatre broadcast teaming Cary Grant with Irene Dunne and the summer of 1949 Screen Director’s Playhouse broadcast featuring Cary Grant and Betsy Drake.
Also on the release calendar in May from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is the Blu-ray debut of director Irving Pichel’s 1947 film noir release of They Won’t Believe Me, starring Robert Young and three femme fatales, Susan Hayworth, Jane Greer and Rita Johnson.
The street date is May 11 for this new 4K restoration of the original 95-minute theatrical cut (not the 80 cutdown version) from the preserved nitrate film elements.
Told in flashback at his murder trial, we learn that Larry Ballentine (Robert Young) is a two-timing philander, trapped in a loveless marriage to the wealthy Greta (Rita Johnson — Nick Carter, Master Detective, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, The Big Clock). He tries to get out of it and run off with Janice Bell (Jane Greer — The Falcon’s Alibi, Out of the Past, The Prisoner of Zenda), but is bribed off by Greta who sets him up in a lucrative brokerage business.
Enter the third woman, Verna Carlson (Susan Hayworth … scenes were shot separately over a 12-day period as she was in the middle of another film production at the time), who seduces Larry and convinces him to run off with her.
Through a series of events (some very clever writing), Larry is charged with the murder of Verna (she actually died in an accident), not Greta (who committed suicide) and as the film concludes and he awaits the verdict he knows that he is doomed … and justice is served, ironically-speaking.
Arriving on May 18 is director John Sturges’ 1953 “Western,” Escape from Fort Bravo, starring William Holden, Eleanor Parker and John Forsythe.
This new 4K film restoration from the original camera negative is the first film from MGM featuring the studio’s newly developed widescreen aspect ratio of 1.66:1.
Since the action takes place during the Civil War, Escape from Fort Bravo falls into that “frontier” category and is not technically a Western, even though it has all the trappings of a Western. Charlton Heston’s Major Dundee and John Wayne’s The Horse Soldiers are similar transition films. Indeed, the plot elements for Escape from Fort Bravo are somewhat similar to those of Major Dundee in that Confederate prisoners are being held at a territorial prison (Arizona) and end up joining forces with their Union captors against a common enemy.
Rounding out the May new-to-Blu-ray film restorations are the May 11 arrivals of Bachelor in Paradise and The Yearling; the May 18 release of Drunken Master II and Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex and two more on May 25, Athena and Tender Trap.
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