TCM (Quietly) Launches Major Vintage Movie Initiative

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 1/17/09 at 6:36pm

Like many movie buffs, I am enormously frustrated that there are literally hundreds of titles from Hollywood's Golden Age that have never been available on video (at least legally) in any form. Now my favorite cable channel, Turner Classic Movies, has quietly launched a program to put some of them out on limited-edition DVDs sold directly through TCM's website (and its marketing arrangement with Movies Unlimited). TCM, which continues to license its brand to two lines of DVDs distributed by sister company Warner Home Video -- "TCM Archives' and "TCM Spotight' -- has started putting out its own DVDs under the "TCM Vault' label, beginning with a six-disc set of "RKO Lost and Found' titles that TCM premiered on the network in 2007 (and which I wrote about at the time). I spoke with TCM executives Molly Battin and Richard Steiner and they revealed TCM is in talks with Warner Home Video (which controls the rights to the vast Turner Entertainment library, including pre-1948 Warner, pre-1986 MGM and the bulk of the RKO titles), Universal (which also controls hundreds of long-unseen 1929-1948 Paramount titles), Sony, MGM "and just about every other studio' about acquiring rights to classic titles which might not have sufficient sales potential to warrant an expensive, full-scale commercial release. So we might actually be able to see, for instance, Leo McCarey's "Make Way For Tomorrow' (available only as a Region 2 import), Henry King's "The Country Doctor' with the Dionne Quintuplets, Frank Borzage's "No Greater Glory,' Edward Dmytryk's "Hitler's Children' or the excellent series of late '30s Paramount B pictures based on J. Edgar Hoover's "Persons in Hiding.' Not to mention the collected works of Kay Francis, Ruth Chatterton, Warren William, Jack Holt, Wheeler and Woolsey, Joe E. Brown -- and maybe even Hugh Herbert in "Sh! The Octopus!' Well, maybe we could live without the last one.

http://blogs.nypost.com/movies/archives/2009/01/dvd_extra_tcm_q.html

[Hest882]

Posted: 1/17/09 at 6:44pm

Oh, bless you for bringing this news over! scurries over to the TCM site

[rula bean2]

Posted: 1/17/09 at 6:51pm

Fantastic!